Covid quack Collins: It's Trump's fault that​ Americans don't trust authority

Now, that’s funny.

Stephen Colbert brought on former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins to decry the public’s lack of trust in authority figures.

Taylor Sheridan lives on a sprawling Texas ranch, spends time chatting with Joe Rogan, and refuses to ignore red-state America. For that, he must be punished.

Do tell.

Dr. Collins tried to bury good science and push the lousy kind. Now, he’s warning “The Late Show’s” far-left audience about the Trump effect.

There seems to be no real penalty for saying something that’s demonstrably false. It’s just okay. No, it’s not. We have a trust deficit where because people don’t know if they can be sure somebody's telling the truth, why should I trust that person? So we stop trusting each other most of the time, and that’s dangerous also for our future"

Well, he’s right about a dearth of trust, except he should pick up an Ikea mirror and stare at it a good, long while …

Epic win

Tickets for Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" are sold out — a year before it opens.

OK, not all tickets — just a bunch of screenings in the "Oppenheimer" director's favorite format: 70mm Imax.

How big was demand? An hour after Imax announced it, 95% of the seats were snapped up, with some going for premium prices on eBay.

Nolan’s retelling of Homer's ancient epic doesn’t hit theaters until July 2026. In fact, it hasn't even wrapped production yet.

Even if you're not a fellow Nolan fanatic, you have to admire the prudent, long-term planning on display here. The Democratic Party might consider recruiting some of these folks.

The joker

Classic rock virtue-signaling is the saddest virtue-signaling.

We saw that during the pandemic, when Neil Young pulled his music from Spotify to protest Joe Rogan’s “misinformation.” Young later returned his music to the platform when he realized no one cared about his publicity stunt.

Now, the Steve Miller Band is canceling its U.S. tour over climate change. Really.

“The combination of extreme heat, unpredictable flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes and massive forest fires make these risks for you our audience, the band and the crew unacceptable. So …

“You can blame it on the weather … The tour is cancelled.”

The show must go on? Not so much.

Cynical fans flocked to X to blame the cancellation on poor ticket sales, not Mother Nature. Even the far-left Variety hinted that slow sales could be the real culprit. They wouldn’t be the only artists facing fan disinterest. Jennifer Lopez’s latest tour got crushed by underwhelming ticket sales. So did tours by Pink, the Jonas Brothers, and Justin Timberlake.

Those acts weren’t shrewd enough to play the Al Gore Card, alas …

Taylor's version

Taylor Sheridan lives on a sprawling Texas ranch, spends time chatting with Joe Rogan, and refuses to ignore red-state America. For that, he must be punished.

So sayeth Emmy voters, who once again snubbed his populist TV shows in the latest round of nominations. Sheridan isn’t a loud and proud conservative, but he dares to respect conservatives' views and sometimes lets them speak.

And when they do, it tends to go viral. Consider this epic Billy Bob Thornton rant on wind turbines from Sheridan’s “Landman” TV show.

You have any idea how much diesel they have to burn to mix that much concrete or make that steel and haul this s**t out here and put it together with a 450-foot crane? You want to guess how much oil it takes to lubricate that f**king thing? Or winterize it? In its 20-year lifespan, it won’t offset the carbon footprint of making it. And don’t get me started on solar panels and the lithium in your Tesla battery.

Ouch.

No wonder Hollywood elites keep leaving him off their Emmy ballots. Countless loyal viewers and a $200 million deal with Paramount are obviously no substitute for the recognition of his industry "peers." Here's hoping Sheridan can muddle through all the same.

The usual suspect

This disgraced actor has nothing to hide, at least about Epstein Island.

Kevin Spacey, the two-time Oscar winner whose career collapsed during the MeToo explosion, wants Team Trump to release the Epstein files.

"Release the Epstein files. All of them. For those of us with nothing to fear, the truth can’t come soon enough. I hate to make this about me — but the media already has,” he wrote on X.

Spacey’s name has come up a time or two during Epstein news cycles, but the star insists he’s innocent.

He famously played a president on Netflix’s “House of Cards.” Now, if only former President Bill Clinton had Spacey’s confidence about the infamous Epstein list.