‘Weekend at Biden’s’ creator takes on LA mayor Karen Bass



Spencer Pratt has ended his campaign for mayor of Los Angeles, but he says his fight against the two remaining candidates is just beginning.

And we thought all we had to look forward to was an electrifying debate between Nithya Raman and incumbent Karen Bass about shade trees.

‘This is not really a Republican or Democrat issue. ... It’s a commonsense, quality-of-life issue.’

Pratt hardly needs his name on the ballot to steal focus from the two Democrats. The meme magic has been particularly strong with him since he first announced his candidacy — thanks especially to behind-the-scenes creators like digital media guru Nick Ward.

‘Weekend’ warrior

Back in 2020, Ward had a killer idea capitalizing on the Trump/Biden presidential race — but he knew Hollywood wouldn’t so much as give it the time of day.

So he decided to DIY it instead.

Ward’s “Weekend at Biden’s” comedy video swiftly went viral, generating millions of views with his wacky riff on 1989’s “Weekend at Bernie’s.” The clip shows Joe Biden’s advisers attempting to trick the country into thinking he’s still very much alive.

Last month, Ward found inspiration in a battle just as contentious as that presidential match-up: the tight L.A. mayoral race between incumbent Karen Bass and reality show star-turned-candidate Spencer Pratt.

The clip spoofs director Ridley Scott’s classic Apple ad from 1984 featuring a “Big Brother”-style threat. Here, it’s Mayor Bass as Big Sister, telling her bedraggled citizens not to believe their eyes and ears.

“There is no reason to change mayors. Our city is fine,” the dystopian Bass asserts. “There is no homelessness. There is no fire damage. There is no crime.”

“No one’s buying it,” Ward said of Bass’ attempt to spin the truth during her re-election campaign.

He says Californians know it’s “not normal to see a threat on the side of the road and tell your nervous system to ignore it.”

Hammer time

The clip retains the iconic female athlete throwing a hammer into the projection, a figure emblematic of the frustrations felt across Los Angeles. “It speaks to a lot of Los Angeles moms, people who want to feel safe,” Ward said.

The clip was quickly picked up by actor James Woods (5.3 million followers on X), generating hundreds of thousands of views in addition to the eyeballs shared from Ward’s account, @Weekend_Bidens.

“The cat gets out of the bag. ... You have no control in a way,” he said of the clip’s early adoption. “I’m walking around South Beach. ... Within an hour or two it had gone up to 30K or 50K views.”

Ward made the video independently of Pratt’s campaign, but he makes no bones about his intentions.

“This is not really a Republican or Democrat issue. ... It’s a commonsense, quality-of-life issue,” Ward tells Blaze Media Lifestyle of his Pratt support.

RELATED: Hate-spewing Jimmy Kimmel mocks homeless Spencer Pratt with U-Haul gag

Dimitrios Kambouris/Randy Holmes/Getty Images

Truth in comedy

Ward may be building a brand as a go-to political satirist, but he spent his college days honing his improv comedy chops. Now, he’s tapping into the digital world’s viral reach as well as what AI can offer those challenging the media’s groupthink.

He understands the power of humor, something late-night comedians have attempted to marshal for some time. Except the Kimmels and Stewarts of the world are working at a disadvantage, as he sees it.

“I think one of the issues with the left, so to speak, is that they can’t really be funny,” he said. “Comedy is about truth. ... They’re not telling the truth.”

“Someone like Gavin Newsom tries to be funny, but it comes off very off-key,” he added.

Since most mainstream comedy platforms lean to the left, that’s given creators like him an opening.

“In some ways there’s been an artificially suppressed supply with that. There is a lot of demand,” he said.

The best satirical clips “speak about what’s unspoken, touching on something you’re not supposed to touch.” It’s one reason he hasn’t had to dig in his pocket for his latest clip’s promotion. It’s being shared organically.

There’s a method to his viral video madness, one that others have understood for ages.

“Leading with comedy is so great. Culture comes before politics,” he said, adding that there’s “a lot to laugh about in California” today.

AI auteur

Ward began making viral video content in 2020, and he didn’t have the wonders of AI at the time. He worked with a professional visual effects team without access to ChatGPT or Grok.

“I used to be so frustrated with stock images and being so limited,” he said. Now, with AI, “I can still do the whole editing process but just make myself the assets and be specific about it.”

The technology still has some hiccups. He notes how AI videos may degrade over time, forcing him to work in shorter segments.

“You try to change one thing, and [the onscreen character] may grow an extra arm or leg,” he said. “I have a few tips and tricks I use. Shorter is better.”

Ward isn’t hiding his partisan approach, but he also hopes his videos do more than ding the Bass campaign.

“I like making dialogue happen between people who aren’t necessarily talking to each other or hearing each other,” he said of his clips. “It’s an opportunity to bring people back into the conversation.”

Sen. Mike Lee reveals the brutal term his Democratic colleagues are using for the Biden decrepitude saga



Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) provided "Blaze News Tonight" Thursday with some damning insights into the state of play in Washington, D.C., and into how his Democratic peers are handling President Joe Biden's decrepitude and political collapse. Lee indicated the situation across the aisle has devolved into a truly pitiable state.

Biden has provided ample evidence in recent years that he is not immune to the ravages of time. The 81-year-old Democrat has manifested various signs of cognitive decline in public — confusing countries and family members; speaking to the dead; falling; repeating himself; slurring his words; forgetting critical life events; and relying upon large-printed instructions to execute basic tasks.

As recently as last month, Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media were still dutifully painting Biden as mentally fit and competent, deriding critics as conspiracy theorists, partisans, and cranks, and even suggesting that raw footage evidencing Biden's decline were "deepfakes."

However, Biden's presidential debate with President Donald Trump forced a paradigm shift in the mainstream — or at the very least left the American public asking enough questions that the political establishment had to begin seriously considering answers. Biden has not made his defense any easier in recent days by mistaking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for Russian President Vladimir Putin at Thursday's NATO press conference, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris as "Vice President Trump," or relying upon Jill Biden and former President Barack Obama to lead him around.

When pressed by "Blaze News Tonight" co-host Jill Savage about what his Democratic colleagues were saying about Joe Biden, Lee said, "They are referring behind closed doors to this situation and to conversations that they've apparently had to have as a conference within the last hour or two as the 'Weekend at Bernie's' chat."

'A whole lot of them and a whole lot of people in the media should not pretend to be surprised here.'

In the 1989 comedy movie "Weekend at Bernie's," a pair of lowly insurance company employees are invited to their CEO's beach home under false pretenses. Rather than a warm reception, they are greeted instead by the cold, dead body of their boss, Bernie Lomax. For fear of being tied to Bernie Lomax's demise and desiring to live it up in the beach house at the dead man's expense, the duo do their best to make it seem as though Lomax is still alive, manipulating and lugging around his body. The deception is made easier by the fact that many others are blinded by their own desires to similarly exploit the dead man's affluence and amenities.

"This is the reality in which they're swimming," said Lee. "I don't envy them. And yet we do have to remember that — I don't want to say all of them — but a whole lot of them and a whole lot of people in the media should not pretend to be surprised here."

"I think most of us, even those of us who are not Democrats, have seen this for a long time," continued the senator from Utah. "We've seen the president of the United States shaking hands with people who are not there or at least we can't see them. We've seen him getting lost between the helicopter and the residence at the White House. We've seen all sorts of things that don't make sense."

'They're looking for an off-ramp.'

Lee emphasized that there have long been far too many signs of Biden's decline for Democrats now to convincingly express shock.

"I think they have finally started to accept the fact that they've pushed it so far they can't take it any further," said Lee. "They're looking for an off-ramp. What I don't know is where it's going to go and whether that off-ramp is going to be any better or any worse for their chances."

Even if Biden ultimately caves to the demands of Democratic donors and lawmakers to exit the race, his most-discussed potential replacement appears similarly fated to lose.

A YouGov poll conducted days after the Trump-Biden debate suggested that two-thirds of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents would approve of Kamala Harris becoming the presidential nominee. However, a post-debate Reuters/Ipsos poll indicated that Harris, whose approval rating is south of 38% and disapproval rating sits around 50%, still trailed Trump by one percentage point. Five Thirty Eight indicated that when factoring in economic and political issues, Biden still stands a better chance against Trump in terms of picking up swing states and winning the Electoral College than Harris by a 17-point margin.

While the broader conversation about Biden has largely dealt with the man himself, Lee steered it back to the issues with his policies.

"Bottom line is all of this ultimately focuses on the fact that Joe Biden's policies have been an unmitigated disaster. They have inflicted torture on the American people. They have made everything more expensive. The average family has to shell out at a minimum $1,300 a month every single month just to live, just to buy groceries and gas, and to pay for their housing," said Lee. "That's not fair, but this is the predictable, foreseeable, and in fact foreseen result of his failed policies."

"So no matter where they run, they cannot hide from the failed progressive Democrat policies that have put us in this position," added Lee. "And that's really what's on trial, more than Joe Biden's dementia."

— (@)

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Brazilian woman caught on camera puppeteering dead man to sign for a loan: 'Uncle, are you listening?'



A woman was arrested Tuesday after wheeling a corpse into a South American bank and attempting to take out a loan in the decedent's name.

Brazilian police indicated 68-year-old Paulo Robert Braga had long been dead when Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes, 42, rolled him into a Rio de Janeiro bank in a wheelchair, talked to him as though he were still among the living, then attempted to puppeteer a signature out of him for a $3,234 loan.

According to the Brazilian news outlet G1, bank employees quickly became suspicious of Nunes' behavior. There were, after all, a few dead giveaways that something was amiss.

In footage of the incident captured by bank employees, Nunes can be seen attempting to keep Braga's head upright and engaging in a clearly one-sided conversation.

"Uncle, are you listening? You need to sign. If you don't sign it, there's no way," Nunes can be heard saying in her native tongue. "I can't sign it for you. I'll do what I can do."

"You hold your chair very strong there," Nunes says to the corpse. She proceeds to ask one of the tellers, "Didn't he hold the door there just now?"

Feigning frustration with Braga's lack of cooperation, Nunes says, "Sign so you don't give me any more headaches. I can't take it anymore."

According to a translation provided by USA Today, one teller says in the video, "I don't think this is legal. He doesn't look well. He's very pale."

Nunes, who claimed to be the dead man's niece, says, "He is like this."

The grim borrower then suggests to Braga, whose mouth is wide open and eyes are glassy, "If you are not well, you will go to the hospital."

Bank attendants ultimately called the police who promptly detained Nunes.

Police chief Fábio Souza of the 34th Police Station confirmed to CNN Brazil that Nunes was charged with attempted theft by fraud and abuse of a corpse. If convicted of the latter, then Nunes could face up to three years in prison and a fine.

Nunes reportedly expressed no remorse in her interviews with police and told officials that Braga had expired while in the bank. Police are not buying her story in part because medical examiners found indications the elderly man had been dead for at least two hours prior to his posthumous banking experience.

Authorities are reportedly still waiting to confirm Braga's cause of death, indicating they will open a homicide investigation if they suspect foul play.

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D.C. Democrats Have Gone Full ‘Weekend At Bernie’s’

Democrats have got Feinstein, Fetterman, and Biden all propped up 'Weekend at Bernie's'-style -- because with a body and an 'aye,' the party can go on.