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UPDATED: Missing Matthew Mitcham, Cheering Tom Daley: A Tale of Two Olympians

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Tom Daley Takes Center Stage at the Rio Olympics As 2008 Gold Medalist Matthew Mitcham Exits From Olympic Diving

In 2008, Matthew Mitcham stunned the world with his final dive in the ten-meter platform event at the Beijing Olympic games. With an extremely difficult dive (a risky two-and-a-half somersault with two-and-a-half twists) performed superbly, Mitcham earned the highest score in the history of the sport and secured the gold medal.

Of his great dive, NBC commentator Cynthia Potter declared, “Matthew Mitcham has done something that nobody in the world thought anybody in the world could do!”

However, as Linda Rapp has noted, NBC failed to report that Mitcham was the only openly gay man among the over 11,000 athletes at the Beijing games. The network also failed to show any reaction shots of Mitcham’s partner, Lachlan Fletcher, in the stands and relegated coverage of the subsequent medal ceremony to its web site.

But viewers of many other networks around the world saw Mitcham’s emotion as he realized that he had won the unexpected gold medal. As he exited the pool deck, he climbed into the stands and kissed both his proud and overjoyed partner and his supportive mother. (Fletcher was there as a result of a travel grant that Mitcham received from the Johnson & Johnson Support Program for Olympic athletes—the first time such an award had been granted to support the travel of a same-sex partner.)

Mitcham’s victory propelled him into the annals of great Olympic athletes. Australians voted him the Sports Performer of the year in 2008; Australian Post issued a stamp in his honor; and he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia.

He also became a role model for gay athletes, a position he did not seek, but accepted graciously: “I never made the choice to be a role model, but as soon as somebody looks up to you or finds something in you that they like, you become one. And that’s something you either honor and respect or reject. I honor it.”

Mitcham’s openness about his homosexuality–“it wasn’t until I was totally honest about it all that it wasn’t a problem,” he said–was in stark contrast with the secretiveness of Australia’s other great Olympian, swimmer Ian Thorpe, who repeatedly denied his homosexuality until he finally came out in a highly touted interview on Australian television in 2014. After years of adamantly denying rumors that he was gay, in the interview Thorpe discussed the pain he experienced in coming to terms with his sexuality while also battling depression.

Despite Mitcham’s extraordinary performance in Beijing, he experienced difficulty finding major corporate sponsors until, in February 2009, he signed a deal with Telstra, an Australian communications company.

After the triumph in Beijing, Mitcham experienced a number of disappointments in his diving career, though he continued to compile a record that is the envy of other elite divers.

For example, in the 2009 World Aquatics Championship in Rome, he finished third in the ten-meter platform event that was won by teen British diving phenom, Tom Daley, who was just emerging on the world scene.

Posted by Matthew Mitcham on Monday, November 1, 2010

In the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, Mitcham won four silver medals, but again lost in the ten-meter event to Daley.

In 2011, Mitcham’s diving suffered as a result of an abdominal injury and an addiction to methamphetamine.

However, in December of that year, he returned to his old form and qualified to compete in the 2012 London Olympics. Unfortunately, there he narrowly failed to qualify for the finals in the ten-meter event.

As his diving career seemed to falter, Mitcham began a parallel career as an Australian television personality and cabaret entertainer.

But in the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in August 2014, Mitcham ended his gold medal drought. He and Dominic Bedggood won the gold medal in the synchronized three-meter platform dive, edging out the English team of Tom Daley and James Denny, who won the silver medal. The following day, Daley won the gold medal in the ten-meter individual platform dive.

The achievement in the synchronized three-meter dive marked the first time in the history of the Commonwealth Games that two openly gay athletes have won gold and silver in an event, though, as pointed out above, in the 2010 Games–three years before Daley came out–he and Mitcham also finished first and second in the ten-meter competition.

Although some observers were looking forward to another match-up between Mitcham and Daley in the Rio Olympics, in January of this year Mitcham announced his retirement. Saying that he would concentrate henceforth on his media and entertainment career, Mitcham told the Australian Broadcasting Company News, “I have achieved everything I hoped for, including the big three–Olympic gold in 2008, world number one in 2010, and Commonwealth gold in 2014, which could never have happened without all the help I’ve had along the way.”

Mitcham is covering the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio for Australia’s Channel 7:

Enter Tom DaleyÂ

Mitcham was the only openly gay male athlete competing in the 2008 Olympics. In contrast, Tom Daley will be one of 11 openly gay male athletes competing in Rio, along with 33 female athletes who identify as lesbian, bisexual, or intersex. (For a list of these Olympians, see Outsports.)

Daley, however, is the only openly gay diver who will take to the platform in 2016. He will compete in at least two events, the men’s synchronized ten-meter dive, scheduled for Monday, August 8,  and the men’s ten-meter platform dive, scheduled for Friday, August 19.

The @teamgb #diving boys 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧, taking over the rings 🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷

Posted by Tom Daley on Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Despite his youth, the 22-year-old Daley is an experienced Olympian. At the age of 14, he competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where he finished seventh in the ten-meter platform event and eighth in the ten-meter synchronized competition.

Daley came into his own in 2012, when he won several international and United Kingdom championships and became a favorite to win a medal at the London Olympics.

However, Daley and his partner in the synchronized diving event disappointed the home crowd by finishing in fourth place, thus increasing the pressure on Daley to earn a medal in the ten-meter platform competition.

In the ten-meter platform event, Daley became locked in an exciting contest with China’s Qiu Bo and the U.S.’s David Boudia, whom he led until the final dive. Unfortunately, Daley’s last dive had a lower degree of difficulty than the dives performed by Bo and Boudia, and they edged him out for the gold and silver medals. Still, his bronze medal was wildly celebrated by the London viewers and made Daley a British heartthrob.

Following the London Olympics, in October 2012, Daley easily triumphed in the World Junior Diving Championships in Australia. In 2013, however, his competitive diving was severely restricted by a triceps injury.

But Daley, who by now had become a television personality in the U.K., made news when he issued a wrenching YouTube video to announce that he was in a relationship with a man.Â

It was subsequently revealed that the man with whom Daley was involved was Academy Award-winning screenwriter and activist Dustin Lance Black. Black wrote the screenplay for Gus Van Sant’s  Harvey Milk biopic Milk (2008), and also served on the board of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which sponsored the federal lawsuit against Proposition 8. Following the 2010 federal district court trial challenging Proposition 8 before Judge Vaughn Walker, Black wrote the play 8, based on actual events and testimony, in order to disseminate information about the historic trial.

☀️🇪🇸❤️🇪🇸☀️

Posted by Tom Daley on Monday, July 4, 2016

The two revealed their engagement in a tongue-in-cheek announcement in the October 1, 2015 Births, Marriages, and Deaths section of the (London) Times: “The engagement is announced between Tom, son of Robert and Debra Daley of Plymouth, and Lance, son of Jeff Bisch of Philadelphia and Anne Bisch of Lake Providence.”

Meanwhile, Daley worked hard to overcome a case of post-Olympic blues and an aversion to the difficult dive that propelled Matthew Mitcham to Olympic glory in 2008.

With a new coach, Daley developed a new “twister dive” that may make a difference to his success or failure in Rio. He continued a series of medal-winning performances in World Championship, British Championships, and other competitions and began training seriously for the Rio Games.

In the video below, Daley explains the deprivations an Olympian must endure even during Christmas in Los Angeles.

The following video, an excellent documentary from Britain’s ITV, charts Daley’s journey to Rio.

Daley will face stiff competition in Rio, especially from Chinese diver Qui Bo and 2012 gold medalist American David Boudia in the ten-meter platform competition; in the synchronized diving event Daley and Daniel Goodfellow (photo, below) will have to overcome the favored Chinese pair Lin Yue and Chen Aisen and the American duo David Boudia and Steele Johnson. But many of us will be cheering on Tom Daley.

4 more days til we leave for Rio. Getting those last few training days in 💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼

Posted by Tom Daley on Thursday, July 28, 2016

So too may Greg Louganis, who will also be in Rio, serving as an official athlete mentor of the U.S. diving team.

Louganis is widely regarded as the greatest diver in history. After having won a silver medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, he dominated diving competitions throughout the 1980s, winning two gold medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and two more at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Although he did not compete as an openly gay athlete, after his retirement he acknowledged both his homosexuality and his status as a person living with HIV.

Louganis knows well the hard work, discipline, and incredible dedication that it takes to become an Olympian. In addition, he knows from first-hand knowledge the bullying that both Mitcham and Daley experienced as adolescents. Although he will certainly fulfill his role as mentor to U.S. athletes at Rio, he will no doubt also have a special empathy for the particular challenges Daley faces as an openly gay athlete and wish him a spectacular Olympics.

UPDATE

On August 8, 2016, Daley and Daniel Goodfellow secured an Olympic bronze medal in the ten-meter synchronized diving event. They were propelled  past the rival Ukranian and German duos by performing two outstanding final dives. The Chinese team of Lin Yue and Chen Aisen dominated the event and won the gold medal; the American team of David Boudia and Steele Johnson took the silver medal.

In the video below, Daley remarks on winning the bronze in Rio.

Â

 UPDATE 2

On August 19, Daley led the field of the ten-meter platform competitors, finishing first in the preliminary round with an incredible score of 571.85. With such a performance, he became a strong favorite to win the gold medal in the event.

Alas, however, Daley bombed in the semi-finals on August 20, finishing last among the 18 divers who survived the preliminary round.Â

In an interview following his disastrous performance, Daley said he was heartbroken but was already looking forward to the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.

Image of Matthew Mitcham, Tom Daley via Facebook 

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News

‘Sounds Like Putin’: Trump Blasted for Declaring Top News Organizations ‘Illegal’

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March 14, 2025

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President Donald Trump, just 54 days into his second term, declared himself “the chief law enforcement officer in our country” and labeled two major news organizations, CNN and MSNBC, as “illegal,” while further denouncing their coverage as “illegal.” His remarks Thursday afternoon were delivered to officials at the U.S. Department of Justice, in an appearance that shattered a decades-old norm designed to insulate the department from political interference—a safeguard established in response to President Richard Nixon’s abuses of power. Trump’s statements have drawn sharp criticism for their authoritarian tone and direct attack on press freedom, sparking alarm.

“I believe that CNN and MSNDC,” said Trump (video below), using his own derogatory twist on MSNBC’s name, “who literally write 97.6% bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat Party. And in my opinion, they’re really corrupt and they’re illegal. What they do is illegal.”

Trump also “rallied against the press,” in general, “claiming they are influencing judges and, without any evidence, claiming the media works in coordination with political campaigns, which is not allowed in the news industry,” The Hill reported.

READ MORE: White House Caught Admitting Real Reason for Mass Firings: Experts

It has been widely reported that during his first term in office, Fox News host Sean Hannity spoke with Trump “nearly every weeknight.”

“These networks and these newspapers are really no different than a highly paid political operative. And it has to stop, it has to be illegal, it’s influencing judges and it’s really, eh, changing law and it just cannot be legal. I don’t believe it’s legal and they do it in total coordination with each other,” the President alleged.

Trump’s remarks were just a part of a speech that lasted more than one hour, during which he “delivered an insult-laden speech that shattered the traditional notion of DOJ independence,” as Politico reported. During those remarks, Trump also “labeled his courtroom opponents ‘scum,’ judges ‘corrupt’ and the prosecutors who investigated him ‘deranged.'”

“With the DOJ logo directly behind him, Trump called for his legal tormentors to be sent to prison.”

It is not the first time the President, who is a convicted felon, has declared MSNBC “illegal.”

Last month, when MSNBC host Joy Reid left the news network, Trump unleashed a torrent of hatred.

“Lowlife Chairman of ‘Concast,’ Brian Roberts, the owner of Ratings Challenged NBC and MSDNC, has finally gotten the nerve up to fire one of the least talented people in television, the mentally obnoxious racist, Joy Reid,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform. “Based on her ratings, which were virtually non-existent, she should have been ‘canned’ long ago, along with everyone else who works there. Also thrown out was Alex Wagner, the sub on the seriously failing Rachel Maddow show. Rachel rarely shows up because she knows there’s nobody watching, and she also knows that she’s got less television persona than virtually anyone on television except, perhaps, Joy Reid.”

READ MORE: ‘Team Fight’: Democrats Call for Schumer to Resign

Trump’s Friday afternoon assault on the media was swiftly criticized.

“This is what a dictator sounds like,” wrote U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI).

“Journalism is legal,” declared award-winning investigative journalist Lindsay Beyerstein. “Criticizing the president is legal. Being a Democrat is legal. Nothing Donald Trump is ranting about here is a crime and he’s disgracing himself and the Department of Justice by talking this way.”

Journalist Matt O’Brien observed, “Trump wants to get rid of freedom of speech because he wants to be a dictator. And unlike his first term, he now has a government full of fascists who are eager to make that a reality.”

Marlow Stern, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Journalism at Columbia University’s Columbia Journalism School wrote: “sounds like putin.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist Kyle Whitmire wrote simply: “Enemy of the Constitution.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Basically Underwater on Everything’: Trump in Big Trouble With Majority of Voters Poll Finds

 

Image via Reuters 

 

 

 

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White House Caught Admitting Real Reason for Mass Firings: Experts

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23 hours ago

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March 14, 2025

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White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is “basically admitting” the White House “lied” about the mass firings of tens of thousands of federal government employees, a legal expert is alleging, based on her remarks on Friday. Many of not most of the terminated government workers were ordered to be reinstated by two separate federal courts on Thursday. Judges ruled the terminations were likely unlawful.

According to The New York Times, one judge “said in his lengthy ruling that the government’s contention that the firings of the probationary employees had been for cause, and not a mass layoff, ‘borders on the frivolous.'” Another judge “concluded much the same and made it clear that he thought the manner in which the Trump administration had fired the probationary workers was a ‘sham.'”

Leavitt previously has been criticized for having exhibited “a fundamental misunderstanding of the separation of powers enumerated in the U.S. Constitution since 1789,” and for making false claims in general.

READ MORE: ‘Team Fight’: Democrats Call for Schumer to Resign

On Friday, having been asked to clarify a previous statement, Leavitt told reporters that the Trump administration will be “fighting back” against those two rulings “by appealing, fighting back by using the full weight of the White House Counsel’s office and our lawyers at the federal government who believed that this injunction is entirely unconstitutional.”

Leavitt insisted that the injunction — presumably both injunctions blocking the administration from additional mass firings and requiring that the fired probational employees be reinstated — are unconstitutional.

She claimed that, “for anybody who has a basic understanding of the law, you cannot have a low level district court judge filing an injunction to usurp the executive authority of the president of the United States.”

That is false, and violates the separation of powers, as legal experts and Supreme Court cases have made clear, although it is a claim the Trump administration has repeatedly asserted.

“That is completely absurd, and as the executive of the executive branch, the president has the ability to fire or hire. And you have these lower level judges who are trying to, uh, block this president’s agenda,” she stated (video below).

That appears to be the remark that drew the attention of attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration policy expert and senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.

READ MORE: ‘Basically Underwater on Everything’: Trump in Big Trouble With Majority of Voters Poll Finds

“Pay attention here to how the White House is basically admitting to have lied about why these people were fired,” Reichlin-Melnick wrote. “Now they claim this was the President’s command and must not be overruled. But when the firings were happening, they claimed on paper it was for ‘performance’ reasons.”

Andrew Heineman, legislative director for U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) wrote: “It sounds very much like Leavitt just admitted that the firings were part of Trump’s ‘agenda.'”

Leavitt went on to suggest that there is a conspiracy of activist judges working to “block” President Trump.

“It’s very clear, and as I just cited, I was appalled by the statistic when I saw it this morning in three or, uh, in one month in February, there have been 15 injunctions of this administration in our agenda,” she said.

“In three years under the Biden administration, there were 14 injunctions. So, uh, it’s very clear that there are judicial activists throughout our judicial branch who are trying to block this president’s executive authority.”

She went on to praise President Trump and his legal team, saying that despite being “indicted nearly 200 times,” he was able to become President.

Trump has not been indicted nearly 200 times. He was indicted four times, and faced a total of 91 felony charges.

“We are going to fight back,” she insisted, “and as anyone who saw President Trump up in his legal team fighting back, they know how to do it. He was indicted nearly 200 times, and he’s in the Oval Office now because all of the indictments, all of these injunctions have always been unconstitutional and unfair.”

“They are led by partisan activists, who are trying to usurp the will of this president and we’re not going to stand for it.”

Critics blasted Leavitt’s grasp of the law.

Semafor’s David Weigel posted headlines of federal judges, or, “low level district court” judges, as she said, blocking other President’s actions.

“You sure about that? You sure about that?” he asked, mockingly.

Attorney and Democratic activist Aaron Parnas, responding to Leavitt’s claim that you cannot have a  judge block a president’s wishes, responded: “You actually can. That’s why we have three branches of government.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Entire World Ripping Us Off’: Trump Quotes FDR in Angry Tariff War Meltdown

Image via Reuters

 

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‘Basically Underwater on Everything’: Trump in Big Trouble With Majority of Voters Poll Finds

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March 13, 2025

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Barely more than 50 days into his second term, President Donald Trump appears to be failing in the eyes of a majority of American voters on nearly every major issue — from the economy to immigration to the war in Ukraine to trade to his handling of the federal workforce and more —according to a new poll released Thursday by the highly-respected Quinnipiac University.

“A noticeable uptick of discontent can be seen over President Trump’s handling of a range of issues: from Ukraine to the economy to the federal workforce,” Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy said in a statement.

A majority of Americans, 53%, disapprove of the president’s performance overall, with just 42% approving. That’s a significant swing (11 points) on the disapproval side from Quinnipiac’s January 29 poll, which found 46% percent of Americans approved of the new president’s performance, and 42% disapproved.

Fox News host Jessica Tarlov gave an overview of the poll’s results, telling viewers (video below), “So basically, he is underwater on everything.”

READ MORE: ‘Bizarre’: GOP Obsessed With Me Instead of Governing, Says Transgender Congresswoman

On one of the most strongly-negative questions, 60% of voters oppose President Trump’s plan to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. Just one in three support it. Another major negative is Trump’s position on trade with Canada: 58 percent of voters disapprove of his handling of that issue, just 36 percent approve. That is closely followed by trade with Mexico (56% disapprove).

Historically, the economy has been one of Trump’s strongest approval areas. That is no longer the case.

A majority of voters, 54%, disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy — just 41% approve.

“In the Quinnipiac poll released today, 1 percent of voters describe the state of the America’s economy as excellent. That’s not a typo,” observed Democratic strategist Matt McDermott.

On that topic, Quinnipiac reported, a whopping “76 percent describe it as either not so good (45 percent) or poor (31 percent).”

According to Quinnipiac’s numbers, voters thought President J0e Biden’s economy was better in his last full month (December) than they think President Trump’s is now.

Quinnipiac University’s December 2024 poll found 34 percent described the economy “as either excellent (3 percent) or good (31 percent) and 64 percent described it as either not so good (31 percent) or poor (33 percent).”

Immigration, also once a strong area for Trump, no longer is.

Nearly half of voters, 49%, disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration issues. 46% approve.

Other negatives include his handling of the Russia – Ukraine war (55% disapprove), the federal workforce (also 55% disapprove), foreign policy (53% disapprove,) and the military (48% disapprove).

Trump’s Oval Office dressing down of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not go over well with the American voter.

“Fifty-eight percent of voters disapprove of the way President Trump handled the recent meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, while 35 percent approve.”

Trump’s overall approval rating (42%) is actually one point below what voters gave President Zelenskyy (43%).

READ MORE: ‘Entire World Ripping Us Off’: Trump Quotes FDR in Angry Tariff War Meltdown

Meanwhile, six in ten voters (61%) think Trump is not hard enough on Russia, while half (50%) think he is too tough on Ukraine.

In fact, the only issue where Trump’s overall favorable outweighed his unfavorable rating is trade with China, which has not made many headlines recently. On that issue, 46% approve, 44% approve, a narrow margin.

But even in areas not directly tied to Trump’s approval rating, voters oppose the President’s position, at least in part.

“More than half of voters (57 percent) think that children who have not received standard vaccinations should not be allowed to attend schools and childcare facilities, while 35 percent think that children who have not received standard vaccinations should be allowed to attend schools and childcare facilities,” Quinnipiac found.

On the President’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), 60% of voters “disapprove of the way Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency,” Quinnipiac found, “are dealing with workers employed by the federal government, while 36 percent approve.”

Republicans (77 – 16 percent) approve, while Democrats (96 – 2 percent) and independents (68 – 28 percent) disapprove.

Fifty-four percent of voters think Elon Musk and DOGE are hurting the country, while 40 percent think they are helping the country.

President Trump has ordered that any school that requires vaccinations for COVID-19 will be defunded.

“TIMBER!” exclaimed SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah, who wrote that the poll shows, “Trump’s approval rating falling as fast as he’s killing stock market.”

“ONLY 42% approve of Trump’s presidency. That is LOWEST EVER for 2nd term President at 50 days,” he noted.

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Not Above the Law’: Fist-Pounding Democrat Explodes Asking ‘Where’s Elon Musk?’

 

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