If Americans are concerned about our enemies getting bolder in their bid to disrupt the U.S.-led world order, they should thank President Joe Biden. Last week, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping traveled to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. During the meeting, the leaders outlined plans to enhance bilateral ties on issues such as trade, energy, and military cooperation. Xi and Putin furthermore agreed to support one another’s “fundamental interests,” specifically on matters concerning “sovereignty, territorial integrity, security and development.”
Most notable in the joint statement released by Beijing and Moscow, however, is the expressed goal of creating a “multipolar world order.” “The Parties confirm a willingness to … oppose all forms [of] hegemony, unilateralism and power politics, against cold war thinking, bloc confrontation and the creation of narrow formats against certain countries,” a joint statement released after the meeting reads.
The move signifies a stark challenge to the U.S., which, since the end of the Cold War, has been the world’s sole superpower. Under this unipolar system, the U.S. has utilized its economic, military, and cultural power to fashion a global community centered around Western values.
The three-day meeting between Xi and Putin comes amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Last month, Beijing made headlines after calling for a cease-fire between the two nations. As part of its 12-point peace plan, China has called for all parties involved to abandon “the Cold War mentality” and “stopping unilateral sanctions.” As noted by The Wall Street Journal, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials “routinely” use such language “to criticize the U.S. and other Western powers for their response to Russia’s invasion — including the supply of arms to Ukraine and the use of wide-ranging economic tools to pressure Moscow.”
But it’s not just eastern Europe where the Chinese government is looking to play dealmaker. Two weeks ago, Beijing brokered a peace agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two Middle Eastern nations with a historically antagonistic relationship. According to a separate Journal report, Tehran and Riyadh have agreed to “re-establish diplomatic relations” after seven years of estrangement, which includes commitments to “reopen their embassies and missions on each other’s soil within two months.” The deal comes amid a breakdown in U.S.-Saudi relations — for which Biden bears the blame.
Beijing’s growing global influence is also apparent in Latin America. On Sunday, Honduras — a long-time ally of Taiwan — switched its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. As a prerequisite for establishing ties with its government, China has mandated nations to sever formal ties with Taiwan. Such a requirement is part of the CCP’s strategy to politically isolate Taiwan on the world stage.
Biden Cripples America
Red China’s bid to establish itself as a global power isn’t surprising. Since Xi’s ascension to party leader in 2012, he has sought to further China’s economic and military prowess as a means of expanding its influence throughout the world.
Biden’s presidency has ushered in an era of American weakness Beijing seeks to exploit. His administration threw the U.S.’ longstanding record as a buffer against the CCP’s global ambitions into the garbage. Rather than pursue policies strengthening America’s economic security and military readiness, Biden and his administration have implemented measures achieving the exact opposite.
On the economic front, Biden’s monetary policy — which includes spending trillions of taxpayer dollars on useless Democrat pet projects — resulted in decades-high inflation, causing everyday Americans to struggle to afford basic necessities such as gas and groceries. Rather than curb federal spending or increase domestic energy production, the Biden administration spends its time championing expensive electric vehicles made with Chinese batteries.
The situation isn’t any better on the national security front, either. Up until January, the administration depleted U.S. military ranks by removing servicemembers who didn’t receive the experimental Covid jab. Despite the shot’s inability to stop viral transmission and its significant risks, the Defense Department denied the vast majority of religious and medical exemptions filed by un-jabbed soldiers. Combined with forcing servicemembers to undergo racist DEI training, it’s no surprise the military is facing major recruiting problems.
Biden’s open border policies are also exacerbating national security concerns at the U.S.-Mexico border, where Border Patrol officials are facing unprecedented levels of illegal immigration. From Jan. 2021 to Oct. 2022, an estimated 5.5 million illegal aliens were apprehended by Customs and Border Protection. These figures don’t even include the millions of “gotaways” who evaded capture.
Don’t worry, though. When it comes to foreign policy, Biden’s team of “experts” surely has “confront the growing threat of the CCP” at the top of their to-do list. Right?
If the U.S. had a mentally-sound president who prioritized the success of his country, it’s not crazy to imagine that the CCP would be more hesitant in pursuing its global ambitions. Under Biden’s empty-suit presidency, however, Xi smells opportunity.
With Biden crippling the U.S.’ economic and military readiness from within, China is able to methodically expand its influence throughout the world nearly unchallenged. Whether it’s securing peace agreements between rivaling powers or fostering ties with strategically important countries, the CCP isn’t slowing down in its aim to usher in a world order devoid of American hegemony.
If Biden and co. had any interest in stymying Red China’s growing influence and maintaining U.S. global dominance, they’d reverse course and implement policies that further American success. Doing so would greatly benefit the American people.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Apologies in advance for making you consider something uttered by David French and Jennifer Rubin, but the two work for prominent news publications that unfortunately shape our national dialogue, so bear with me.
“DeSantis actually called Russia’s grotesque, aggressive invasion of a sovereign country a ‘territorial dispute.’ … Astonishing. Dangerous.”—French, New York Times columnist
“[DeSantis] has decided that if you can’t beat the pro-Putin wing of the Republican Party, then join them. He declared that Russia’s brutal and unjustified war of aggression against a sovereign Ukraine is actually ‘a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia…’”—Rubin, Washington Post columnist
The “territorial dispute” quote is from Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ recently released statement about the ongoing war in Ukraine (a place our elected leaders in Washington sometimes refer to as “Our Last Great Hope.”) What he said more fully is that “becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia” is not a “vital interest” to the United States.
That’s a view shared by anyone who thinks yet another foreign war without clear and substantial strategic benefit to America is not something we should busy ourselves with. (It’s not like we have any pressing problems here!) But French, Rubin and the rest of the national media really hate that view. It’s “pro-Putin”! It’s “astonishing” and “dangerous”!
DeSantis should say it one more time for the people in the back. The war is literally a dispute over territory. Russian leadership claims Ukraine as its own and the Kremlin’s settlement offers are based almost solely on territory concessions (with some details related to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization).
“I believe that Russians and Ukrainians are one people … one nation, in fact,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in 2019. In some parts of Ukraine, even Ukrainians claim that. “Many In Eastern Ukraine Want To Join Russia,” read a NPR headline in 2017.
The Washington Post last year found at least 15 percent of residents of Ukraine’s Donbas region said they wanted to join Russia. Maybe, just maybe, this has something to do with Russia and Ukraine being literally part of the same nation for more than half a century.
I know that’s not very sexy for the nerds in the media who prefer to think of the war like a Marvel movie where a corny villain can be overpowered by a united and freedom-loving Justice League, but that’s not the case.
Democracy is at stake!
*Cue Max Boot solemnly removing his little hat in reverence.*
It turns out that discussing the conflict doesn’t first require the speakers to confess their love for Ukraine and hatred for Putin while shedding a tear. It’s not the romantic affair that Rubin, French, et al. want it to be.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Less than 24 hours after his staged trip to Kyiv, Ukraine, President Joe Biden told thousands of spectators in Warsaw, Poland, that he plans to indefinitely squander U.S. taxpayer dollars on a proxy war, despite Americans indicating they oppose this involvement.
“Our support for Ukraine will not waver, NATO will not be divided, and we will not tire,” Biden yelled on Tuesday during his occasionally incoherent remarks.
The event was promoted as a somber affair to mark one year since Russia invaded Ukraine. Biden’s speech, however, kicked off with the light-hearted air of a campaign stop, featuring background music by the Foo Fighters and Coldplay and photo opportunities with children waving American, Polish, and Ukrainian flags.
Back home, Americans plagued with sky-high inflation, a growing border crisis, and hazardous chemical spills are not as enthused by Biden’s words. Less than half of Americans support shipping weapons and cash to the Eastern European country, especially because, with no oversight, those funds are lining the pockets of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose regime is plagued with allegations of corruption.
Despite Americans’ opposition to prolonging an overseas war, Biden falsely claimed to his audience in Poland that Americans “are united in our resolve” to sponsor the Zelensky regime “for as long as it takes.”
“All across my country, in big cities and small towns, Ukrainian flags fly from American homes. Over the past year, Democrats and Republicans in the United States Congress have come together to stand for freedom. That’s who Americans are, that’s what Americans do,” Biden said.
In a full embrace of the uniparty’s interventionist agenda, Biden claimed this commitment to “the people of Ukraine and the future of Ukraine” is rooted in the belief that Ukraine should be a “free, sovereign, and democratic” nation. “There’s no sweeter word than freedom. There is no nobler goal than freedom. There’s no higher aspiration than freedom. Americans know that, and you know it,” Biden said.
While his homeland crumbles, Biden touts dragging the U.S. into a global war in the name of advancing “democracy” and “sovereignty” overseas with no word about the negotiations required for de-escalation. On the contrary, Biden said the only end to this war he will accept is Russia ceasing its invasion, something President Vladimir Putin said he doesn’t plan to do.
“If Russia stopped invading Ukraine, it would end the war. If Ukraine stopped defending itself against Russia, [it] would be the end of Ukraine,” Biden said.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
Americans received a pristine view of Democrats’ disastrous America-Last policies this morning as Joe Biden paid a surprise visit to Ukraine while his own country literally burns with manmade disasters he continues to inflame.
Biden’s Federal Emergency Management Agency denied any money to help clean up a burning chemical disaster zone in the Republican state of Ohio, but Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear that Biden will get a blank check to slosh around hundreds of billions from U.S. taxpayers to prolong the carnage of war in Ukraine — and the profits from it from insane deficit spending that also threatens U.S. national security.
Not only is key U.S. infrastructure on fire stateside, but Biden, in violation of his oath of office, also set the U.S. border figuratively on fire immediately upon assuming the presidency by lifting former President Trump’s effective enforcement of U.S. national security laws. Cities and towns across the United States are overwhelmed with mass human trafficking and the outsourcing of U.S. border control to international drug cartels allied with the top U.S. foreign adversary, Red China.
It’s no surprise that American support for expanding the U.S. proxy war with Russia is declining. They can see that their neighbors have to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for health insurance even if they never see a doctor because they’re really paying off the health expenses of illegal migrants, and that their neighbors are dying from the fentanyl trafficked with the human flood of misery across the border.
And where is Biden as his country is in flames? Hiding from his crimes against Americans, our laws, and our Constitution by urging continued atrocities while doing a dog and pony show in Ukraine. While forcing his own people — and those whose migration keeps the cartels supplied with the billions to buy military-grade weaponry — to suffer murder, rape, and other heinous crimes, Biden is abroad encouraging ongoing violence in Ukraine.
War is hell, especially for the vulnerable — women, children, and the elderly. But Democrats and their military-industrial complex believe death, rape, starvation, and continued demolishing of Ukranian homes and towns are a worthy trade for a shiny new excuse to open U.S. coffers wide to high-dollar campaign donors with no oversight. It’s no coincidence, surely, the dollar spigots are also flooding toward the very same country that supplied millions to politically influence Biden’s family — and, according to his family, to influence Biden himself.
This is Joe Biden’s “mission accomplished” moment. Or, it would be, if the hapless and embarrassing George W. Bush were as patently evil as the Democrats running Biden.
Remember, six weeks after he invaded Iraq, Bush stood in front of a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished.” U.S. troops remained in Iraq and Afghanistan for 20 more years, spending precious soldiers’ lives and trillions in American treasure to weaken our national security by distracting us from higher foreign policy priorities, such as China. Right after Bush gave the “Mission Accomplished” speech, Iraqi insurgents redoubled their efforts.
U.S. Navy Photo by Photographer’s Mate Third Class Juan E. Diaz. Public domain / Wikimedia
Democrats’ media mouthpieces may have controlled U.S. discourse so much that only the brave like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis can point out the foolhardiness of tempting another world war by refusing to seek peace for Ukraine. But the rest of the world is not fooled. They’re aware that Democrats are weak, that they hate America, and that they are willing to sell the labor, security, and peace of their American brethren to the highest bidder.
Biden may be trying to look tough by visiting Ukraine weeks after allowing Chinese spy balloons to traverse the United States and then shooting down $6 hobby balloons with $400,000 missiles. But the only person he’s fooling is himself.
Biden’s weakness is the Democratic Party’s weakness is the U.S. foreign policy cabal’s weakness. And weakness invites aggression. Photo ops are not going to reduce the threat of a world war. Patently weak appearances by Biden in fact escalate the threat of world war. Seeking to de-escalate is the only prudent choice. We all had better pray someone with power figures that out before China and Russia continue to align against us. History tells what happens when leaders fiddle after setting their cities ablaze.
The Department of Justice unsealed twin indictments on Monday against Charles McGonigal, a former FBI section chief involved in the decision to launch the Crossfire Hurricane investigation against then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Here are six takeaways from yesterday’s news.
1. McGonigal Charged with Conspiring with Russian Interpreter to Launder Money — and More.
Monday morning brought breaking news that the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York had unsealed a five-count indictment that charged McGonigal and Sergey Shestakov with violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, and with conspiring to launder money. Prosecutors also charged Shestakov with lying to the FBI.
McGonigal, as the indictment explained, was previously a “senior official” in the FBI, having been employed by the bureau from 1996 to 2018, and working in Russian counterintelligence, organized crime matters, and counter-espionage. From 2016 until his retirement in 2018, McGonigal was the special agent in charge of the Counterintelligence Division of the FBI’s New York Field Office, a role in which he supervised and investigated Russian oligarchs, according to the indictment.
Shestakov, for his part, is described as a “former Soviet and Russian diplomat,” who was in that role from 1979 until his retirement in 1993. The press release announcing the charges notes that Shestakov is now a U.S. citizen, and he has “more recently served as an interpreter for United States federal courts and prosecutors.”
The indictment charged that McGonigal and Shestakov violated the sanctions imposed by the United States on Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, in violation of the IEEPA. Specifically, the indictment alleged the duo, in or about 2021, “agreed to and did investigate a rival oligarch of Deripaska in return for concealed payment from Deripaska.”
According to Monday’s press release, McGonigal and Shestakov negotiated with a representative of Deripaska, identified as Agent-1 in the indictment, “to conceal Deripaska’s involvement” in the relationship “by, among other means, not directly naming Deripaska in electronic communications,” using instead various nicknames, such as “the big guy.” McGonigal, Shestakov, and Deripaska also allegedly used “shell companies,” to hide the payments coming from Deripaska.
McGonigal allegedly first met Deripaska’s representative, Agent-1, while still employed by the FBI, but then in the spring of 2021, after McGonigal had retired from the bureau, he was allegedly solicited to work directly for Deripaska. Specifically, the indictment charged that Deripaska hired McGonigal to investigate a second Russian oligarch with whom Deripaska had an ongoing dispute over control of a Russian corporation. In exchange, Deripaska allegedly agreed to pay the partners $51,280, followed by monthly payments of $41,790, although the payments were made to a New Jersey corporation, which then transferred the funds to McGonigal and Shestakov.
The activities among McGonigal, Shestakov, and Deripaska’s intermediaries “largely” ceased, according to the indictment, upon the FBI executing search warrants and seizing McGonigal and Shestakov’s electronic devices on Nov. 21, 2021. Shortly before the FBI executed the search warrant, Shestakov allegedly lied to the FBI about his relationship with McGonigal, which formed the basis of the false statement charge against Shestakov.
2. McGonigal Is in More McTrouble
If the indictment in the Southern District of New York were not enough to shake McGonigal’s world, an hour later the Department of Justice released a second press release announcing the unsealing of a second indictment in the District of Columbia. This indictment charged McGonigal with making multiple false statements, concealing material facts, and falsifying records or documents — nine counts in total.
Underlying the nine criminal counts were allegations that McGonigal failed to accurately complete financial disclosure reports, which McGonigal was required to do on an annual basis, and failed to accurately report unofficial foreign travel and ongoing professional or official contracts with foreign nationals.
The accusations are related to McGonigal’s alleged failure to accurately report his financial situation, connections with foreign nationals, and his relationship with several unnamed individuals. Those individuals are identified as Persons A, B, C, and D, with McGonigal receiving large cash payments in exchange for what appear to be questionable “favors.”
For instance, the indictment described Person A as a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Albania and who had previously worked for the Albanian intelligence agency. It then alleged McGonigal “hid aspects of his relationship with Person A,” including “that he had accepted more than $225,000 from Person A, had traveled to Europe with Person A, and met numerous foreign nationals through Person A.”
It was McGonigal, according to the indictment, who approached Person A with the money-making scheme, when “no later than August, 2017,” he “inquired as to whether Person A could provide money to him.” Then on Sept. 7, 2017, Person A allegedly indicated he “was working on the money.” Thereafter, McGonigal traveled with Person A to Albania where he allegedly lobbied the Albanian prime minister on behalf of Person A.
Over the next several months, McGonigal allegedly received three cash payments from Person A, ranging from approximately $65,000 to $80,000 each time. The indictment further charged that “McGonigal caused the FBI-NY to open a criminal investigation of a U.S. citizen in which Person A would serve as a confidential human source.”
Specifically, on Nov. 25, 2017, McGonigal allegedly informed a federal prosecutor of “a potential new criminal investigation involving a U.S. citizen who had registered to perform lobbying work in the United States on behalf of an Albanian political party different from the one in which the Prime Minister was a member.” Then on Feb. 26, 2018, the FBI office “formally opened a criminal investigation focused on the ‘U.S. citizen lobbyist’ at defendant McGonigal’s request and upon his guidance.”
The indictment suggests McGonigal opened the investigation into “the U.S. citizen lobbyist” to further his monetary relationship with Person A and others, with the allegations stressing that McGonigal remained in communication with the prime minister after Person A arranged for them to meet in September of 2017. Person A and Person B, the latter identified in the indictment as a former senior Albanian government official and informal adviser to the Albanian prime minister, both then assisted the FBI in the investigation of “the U.S. citizen lobbyist.”
Elsewhere, the indictment charged that McGonigal attempted to arrange a meeting with Persons C and D and U.S. government authorities to benefit from the unnamed Person A. Among other things, the indictment claimed that McGonigal proposed Person D pay Person A’s company $500,000 in exchange for the scheduling of a meeting with a representative from the U.S. delegation to the United Nations. McGonigal then worked to coordinate the meeting, according to the charges.
3. The Shockwaves of This Latest FBI Scandal Hit Spygate
The two indictments alone represent another huge scandal to the FBI: McGonigal was no low-level agent but rather a special agent in charge of the Counterintelligence Division for the New York Field Office. And although McGonigal retired in 2018, some of his allegedly criminal conduct took place while still in that position and allegedly involved the launching of an investigation of a U.S. citizen who was lobbying for a political opponent of one of McGonigal’s foreign contacts.
In isolation, yesterday’s news is a body blow to the bureau, which already has two black eyes from the last seven years of scandals. But the New York indictment of McGonigal reverberates more directly to the SpyGate scandal and specifically the failure of the DOJ to pursue Christopher Steele for his own work for Deripaska.
The inspector general’s report on FISA abuse concluded that “Steele performed work for Russian Oligarch 1’s attorney on Russian Oligarch 1’s litigation matters,” with Deripaska the generically named “Oligarch 1.” Steele, the OIG report continued, “passed information to Department attorney Bruce Ohr advocating on behalf of one of Russian Oligarch 1’s companies regarding U.S. sanctions.” The report further found that Ohr and Steele’s communications concerning Deripaska occurred “in 2016 during the time period before and after Steele was terminated as a [confidential human source].”
Additionally, the OIG report connected that “Ohr said that he understood Steele was ‘angling’ for Ohr to assist him with his clients’ issues,” and that “Ohr stated that Steele was hoping that Ohr would intercede on his behalf with the Department attorney handling a matter involving a European company.”
Steele had reportedly also previously worked for Deripaska’s London-based attorney Paul Hauser, and Steele “appeared to lobby on behalf of Deripaska through a D.C.-based attorney, Adam Waldman.” Steele, however, never registered as a lobbyist under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, or “FARA.”
Yet Steele has never been charged with violating FARA. Why?
While this question has been asked again and again, the federal charges against McGonigal for his work on Deripaska’s behalf bring this question to the forefront again.
4. Speaking of Deripaska, There’s Another SpyGate Scandal Unresolved
The raising of Deripaska’s name in yesterday’s indictment also offers the chance to revisit another SpyGate scandal yet unresolved — a lesser noticed one buried in the hundreds of pages of the inspector general’s report on FISA abuse.
As I previously detailed, the IG report noted that on Dec. 7, 2016, Bruce Ohr called an interagency meeting to discuss Deripaska. During that meeting, Ohr apparently suggested trying to work with Deripaska, and later told a subordinate that the basis for the suggestion was that “Steele provided information that the Trump campaign had been corrupted by the Russians,” and that the corruption went all the way to President-elect Trump. So Ohr apparently suggested cutting a deal with a Russian oligarch based on the fake Steele dossier.
It also appears that agents considered cutting a deal with Deripaska to possibly ensnare Paul Manafort, with the end goal being to take down Trump — another startling possibility that would reveal our FBI viewing Trump as worse than the Russian oligarch.
To date, little has been explored of possible efforts by the DOJ or FBI to go easy on Deripaska for the great goal of getting Trump. But maybe the renewed focus on Deripaska will resurrect these overlooked details.
5. McGonigal’s Role in Crossfire Hurricane Raises Huge Red Flags
The charges against McGonigal also raise concerns about his role in the decision to launch Crossfire Hurricane.
In his congressional testimony, FBI Agent Jonathan Moffa testified that from July 28 to July 31 of 2016, officials in FBI headquarters discussed whether to open a counterintelligence investigation on Trump, purportedly based on information provided by a “friendly foreign government.” That information consisted of an Australian diplomat telling his American counterpart that Trump’s volunteer campaign adviser George Papadopoulos had suggested the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. In explaining how he had learned of the discussions over whether to open the investigation that became known as Crossfire Hurricane, Moffa testified he had received an email from McGonigal, the then-section chief in FBI headquarters, that contained the reporting from the friendly foreign government.
After McGonigal helped decide to launch the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign, FBI Director James Comey named him “the special agent in charge of the Counterintelligence Division for the New York Field Office” in October of 2016. In that position, McGonigal stayed engaged in aspects of the investigation, with his “team” questioning Carter Page in March of 2017. McGonigal would later also express concerns about the Page FISA leaking after a briefing to the House Intel Committee, and sure enough, a few weeks later the story leaked.
Given that if the allegations in the indictments are true, McGonigal has proven himself willing to be bought, his involvement in Crossfire Hurricane is extremely troubling.
6. A New Life for Durham
While McGonigal’s involvement in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation raises serious concerns, it also provides one final chance to learn the depth of the SpyGate scandal. With McGonigal facing serious federal criminal charges in two different districts, the incentive for him to seek a deal with the government is high. Given his involvement in the decision to launch Crossfire Hurricane and his later involvement in at least portions of the investigation, he may just have something to offer Special Counsel John Durham.
And McGonigal may have just the attorney to cut that deal: Seth DuCharme. DuCharme is listed as McGonigal’s attorney of record in court filings, and emailsreleased pursuant to FOIA requests show DuCharme previously worked for Durham.
Whether McGonigal has anything of value to Durham, however, remains to be seen.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
Soon after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, he gave a few reporters access to the tech giant’s internal communications, resulting in scandalous revelations about Twitter’s routine collusion with and censorship direction from the FBI — revelations you likely haven’t heard much about from the corporate media.
“The Twitter Files” showed that this symbiotic relationship between the feds and a so-called private company involved the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story right before the 2020 election, the silencing of Covid dissenters, and even the squelching of regime-challenging journalists, among other bombshells. According to the communications, the federal government paid Twitter some $3,000,000 for its assistance.
Notwithstanding these explosive revelations, backed up by the internal communications of high-level Twitter executives, the corporate media have ignored the scandals. But why?
Here are five reasons the corrupt press has refused to adequately cover “The Twitter Files.”
1. Giving Credence To Trump’s 2020 Election Claims Would Be Unforgivable
Accurate coverage of “The Twitter Files” would require the media to report on the FBI’s role in burying the Hunter Biden laptop story shortly before the 2020 election. Among other things, “The Twitter Files” revealed the FBI met monthly and then weekly with Twitter’s team, warning them of various foreign efforts to interfere in the election. Those internal communications, when coupled with an earlier statement Yoel Roth, the then-head of Twitter’s site integrity, provided to the Federal Election Commission, establish the FBI was behind Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden story.
“Since 2018 he had regular meetings with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and industry peers regarding election security,” Roth stated. “During these weekly meetings, the federal law enforcement agencies communicated that they expected ‘hack-and-leak operations’ by state actors might occur in the period shortly before the 2020 presidential election, likely in October,” Roth said, adding that from those meetings he learned “that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden.” Roth then explained that those “prior warnings of a hack-and-leak operation and doubts about the provenance of the materials republished in the N.Y. Post articles,” led Twitter to conclude “the materials could have been obtained through hacking.”
When Roth’s statement is read together with the internal emails establishing that Twitter banned the New York Post’s blockbuster reporting under the guise that the materials had been hacked, the FBI’s responsibility for causing the censorship of this politically explosive story is clear. And because the FBI knew Hunter’s laptop had not been hacked and that the materials on it were authentic, by prompting the censorship of the story, the FBI knowingly interfered in the 2020 election.
Or as Donald Trump put it on Truth Social after “The Twitter Files” broke: “The biggest thing to come out of the Twitter Targeting Hoax is that the Presidential Election was RIGGED — And that’s as big as it can get!!!”
For the press to honestly cover “The Twitter Files,” then, would require it to give credence to Trump’s “RIGGED” claims — something it just cannot stomach. Instead, the corrupt media have responded to “The Twitter Files” with silence or spin.
2. Being the Press Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry
A second reason the press refuses to cover “The Twitter Files” stems from the corrupt media’s inability to acknowledge its own bias, wrongdoing, and hackery. To report on the many scandals exposed by the files would require media elites to face their own involvement in censoring news and their failings as so-called journalists.
While historically, journalists stood in unity with their fellow reporters, when Twitter and other tech companies censored and then deplatformed the New York Post, the press — in the main — remained silent. In contrast, when Musk temporarily suspended reporters’ accounts who had posted location tracking information in violation of Twitter’s new rules, a thud sounded as the same journalists collectively collapsed on their fainting couches.
Not only did these supposed standard-bearers of journalism not condemn the censorship, most ignored the story. Those that did not ignore it, such as NPR, discussed not the details of the scandal, but their justification for ignoring it. “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions,” NPR intoned.
Covering “The Twitter Files” now would be an implicit admission that they were wrong not to report on the laptop story and that they were equally amiss in failing to condemn the censorship of the Post.
“The Twitter Files” also raise an uncomfortable set of questions for news outlets, namely: Did the FBI warn legacy media that supposed Russian disinformation, in the form of potentially hacked materials involving Hunter Biden, would drop? Is that why they ignored the story and allowed the censorship of the Post to go unchallenged?
Reporting on “The Twitter Files” would force legacy outlets to confront the potential reality that the FBI had played them and that they were willing to trust the government rather than be a check on its abuse.
“The Twitter Files” also vindicate Musk and counter the media narrative that his Twitter takeover spelled the beginning of the end for the tech giant. Not only did the avalanche of predicted hate speech not materialize, but under Musk’s leadership, Twitter’s newfound transparency has served both the public interest and a (functioning) free press. Reporting on these facts, then, would require the press not only to acknowledge its own failings but to apologize to Musk and admit their own complicity — things they are apparently unable to do.
3. Condemning the Feds Would Shut Down Sources and Hurt Their Heroes
The media are likely also ignoring “The Twitter Files” to protect their sources — both literally and figuratively.
Many of the same FBI agents and governmental officials, such as Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who pushed for Twitter to censor speech probably serve as regular sources for the legacy media. This scenario is especially likely if the FBI pushed for the press to censor the Hunter Biden story, as it had with Twitter and Facebook. Reporting on “The Twitter Files” would thus force the media to hammer some of the same individuals who give them valuable leaks. Condemning those individuals could shut down various source networks the corrupt media can’t risk.
The media likely also don’t want to “hurt” their sources or the FBI agents who pushed the Russia disinformation lie to tech companies because they see themselves on the same anti-Trump team.
Just as the media refuse to condemn the Department of Justice and FBI agents involved in pushing the Russia-collusion hoax because the press favored the unwarranted attacks on Trump that hamstrung his administration, the leftist media silently applauds the FBI’s interference in the 2020 election because it helped deny Trump a second term.
In this regard, the legacy media and the deep state share the same worldview — that the ends justify the means. The media will thus keep mum about what the FBI did because they’re grateful that intelligence agencies destroyed Trump’s chance to defeat Biden by prompting the censorship of the October surprise.
4. The Russian Bogeyman Must Be Preserved at All Costs
Ignoring “The Twitter Files” also helps the media preserve their Russia, Russia, Russia narrative.
The various “Twitter File” threads revealed several damning details concerning Russia’s supposed interference in American politics. First, they exposed how the FBI and federal intelligence agencies used Russia’s supposed interference in the 2016 election to push for more resources and collaboration with tech giants. Second, the files revealed that, notwithstanding federal agents’ claims, there were no systemic efforts by Russia to use Twitter to interfere in the U.S. elections. To the contrary, the internal communications showed the FBI pushing for evidence of Russian interference and Twitter executives countering that they weren’t seeing issues.
Third, as detailed above, “The Twitter Files” exposed that the Hunter Biden laptop story was not only not Russian disinformation but that the FBI used that excuse anyway to prompt censorship of the story.
Fourth and finally, the internal Twitter communications showed that the trending of the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag was not prompted by Russian bots or Russian-connected accounts and that Democrats such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Schiff’s claims to the contrary were false. Those communications also revealed that even though Twitter negated the Russian-interference theory — telling politicians point blank that the evidence showed #ReleseTheMemo was trending because of organic interest in the hashtag — Democrats and the media continued to push that false storyline.
Reporting on “The Twitter Files” would require the media to first acknowledge they were wrong in their #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag coverage. But what’s more, covering Twitter’s internal communications would force the press to dispel the notion that Russia is the bogeyman behind every Republican candidate and every negative story about Democrats.
Corrupt media need to maintain Russia as the bad guy for future elections, however, and to counter future scandals affecting Democrats. Accurate reporting on “The Twitter Files” would lessen the effects of any later resort to a Russia, Russia, Russia narrative — and the press can’t have that.
5. Reporters Prefer Their Role as Propagandists to Journalists
While there are many practical reasons the press refuses to report on “The Twitter Files,” as a matter of principle, it all comes down to one: The legacy media have none.
The so-called journalists working at outlets that were once the standard by which all journalists were judged today value politics more than they do their professional obligations. Informing the public and providing a check on the rich, the powerful, and the politicians are no longer the end goals of corrupt reporters; rather, they seek to use their power to advance their own personal beliefs and agendas.
In short, the reporters refusing to cover “The Twitter Files” prefer their role as propagandists to journalists.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
The Washington Post admitted Monday that “Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters” — years after the Post and other corporate media water-carriers pushed the false story that former President Donald Trump’s election was illegitimate, due in part to Russian interference via bots on Twitter targeting U.S. social media users. The admission cites a New York University study that found “there was no relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior.”
Media treatment of the non-story followed a predictable, three-step process that’s become the propaganda press’s MO: Spread a false claim, control the narrative while crushing dissent with bogus “fact checks,” and then admit the truth only after the news cycle has achieved its intended purpose.
How the Russian Bots Story Followed the Playbook
In 2016, then-Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook launched the conspiracy theory that then-candidate Trump was in cahoots with Russia and colluding together to steal the 2016 election. One dossier full of bunk allegations commissioned by the Clinton campaign later, the entire media establishment, in tandem with a politicized intelligence community, was running with the Russia collusion hoax.
One of the many conspiracy theories thrown at the wall was that Russia was influencing U.S. voters via social media, including through armies of “bot” accounts. As my colleague Joy Pullmann has noted, U.S. intelligence agencies propelled that claim with an “intelligence community assessment” on Jan. 6, 2017, “signed off publicly by the FBI, National Security Agency, and CIA concluding that Trump’s election was boosted by Russian social media content farms.”
Regime media ran with it the same narrative before and after that assessment that turned out to be false:
The Washington Post: “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say,” November 2016.
Politico Magazine: “How Russia Wins an Election” (spoiler: “the Kremlin’s troll army swarmed the web to spread disinformation and undermine trust in the electoral system,” the piece says), December 2016.
NPR: “How Russian Twitter Bots Pumped Out Fake News During The 2016 Election,” April 2017.
New York Times: “The Fake Americans Russia Created to Influence the Election,” September 2017.
Mother Jones: “Twitter Bots Distorted the 2016 Election — Including Many Likely From Russia,” October 2017.
The “Twitter Files” revealed just weeks ago that media pressure on this story, combined with threats from elected Democrats, were successful in getting Twitter to obey U.S. intelligence agency requests for information suppression, even though Twitter executives couldn’t find any evidence of coordinated Russian disinformation campaigns on their platform.
31.Twitter soon settled on its future posture.
In public, it removed content “at our sole discretion.”
Privately, they would “off-board” anything “identified by the U.S.. intelligence community as a state-sponsored entity conducting cyber-operations.” pic.twitter.com/Jc94kEg2KR
Hilariously, Tim Starks, the same writer who wrote WaPo’s admission this week that Russian bots had “little influence” on the election, had written a 2019 piece for Politico titled “Russia’s manipulation of Twitter was far vaster than believed.”
While media outlets were running cover for the story, they slapped “fact” “checks” on those who challenged the narrative, including the U.S. president. And (you guessed it) they cited the intel community’s Jan. 6, 2017 report as evidence — the same one now called into question by The Washington Post’s latest admission.
Those allegations, along with several other now-debunked claims about Trump-Russia collusion, were the basis for a special counsel investigation and a presidential impeachment, all part of a narrative aimed at kneecapping Trump’s time in office. The Mueller investigation even indicted a Russian bot farm for election interference.
Only now — after Trump has been successfully hounded out of the White House, now that almost half of likely voters have been convinced that Russia probably “changed the outcome of the 2016 presidential election,” and everyone else has forgotten about the story — does The Washington Post come around to admitting that those troublesome Russian bots didn’t really do much after all.
5 Other Times Corporate Media Followed the Same Strategy
The Twitter bots story was just one of many instances of regime media running with the same strategy. They do it almost daily, but here are just five of the most egregious examples in recent memory.
Covid: From masks to lockdowns to vaccines, we were hounded by media bullhorns for years about the untouchable efficacy of every recommendation the “experts” tossed our way. Those who resisted, in person or on social media, were vilified and censored. Workers lost jobs, kids fell behind in school, non-Covid medical patients were denied potentially life-saving treatments and surgeries, neighbors shunned each other, and people were forced to get experimental injections they didn’t want.
Only after the reigning narrative had been used to quash its intended targets for two years did its messengers admit the truths the rest of us had been saying from the beginning.
Inflation: Despite the obvious pitfalls of Covid-era decisions to shut down the entire nation’s economy and then hand out free money to everyone screwed over by government lockdowns, regime media insisted that inflation wasn’t happening under the newly minted Biden administration. CNBC told us to “Ignore ‘hysterical people’ — inflation is not here to stay, economist says.”
“Inflation isn’t a real danger,” insisted WaPo. “The Inflation Scare Doesn’t Match Reality,” said Forbes. The New York Times offered “179 Reasons You Probably Don’t Need to Panic About Inflation.”
Now that we’re undoubtedly experiencing the worst inflation in four decades, the talking point has changed to “actually, inflation is good.”
The Steele dossier: After British agent Christopher Steele was hired by the Clinton campaign’s opposition research firm to write now-debunked rumors about Trump in what became known as the Steele dossier, Steele shopped the story out to media outlets, which ran with the hoax. The New York Times even got a Pulitzer for it. The information in the dossier, which corporate media coverage helped legitimize, was used by the Obama FBI to obtain warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. Journalists who questioned the concocted narrative were called conspiracy theorists.
After the damage to the Trump campaign (and eventually, the Trump administration) was done, corporate media admitted, in a laughable understatement, that the “Arrest of Steele dossier source forces some news outlets to reexamine their coverage.”
Irreversible surgeries for gender dysphoria: Corporate media helped fuel the epidemic of sexual confusion giving rise to disfiguring surgeries and hormone “treatments” for people, including children, with gender dysphoria. Outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post pounced on anyone who challenged the dogma that pumping teenagers with off-label hormones and dicing up their genitalia was a totally safe and normal thing to be celebrated. People like The Federalist’s own John Daniel Davidson are still locked out of their social media accounts for telling the truth about the transgender craze.
Sandwiched between op-eds decrying critics of transgenderism, The Times allows no one but itself to wonder, belatedly: “Is There a Cost?“
Hunter Biden laptop: When the New York Post published damning revelations about the Biden family’s overseas business dealings shortly before the 2020 presidential election, legacy outlets smeared the story as “disinformation” and a Russian info op.
“Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say,” parroted Politico. CBS’s Lesley Stahl called the laptop “discredited.” NPR told readers, “we don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.” The Post and others who shared the story had their social media accounts frozen or their posts taken down.
A year and a half later, The New York Times quietly admitted — in the 24th paragraph of an article about Hunter Biden’s taxes — that “a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop … [was] authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.” By then, the 2020 election was safely in Joe Biden’s hands.
Don’t think those six instances are the only times regime media have run the same playbook. By now, it’s their standard practice.
Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is relying on a network of foreign investors to present an illusion of broad support for the agency’s proposed climate disclosure rule, which threatens to increase structural risks to the American economy.
In March, the trade agency outlined new regulations requiring firms to report their estimated energy emissions. While the SEC technically only has jurisdiction over publicly traded companies, the broad nature of the agency’s proposal aims to coerce private businesses into carbon calculations that track the behavior of their customers. Firms that fail to comply with government standards are subject to fines and lawsuits.
The new rules are “a disingenuous power grab by the SEC,” Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers’ Research, said in an interview.
“By requiring the corporations the SEC regulates to make scope 2 emissions disclosures, those corporations will be forced to require the businesses they source from to calculate and disclose their emissions or stop doing business with them,” Hild told The Federalist. “So even if a business is private (not publicly traded) but their customers are public companies, then the SEC will have effectively forced them to participate in the disclosures scheme.”
According to an analysis of the SEC’s proposal from the Western Energy Alliance, a coalition of predominantly small independent oil and gas producers, more than 80 percent of asset managers cited by the agency as supportive of the new regulations are foreign. Just 7 percent of American asset managers support the disclosure rules.
The white paper from the Alliance published in June outlines how activist investors are masquerading as representative of majority sentiment on Wall Street despite just a handful of firms forming multiple coalitions. According to the report, seven major climate change advocacy organizations cited by SEC as behind the agency on mandated disclosure include the same investor coalition groups working in close collaboration. It’s as if the same 50 members of Congress formed 100 different caucuses that pledged support to particular legislation to show proof of consensus.
“These groups are so intertwined that it is not at all clear they represent anything other than a minority of investors advancing a particular policy agenda,” the Alliance report reads. “Across those seven climate initiatives and the global network of non-profit organizations that support them, only 19 percent are American. More than half are European.”
Among the groups behind the SEC climate disclosure is Climate Action 100+, a coalition of investors pushing to eliminate highly efficient fossil fuels through public and private policy. Earlier this month, House Republicans on Capitol Hill launched an antitrust probe into the group, where they described Climate Action 100+ as a “cartel” to “ensure the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take… action on climate change.’”
The Alliance white paper also highlights Russian influence at the center of the SEC’s proposed rule via an endorsement from the Sea Change Foundation. In 2015, the Environmental Policy Alliance described the Sea Change Foundation as “a conduit for funneling Russian government money to U.S. environmental groups in order to undermine American natural gas and oil production to Russia’s benefit.”
Kremlin oligarchs stand to profit by Washington’s elimination of fossil fuels because that would force global markets to rely on Moscow for their energy needs.
In March, 20 House lawmakers sent a letter to Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., that raised the alarm on Russian interference in the American environmental lobby sabotaging energy security.
“Given the impact that Russia’s control of the European energy market has had in the lead up and prosecution of the war in Ukraine, it is critical that Congress gains a better understanding of the role that Russian financing has had in shaping American environmental policy and sentiment,” lawmakers wrote.
Maloney, however, continued to preside over hearings that targeted oil and gas producers as Democrats demand that reliable power from fossil fuels be replaced by less-reliable wind and solar.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Henry Rodgers and Foreign Minister of Hungary Péter Szijjártó:Daily Caller Obtained
WASHINGTON, DC – The foreign minister of Hungary, Péter Szijjártó, in part, blamed the current war between Ukraine and Russia on President Joe Biden in an exclusive interview Wednesday with the Daily Caller. He argued that if the 2020 election had played out differently, there would be no war.
Szijjártó sat down for an interview with the Caller after speaking at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) International Ministerial Conference and discussed a variety of different issues affecting the U.S. and Europe, including the war in Ukraine. Throughout the interview, Szijjártó made it clear he believes that if former President Donald Trump and former Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel were still in power, the war would not have started.
“The European economy is suffering. Europe is suffering. That is why the only solution for Europe is peace. But definitely, peace will not come with this behavior. What the U.S. administration has been showing. Why? Because in order to create peace, you would need to talk. You would need to communicate,” Szijjártó said during the interview. “And you know, I am usually under very heavy pressure and criticism of why I still talk to the Russians. But, you know, I mean, you cannot afford not to talk to them when you are almost hundred percent dependent on their energy sources and Russia is a reality in Europe, and Russia will remain a reality in Europe regardless of the outcome of this war.”
He continued:
“So, you know, what we are definitely sure about is that if your presidential election had played out differently in 2020, this war would not have broken out. As much as I can be sure about things that didn’t happen, I am pretty sure that this would have been the case because we are currently, globally speaking, we are currently lacking leaders. President Trump was a real leader. Chancellor Merkel was a real leader. So what I know is that if Chancellor Merkel. And if President Trump had stayed in power, this war, I’m pretty sure, would not have been broken out. So that’s why what we hope is that there will be some American-Russian talks in this regard because don’t be misled. Don’t be misled. This is necessary to create peace. Russian-American talks.
(Henry Rodgers and Foreign Minister of Hungary Péter Szijjártó: Daily Caller Obtained)
Szijjártó echoed their concerns, however, mentioning the upcoming November G-20 summit in Indonesia, which Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin are scheduled to attend, as an opportunity for the two leaders to talk. The Hungarian minister’s suggestion comes despite claims that U.S. officials are making sure Biden does talk with Putin, per Politico. Biden himself previously told CNN’s Jake Tapper said he will not meet the Russian president except maybe to discuss American Britney Griner, who is serving a 9-year sentence in Russian prison. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Here’s Why Hungary Is Incentivizing Children, Marriage)
“I do hope that those discussions, which are necessary to finish the war, will take place soon. And I don’t want to degrade anyone, but I am pretty certain that these negotiations must take place between the American and the Russian administration,” Szijjártó said. “And, you know, I hope that both of them will behave responsibly because I understand that there will be a G20 meeting. I understand that there is a chance that both of the presidents might be there. And to be honest, I think it would be very, very complicated to explain to the world from both perspectives, why they have not met, if they. If they are on the same place. So, you know, we in Hungary cannot do anything more than just wish, hope, and pray.”
“I want to underline that I really do believe and think that if he had stayed in power, this wouldn’t have broken out,” he added.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said President Joe Biden’s recent remark regarding the “prospect of Armageddon” over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats reflects “the very high stakes that are in play right now.”
ABC “This Week” host Martha Raddatz asked Kirby about Biden’s comment last week that there’s a potential nuclear Armageddon.
Kirby responded, “The president was reflecting the very high stakes that are in play right now.”
He continued: “When you have modern nuclear power and the leader of that modern nuclear power willing to use irresponsible rhetoric the way that Mr. Putin has several times in just the last week or two, as well as the high tension in Ukraine over just the course of the last few days … so the president, I think, was accurately reflecting the fact that the stakes are very high right now.”
Kirby then clarified that Biden’s comments were “not based on new or fresh intelligence or new indications that Mr. Putin has made a decision to use nuclear weapons and, quite frankly, we don’t have any indication that he has made that kind of decision.”
But he added, “Nor have we seen anything that would give us pause to reconsider our own strategic nuclear posture in our efforts to defend our own national security interests and those of our allies and partners.”
Kirby said the president has also said, “neither we nor our allies are going to be intimidated by this.”
At a Democratic fundraiser in New York City last Thursday, Biden said Putin was “not joking when he talks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons.”
“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” he added, according to The Associated Press, which noted that the president’s remarks were the starkest warnings yet by the U.S. government about the nuclear stakes.
Biden also suggested the threat from Putin is real “because his military is — you might say — significantly underperforming.”
Last month, Putin said, “I want to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction … and when the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, to protect Russia and our people, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal. It’s not a bluff,” as quoted by the AP.
As the Russian invasion entered its seventh month in October, Ukraine sought an accelerated membership in NATO after Putin announced the annexation of four Ukrainian provinces: the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Putin claimed that residents in the annexed Ukrainian regions voted in a referendum to join his nation. Ukrainian officials called the voting coerced by Russian soldiers.
“The Kremlin’s sham referenda are a futile effort to mask what amounts to a further attempt at a land grab in Ukraine,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement at the time. “To be clear: the results were orchestrated in Moscow and do not reflect the will of the people of Ukraine.”
The U.S. has sent more than $9.8 billion in civilian and military assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began in February. Late last month, Biden signed a bill that includes an additional $12.3 billion for Ukraine’s war effort against Russia. Apart from Ukraine aid and funding for government agencies, the bill authorizes Biden to direct the drawdown of up to $3.7 billion for the transfer of excess weapons to Ukraine from U.S. stocks.
Germany is reportedly working on reducing the nation’s economic dependency on Communist China due to concerns about “human rights abuses and the risks of being beholden to an increasingly assertive authoritarian state,” Reuters reports.Berlin finally learned one lesson from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: it’s dangerous to economically rely on authoritarian regimes.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policies — building an economy based on Russia’s energy supply and China’s market demand — were primarily responsible for German’s economic predicament today. Zealous in fighting climate change, Merkel shut down coal mines and retired the majority of nuclear power plants in Germany while relying on Russia for energy and raw materials, despite repeated warnings from the Trump administration. By 2020, Russia supplied more than half of Germany’s natural gas and about a third of all the oil that Germans burned to heat homes, power factories, and fuel vehicles.
While paying Russia billions of euros for energy supply (the money no doubt helped finance Putin’s war chest), Merkel neglected to invest in German’s armed forces, even after Putin annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. She outsourced Germans’ and, to a larger extent, Europe’s security to the United States and simply hoped for the best. When Merkel retired in 2021, after being in office for 16 years, German’s military was left “in a weak position and require years of renewal to become a credible deterrent to Russian aggression,” according to The American Institute for Contemporary German Studies.
Strengthened China Ties
Besides empowering and enriching Russia, Merkel was keen on strengthening Germany’s economic ties with China while in office. No other leaders from Western democracies had visited China more often than Merkel (she had 11 state visits to China).
To promote Germany’s export-oriented economy, Merkel was indifferent to China’s aggression in the South China Sea, its geopolitical expansion through the “Belt and Road” infrastructure project, and its increasingly assertive foreign policies. In addition, she avoided criticizing China’s mishandling of Covid-19 in the early days of 2020 and turned a blind eye to many human rights abuses in China, especially the genocide of Uyghur Muslims and suppression of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.
Under Merkel, China became Germany’s largest trading partner in 2016. German’s auto industry especially relies on China — about 50 percent of German car maker Volkswagen’s profit comes from China. Merkel’s China policy has made Germany’s economy vulnerable and helped speed up the Chinese military’s modernization.
Beijing reportedly focused on investments in Germany to obtain critical technologies, especially those with dual-use, meaning both civilian and military applications. For example, engines made by German companies have powered several types of Chinese navy warships, Deutsche Welle found.
Although Merkel retired in 2021, the effects of her economic policies continued. According to a German Economic Institute (IW) study, Germany’s economic dependency on China has continued to grow in 2022. “China’s share of German imports rose to 12.4 percent in the first half of 2022, compared with only 3.4 percent in 2000. German imports of Chinese goods… have surged by 45.7 percent year-on-year in the comparable period of the first six months. Germany’s trade deficit with the country had leapt to almost EUR 41 bn by mid-2022.”
A Wake-Up Call
After Russia invaded Ukraine, Germany joined other EU nations in imposing punitive economic sanctions on Russia. Putin retaliated by weaponizing his energy supply to Europe, sending energy prices soaring and dealing a blow to the German economy.
Inflation in Germany has reached a 40-year high. Suppose Putin shut off the natural gas supply to Europe, as he threatened. In that case, many predict an energy-induced recession in Europe is inevitable, and Germany could lose close to $240 billion in economic output over the next two years.
The grim economic outlook, and the fact that Beijing refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and helped Russia evade the West’s economic sanctions by purchasing Russian energy and agriculture products, have become a wake-up call for Germany. Additionally, Beijing’s “zero-Covid” policy that has kept dozens of cities and millions of Chinese people in lockdown means German businesses have had limited access to the Chinese market, and the trend will continue in the foreseeable future.
The German Economic Institute called for the government to change its economic policy, “specifically a reduction in incentives for doing business with China and a shift towards more trade with other emerging markets.” It also warned German businesses to “curb their dependency on China.” Otherwise, companies may expose themselves to bankruptcy due to Western sanctions imposed on China in the event of the People’s Liberation Army’s invading Taiwan.
Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing also warned, “When it comes to dependencies, we also have to face the awkward question of how to deal with China.” He appealed to the German government to decouple economically from China and acknowledged such a move would “require a change no less fundamental than decoupling from Russian energy.”
Germany Stepping Back
These calls for action have reached their desired audience. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock acknowledged Germany couldn’t afford to “just behave following the motto ‘business first,’ without taking into account the long-term risks and dependencies.”
Reuters reports that Germany’s economic ministry is considering several actions to cut Germany’s reliance on China, including reducing or scrapping investment and export guarantees for China and no longer promoting trade fairs and manager training there. It is also contemplating screening not just Chinese investments in Germany but also German investments in China. It also might submit a complaint to the World Trade Organization about unfair Chinese trade practices, together with the Group of Seven, an intergovernmental political forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
While Germany is waking up to the risks of economic dependency on authoritarian regimes, the Biden administration has deepened our nation’s economic reliance on China with a green revolution that centers around replacing fossil fuels with solar and wind, and gas-powered cars with electric vehicles (EVs). China dominates the global supply chain of raw materials and parts for EV batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines. The nation has been able to keep the manufacturing cost low by burning coal and employing forced labor from Uyghur and other ethnic minorities.
Even Politico has had to admit the dirty truth: “The U.S path to clean energy goes straight through China.” Germany’s economic woes should serve as a timely warning to the Biden administration that relying on an authoritarian regime is both dangerous and foolish.
Helen Raleigh, CFA, is an American entrepreneur, writer, and speaker. She’s a senior contributor at The Federalist. Her writings appear in other national media, including The Wall Street Journal and Fox News. Helen is the author of several books, including “Confucius Never Said” and “Backlash: How Communist China’s Aggression Has Backfired.” Follow her on Parler and Twitter: @HRaleighspeaks.
Fox News host and Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson called out political leaders’ alleged dishonesty Wednesday about a potential third world war. Carlson criticized Republicans for not recognizing “untrue” warnings of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s potential takeover of Europe, pointing to Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham vowing to pass a resolution to name Russia a “sponsor of terrorism” during a trip to Kyiv, Ukraine, along with Democratic Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal.
“Defeat Putin. Will that improve your life? Is it improving the lives of the Ukrainians right now? No, it’s not,” Carlson said. “And yet, every person who has been on the wrong side of every foreign policy decision going back forty years is on the same page.”
The Daily Caller co-founder cited former White House national security adviser John Bolton admitting to CNN Tuesday he had formed coups in foreign countries and therefore said the Jan. 6 Capitol riot did not classify as one.
“Wait, what? I tuned in to find out whether I should buy Cisco on the dip, and you’re a foreign policy expert now? The American economy is in serious trouble, it’s heading south faster than anyone anticipated,” the host said. “But instead, you turn on CNBC and the geniuses are talking about World War III. And they’re not the only ones.”
Carlson pointed to a New York City public service announcement instructing citizens on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. The video told viewers to go inside, shut doors and windows and immediately clean themselves in the aftermath of the bombing.
“If you were drinking beer and this came on TV, you would think maybe she was giving you advice on what to do if your basement floods or if there’s a heat wave,” he said. “Then you hear the part where she says, ‘radioactive dust’ and you snap, ‘radioactive dust?’ You’re suggesting someone might lob a nuclear weapon into our largest city? What? What the hell are you talking about? How did we get so close to nuclear war that the city of New York is telling me to wash the radioactive dust off my pants? This is total lunacy. This is crazy.”
The host said the fear of nuclear war is spreading because the Republican Party has “collaborated” with the Biden administration to defeat Putin and preparing for World War III.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) formally invited Sweden and Finland to join the alliance on Wednesday after Turkey dropped its opposition to the move. World leaders, including President Joe Biden, gathered in Madrid earlier in the week for the NATO Summit. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Finland President Sauli Niinistö and Sweden Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson on Tuesday to hash out details of the two countries’ push to join NATO – a move that came after Russia invaded Ukraine and which Turkey originally said it would not support.
“In that meeting, the leaders agreed a trilateral memorandum to address Turkey’s legitimate security concerns, paving the way for Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership,” a NATO statement posted late Tuesday read.
“I strongly welcome the signing of this trilateral memorandum, and I strongly welcome the constructive approach all three countries have shown during the negotiations. Finnish and Swedish membership of NATO is good for Finland and Sweden, it is good for NATO, and it is good for European security,” Stoltenberg said.
NATO has now formally invited Sweden & Finland to join the military alliance, which would expand the membership from 30 to 32. "Today, we have decided to invite Finland & Sweden to become members." Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expects ratification process to move quickly.
The official invitation paves the way for the alliance to bolster up to 32 member nations.
The trilateral agreement between Turkey, Finland and Sweden includes an extradition request for 33 terror suspects in the two Nordic countries, according to CNN. The agreement also addresses concerns from Turkey “around arms exports, and the fight against terrorism,” according to Stoltenberg.
“We [Turkey] will ask them to fulfill the requirements of our applications after this memorandum of understanding,” Turkish Justice Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag told reporters shortly after the news, according to CNN. “We have already applied for extradition. The files of six PKK and six FETO terrorists in Finland and 10 FETO and 11 PKK terrorists in Sweden.”
“Our ministry will write about their return and remind them again … Once again, we ask them to fulfill their promises,” Bozdag added.
Support in Finland and Sweden for joining NATO skyrocketed after Russia’s invasion in February, according to Business Insider. Should the deal officially go through, Russia’s border with NATO countries would more than double. Turkey’s reversal is a major loss to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has vehemently opposed increasing NATO and vowed to retaliate in May after Finland announced its intention to seek membership.
“Russia will be forced to take retaliatory steps, both of a military-technical and other nature, in order to stop threats to its national security arising,” Russia’s foreign ministry said at the time.
In a move of staggering stupidity and hubris, Lithuanian banned the transit of Russian goods to Kaliningrad effective today, June 18, 2022. Kaliningrad, which is wedged between Poland on the west and Lithuania on the east, is home to almost a half-million Russians and the headquarters for the Russian Navy’s Baltic Sea force.
Lithuania claims it is simply abiding by the sanctions imposed by the European Union. After all, Lithuania is a member of the European Union and NATO. But that is the point. This is a deliberate provocation. It is laying economic siege to a vital interest of Russia. While there is no immediate danger to the Russian population of Kaliningrad, this is a flash point that could lead to an actual war as opposed to a special military operation.
What is the difference between a special military operation and war? In the SMO you leave communications, electrical infrastructure, transportation infrastructure and fuel depots largely intact. In the SMO you try to minimize civilian and military casualties.
War on the other hand is terrifying. If Russia opts for a war footing, the restraint that characterized its activities in Ukraine will be replaced by a full-on attack on key military installations and assets in the region as well as the destruction of the communications, electrical, transportation and fuel resources of the adversary. This probably includes taking out critical satellite communications and intelligence collection systems of the United States and Europe.
Kaliningrad, formerly known as Königsberg, was put under Soviet control in 1945 according to the terms of the Potsdam Agreement, which was backed by the United States and Great Britain. The Russian people paid blood for this land in 1945 and are not going to relinquish it in the face of bullying or threats from the west. If you are going to poke an angry bear with a stick, you better be damn sure that bear is locked up and can’t get you. Russia sure as hell is not secure in a cage.
The House Select Committee on Jan. 6 launched the public phase of its proceedings Thursday night in a prime-time hearing with all the fanfare of a Soviet show trial, complete with production assistance from a former president of ABC News.
Just as the communists gathered in Moscow between 1936 and 1938 to purge their political opponents in public show trials, nine members of the lower chamber filed into the Cannon House Office Building to demonize their political opponents as domestic enemies.
“I’m from a part of the country where people justify the actions of slavery, Ku Klux Klan, and lynching,” Chairman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi said in his opening. “I’m reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try and justify the actions of the insurrectionists on January 6th, 2021.”
Thompson went on the brand today’s political opposition as modern-day Confederates and “domestic enemies of the Constitution,” cloaking his own authoritarian admonishment under the moral righteousness of preserving American democracy.
“The world is watching what we do here,” Thompson said. “America has long been expected to be shining city on the hill, a beacon of hope and freedom, a model for others when we are at our best.”
The hearing, however, possessed all the signature hallmarks of the infamous Moscow Trials nearly 100 years ago, in which opponents to Joseph Stalin’s regime were hauled before the public and charged with treason and sedition. And those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 are far from the only targets of the witch hunt spearheaded by Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Thompson.
Legitimate political opposition on Thursday was absent from the hearings. No counternarrative was allowed by the regime, which barred the opposing party’s selected representatives as every cable network except Fox News carried the programming live. Members conducting the show trial accused their opponents of conspiracy to topple the U.S. government, just as the Soviets accused Old Bolshevik leaders of plans to terminate Stalin. Never mind that American institutions held on Jan. 6, and the federal government came nowhere close to collapse when congressional proceedings were interrupted.
The trials in Moscow culminated in the “Great Purge” of dissidents to the incumbent regime, with defendants given death sentences. The Jan. 6 proceedings are aimed at the ultimate purge of former President Donald Trump and his supporters, albeit through societal exile and jail sentences as opposed to execution. According to whistleblowers in the FBI, a purge within the federal law enforcement agency has already begun.
On Tuesday, Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray detailing allegations of multiple whistleblowers who reported they were terminated for their dissident (conservative) views from the agency.
“[He is a] decorated Iraqi War veteran being run out of the FBI,” Jordan said on Fox News Tuesday night of one whistleblower. “His allegiance to the country is being questioned because he had the gall to say something that offended the FBI leadership about the Jan. 6 investigation.”
The other [individual] is also having the same thing happen to them simply because, on an anonymous questionnaire, they said something that the leadership disagreed with them about Jan. 6.
Six in total have come forward, Jordan told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham.
Meanwhile, the Jan. 6 Committee’s prime targets have included prominent members of the prior administration, just as Stalin’s deputies prosecuted leaders of the old regime. On Friday, former Trump Trade Advisor Peter Navarro was taken by the FBI in handcuffs and charged with crimes stemming from the committee’s work. On Thursday morning, hours before the Jan. 6 Committee’s prime-time show trial, lead Michigan GOP gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley was arrested by the same agency.
Of the more than 100 subpoenas issued by the Select Committee ostensibly established to probe the Capitol riot, less than 10 percent, according to a Federalist analysis, have targeted individuals directly involved in the chaos. The rest have gone after Americans who committed the now-apparent crime of holding a peaceful demonstration at the White House and espoused unacceptable views in the eyes of the incumbent regime.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is illuminating an ugly truth: the anti-fracking war on America’s energy security is being waged by well-funded, radical U.S. environmental groups, as well as interests tied directly to Vladimir Putin. For years, the U.S. government has investigated Russian financial ties to environmental groups that push for ending U.S. fossil fuel production and have successfully shut down fracking sites and pipelines, to the detriment of U.S. workers and consumers. Who benefits? Putin, because the desolation of U.S. energy security has bolstered state-owned Gazprom and his dangerous geopolitical aims.
Before the war on Ukraine, the U.S. Congress began exposing connections between Russia and little-known foundations that donate to major environmental groups such as Sierra Club and National Resource Defense Council (NRDC). The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works released a 2014 report noting a small group of rich Americans was controlling environmental groups and collaborating with questionable offshore funders to maximize support. In 2017, two congressmen called for further investigation of the connection between these funders and Russia. These suspicious donations to radical environmental groups could be part of the larger geopolitical strategy Putin used to execute greater control over Europe before his invasion of Ukraine. For instance, if the United States had ramped up natural gas production, Putin could not today be blackmailing Poland and Bulgaria by cutting off their energy supply. Had America allowed more investment in fracking and other energy production, Putin would not have strategic leverage over Europe.
Most Americans know Putin does not want to see the United States succeed. What they may not know is these anti-energy groups acting under the guise of “environmental justice” are funded by a handful of wealthy Americans who are either blindingly naïve to the role they have played in supporting Putin’s agenda or willfully complicit.
There is no more notorious example than the Heinz Endowment, led by Teresa Heinz, wife of U.S. climate envoy John Kerry. Under her watch, the endowment has deployed at least $13 million toward anti-shale activism since 2008, killing jobs and prosperity in their own Pennsylvania backyard and unnecessarily forcing America to give up market share to tyrants like Putin. The Heinz fortune funds dozens of Pennsylvania groups engaged in killing pipelines and natural gas production. One of their beneficiaries, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, is successfully fighting to keep a ban on natural gas production in the Delaware River Basin that is preventing access to vast new reserves. In fact, Pennsylvania, where the Heinz family made their fortune and is still based, is bearing the brunt of this campaign. The latest example is the Keystone State’s addition to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Sierra Club and NRDC lobbied in favor of expanding the interstate compact to tax carbon emissions to include Pennsylvania, even though scientists at Penn State found 86 percent of carbon emissions will simply move to nearby states.
As Putin now leverages his energy dominance as a tool of coercion and his geopolitical strategy is brutally playing out for all the world to see, Heinz and other radical environmental groups can no longer claim they are innocent arbiters of environmental justice when their actions have, intentionally or not, aided and abetted him.
Isn’t it time for these Americans to focus on policies that protect the earth, advance American energy security, and counter America’s enemies?
Victoria Coates, a distinguished fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, served as senior policy adviser to the secretary of energy in the Trump administration. Jennifer Stefano is executive vice president of the Commonwealth Foundation and an Independent Women’s Forum visiting fellow.
Americans are now entering uncharted, revolutionary territory. They may witness things over the next five months that once would have seemed unimaginable. Until the Ukrainian conflict, we had never witnessed a major land war inside Europe directly involving a nuclear power. In desperation, Russia’s impaired and unhinged leader, Russian President Vladimir Putin, now talks trash about the likelihood of nuclear war.
A 79-year-old President Joe Biden bellows back that his war-losing nuclear adversary is a murderer, a war criminal, and a butcher who should be removed from power.
After a year of politicizing the U.S. military and its self-induced catastrophe in Afghanistan, America has lost deterrence abroad. China, Iran, North Korea and Russia are conniving how best to exploit this rare window of global military opportunity.
The traditional bedrocks of the American system – a stable economy, energy independence, vast surpluses of food, hallowed universities, a professional judiciary, law enforcement and a credible criminal justice system – are dissolving. Gas and diesel prices are hitting historic levels. Inflation is at a 40-year high. New cars and homes are unaffordable. The necessary remedy of high interest and tight money will be almost as bad as the disease of hyperinflation.
There is no southern border.
Expect over 1 million foreign nationals to swarm this summer into the United States without audit, COVID testing, or vaccination. None will have any worry of consequences for breaking U.S. immigration law.
Police are underfunded and increasingly defunded. District attorneys deliberately release violent criminals without charges. (Literally 10,000 people witnessed a deranged man with a knife attack comedian Dave Chappelle on stage at the Hollywood Bowl last week, and the Los Angeles County D.A. refused to press felony charges.) Murder and assault are spiraling. Carjacking and smash-and-grab thefts are now normal big-city events.
Crime is now mostly a political matter. Ideology, race, and politics determine whether the law is even applied.
Supermarket shelves are thinning, and meats are now beyond the budgets of millions of Americans. An American president – in a first – casually warns of food shortages. Baby formula has disappeared from many shelves.
Politics are resembling the violent last days of the Roman Republic. An illegal leak of a possible impending Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade that would allow state voters to set their own abortion laws has created a national hysteria.
Never has a White House tacitly approved mobs of protesters showing up at Supreme Court justices’ homes to rant and bully them into altering their votes.
There is no free speech anymore on campuses.
Merit is disappearing. Admissions, hiring, promotion, retention, grading and advancement are predicated increasingly on mouthing the right orthodoxies or belonging to the proper racial, gender or ethnic category.
When the new campus commissariat finally finishes absorbing the last redoubts in science, math, engineering, medical and professional schools, America will slide into permanent mediocrity and irreversible declining standards of living.
What happened?
Remember all these catastrophes are self-induced. They are choices, not fate. The U.S. has the largest combined gas, coal and oil deposits in the world. It possesses the know-how to build the safest pipelines and to ensure the cleanest energy development on the planet.
Inflation was a deliberate Biden choice. For short-term political advantage, he kept printing trillions of dollars, incentivizing labor non-participation, and keeping interest rates at historical lows – at a time of pent-up global demand.
The administration wanted no border. Only that way can politicized, impoverished immigrants repay left-wing undermining of the entire legal immigration system with their fealty at the ballot box.
Once esoteric, crack-pot academic theories – “modern monetary theory,”critical legal theory, critical race theory – now dominate policymaking in the Biden administration.
The common denominator in all of this is ideology overruling empiricism, common sense, and pragmatism. Ruling elites would rather be politically correct failures and unpopular than politically incorrect, successful, and popular.
Is that not the tired story of left-wing revolutionaries from 18th-century France to early 20th-century Russia to the contemporary disasters in Cuba and Venezuela?
The American people reject the calamitous policies of 2021-2022. Yet the radical cadres surrounding a cognitively inert Biden still push them through by executive orders, bureaucratic directives, and deliberate cabinet nonperformance.
Why? The Left has no confidence either in constitutional government or common sense.
So as the public pushes back, expect at the ground level more doxxing, cancel culture, deplatforming, ministries of disinformation, swarming the private homes of officials they target for bullying and likely violent demonstrations in our streets this summer.
Meanwhile, left-wing elites will do their best to ignore Supreme Court decisions, illegally cancel student debts and likely by the fall issue more COVID lockdowns. They will still dream of packing the Court, ending the filibuster, scrapping the Electoral College, adding more states, and flooding the November balloting with hundreds of millions more dollars of dark money from Silicon Valley.
When revolutionaries undermine the system, earn the antipathy of the people, and face looming disaster at the polls, it is then they prove most dangerous – as we shall see over the next few months.
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won,” from Basic Books. You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com.
On Saturday, six Y-20 cargo planes from China landed in Belgrade, Serbia, reportedly carrying HQ-22 surface-to-air missile systems. (@200_zoka / Twitter screen shot)
Chinese Air Force cargo jets ferried arms to Europe on Saturday as a reminder of China’s long reach into world affairs. Six Y-20 cargo planes were first tracked as they entered European air space before landing in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, according to The Drive. The report noted one highly unusual measure, perhaps reflective of the conflict in which Europe finds itself.
“Observers noted at least some of the planes had the covers for their chaff and flare countermeasures systems removed,” The Drive reported.
“It looks very much like they may have been equipped with live countermeasures, which would be anticipatory of some sort of potential threat. What that threat would have been isn’t clear,” the report said.
Interesting find by @Prova_61 👍 … In fact I have never seen before this, what appears to be the hatch removed for the chaff & flare dispenser boxes.
The planes’ presence alone would have been notable, the report continued.
“The Y-20s’ appearance raised eyebrows because they flew en masse as opposed to a series of single-aircraft flights,” The Drive’s report noted. “The Y-20′s presence in Europe in any numbers is also still a fairly new development.”
The report said that the Chinese planes were carrying HQ-22 surface-to-air missile systems that would be used by Serbia. Serbian military analyst Aleksandar Radic said, “The Chinese carried out their demonstration of force,” according to the Associated Press.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said Saturday that he will display “the newest pride” of his country’s military on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.
As we reach a month of the Ukrainian war amid talks of possible peace, a strategic appraisal is in order. It appears the Russians thought the war would be easy and fast, the Ukrainians would simply roll over and surrender, and the common people would rise up to greet Russians as liberators. Russian strategic decision-making, worsened by ideological bubbles, turned out to be as haunting as British and American misadventures in Iraq and Libya.
The Russian officer attrition in this war is on a level rarely observed in any recent conflict, partially because this level of high-intensity, state versus state, multi-domain total war hasn’t occurred in the last few decades. Russia did not foresee that its old-fashioned special operations tactics are obsolete satellites and drones track their movements. The fact that Moscow did not calculate this in their battle plans is a sign of decline, a far cry from its prestigious officer corps training during the Soviet era. The bulk of the Russian navy and air force are still bafflingly underused and functionally unavailable given the intensity of the conflict, giving rise to the suspicion that the Russians are preserving their top-tier weaponry and platforms in case the war spirals to a continental conflict.
But, somehow, they are still grinding on. If their objective was to stop Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), they have achieved it already. They have also managed to cut off the entire east and south of Ukraine. Russia might still win the war and achieve Ukrainian zonal neutrality, given Russia’s sheer weight.
The Russian rhetorical “denazification” was also recently dropped quietly from the rhetoric. But the demand for Ukrainian neutrality remains and will remain. It was the single major Russian demand. All the other demands were maximalist and malleable, aimed towards negotiation. Ukraine should have taken the opportunity to do a Cold War-era, Austrian-style “neutralitätserklärung,” which would have resulted in the country constitutionally turning neutral, in order to get funding from the European Union and NATO and flourish. Ukrainians have also swallowed their non-achievable EU and NATO membership dream and are currently just as ideologically inflexible and rigid about compromise as Russia.
Long-Term Ramifications
Unfortunately, the long-term ramifications of this war, for the west, are also bleak. Every single conservative restraint and realist gain from the last few years risks being reversed if realists continue to play defense on the rhetorical field of “values” instead of focusing on a narrow, populist interest.
The absolutely mindless idea of a no-fly zone in an active warzone with a nuclear great power was narrowly avoided by 78 experts writing an open letter against it. Incidentally, support for a no-fly zone declines among Americans the moment it is explained.
But the war hysteria in the first few weeks of the campaign, aided by the usual suspects, demonstrated just how close to power and catastrophe these ideologues were. When a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and a former supreme allied commander of NATO argue for a no-fly zone, one needs to remember they are one step away from real advisory power and might be so again in the future.
A conservative realist grand strategy that focuses on America’s southern borders and argues for Europeans to pay for European defense first needs a realist rhetoric and public relations strategy. It must discuss the public interest, in a language common people will understand and appreciate. Pursuing such a strategy would require a total clean-up of the administrative state and Obama-era holdovers next time Republicans are in power. The hold-outs of liberal internationalism are deeply embedded within the ever-expansive national security bureaucracy.
War Is Burying Liberal Internationalism
Rampant war hysteria has resulted in limited diplomatic maneuverability, a realization that is slowly emerging. As the Financial Times noted, “since Feb 24, the west has been galvanized into more unity than it has shown in years. Yet most of the world is on the side lines waiting to see which way it goes. Not for the first time, the west risks mistaking itself for global consensus.”
No matter how many times fanatical liberal internationalists cry about this war suddenly rejuvenating liberalism, the reality cannot be further from truth. The war proves great powers can deter other great powers and are the only actors that matter, that nationalism is the strongest social force, that interests trump values, norms, and laws. Thus, the war is quite clearly not saving “liberal internationalism” but burying it.
Two of the largest non-western powers are either neutral or tacitly supporting Russia, simply because of the idea that great powers should have their own spheres of influence. The balancing powers in Europe also argued against NATO being a co-belligerent.
Realism Isn’t Isolationism At All
Anglo-American foreign policy realists are not pacifists or isolationists. They simply prioritize a greater strategic threat in China. Wars have their own momentum. The chance of a great power being dragged into war due to foolish or overzealous mistakes of smaller peripheral allies is a far bigger threat, as the current world is functionally similar to a multipolar system prior to the First World War than a relatively binary and Manichean conflict of the Second.
Russia, bogged down in Ukraine already, is not a hegemonic threat comparable to Nazi Germany. The EU’s total population is around 450 million, more than the United States (339 million) and much more than Russia (144 million). The EU’s gross domestic product also dwarfs Russia’s, and just the top four European defense budgets combined are larger than Russia’s. Yet, instead of an actual material pivot to Asia, the United States currently has more than 100,000 troops deployed in Europe.
Globally, the biggest future rival is China. China is almost incomparable in size and power next to previous rivals such as Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and even the USSR. There is nothing they would prefer more than the United States being dragged back to Europe. Ultimately, the U.S. objective should be not to prolong the war, but to focus on China as a rising threat. Ukrainian neutrality would have sorted the issue for good. But Russia has already been pushed into the arms of the Chinese due to the war.
By not allowing an amoral balance of power, wherein we let Russia have a small sphere of influence as a grand bargain instead of being over-committed to Europe, Washington risks undercutting its long-term strategic interests by unknowingly accelerating China’s. In a twist of fate, President Joe Biden is now mirroring former President Donald Trump.
Biden’s old Cold War equilibrium instinct is under siege by his own activist administration, determined to defeat Russian “reactionary imperial patriarchy” and defend foreign borders, statues, and churches — instincts they would never allow at home. The almost theological focus on being a part of a conflict in the far corners of Eastern Europe to ensure the continuation of a liberal democratic revolution is fundamentally undercutting American grand strategy, which historically tried to split Russia and China. Ultimately, pushing Russia to be a Chinese satellite might turn out to be our greatest historic blunder.
Dr. Sumantra Maitra is a national-security fellow at The Center for the National Interest; a non-resident fellow at the James G Martin Center; and an elected early career historian member at the Royal Historical Society. He is a senior contributor to The Federalist, and can be reached on Twitter @MrMaitra.
On Friday, The Daily Mail reported that emails recovered from Hunter Biden’s laptop show he helped an infectious disease research company pursue projects in Ukraine. Those emails confirm portions of charges Russia made the previous day that an investment group run by the now-president’s son had funded a company conducting research at biological laboratories in Ukraine. While these developments add another scandal to the long list of Biden family dirty laundry, the more urgent concern for the country should be the continuing threat to our national security posed by a compromised President Biden and the possibility that Russia has access to the catalog of compromising material contained on Hunter’s laptop.
Mere weeks before then-President Donald Trump and Joe Biden faced off in the November 2020 presidential election, The New York Post published emails obtained from a laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned at a repair shop in Delaware. Those emails revealed that during the elder Biden’s time as Barack Obama’s vice president, Hunter engaged in a pay-to-play scandal, trading off his father’s position to strike deals with players in Ukraine and China. The venture was a family one, with Joe “the Big Guy” Biden listed in one email as set to receive a 10 percent cut of one pending deal and Hunter telling his daughter in another message that “pop” took half of his earnings.
Even after a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s confirmed the authenticity of the emails, the supposed standard-bearers of journalism buried the scandal and social media outlets censored both the story and The New York Post. Worse still, “more than 50 former senior intelligence officials”signed a letter framing the Hunter Biden emails as Russian disinformation. Among others, former CIA directors or acting directors John Brennan, Leon Panetta, Gen. Michael Hayden, John McLaughlin, and Michael Morell signed the letter. In doing so they gave then-candidate Joe Biden cover to lie to the American public, which he did when Trump confronted him about the scandal during a presidential debate.
Are you saying the “laptop is now another Russia, Russia, Russia hoax?” Trump asked Biden.
“That’s exactly what [I] was told,” Biden countered. “There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant,” Biden professed to the American public before they went to the polls and elected Biden our commander in chief.
But even The New York Times has finally admitted the laptop was real and the emails were legitimate. Initially, that admission proved significant because it likewise legitimizes the scandals spawned from the documents recovered from Hunter’s abandoned laptop. However, the trajectory of the scandal changed Friday with The Daily Mail’s exclusive.
“Emails from Hunter’s abandoned laptop show he helped secure millions of dollars of funding for Metabiota, a Department of Defense contractor specializing in research on pandemic-causing diseases that could be used as bioweapons,” The Daily Mail announced last week. The article continued: “[Biden] also introduced Metabiota to an allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas firm, Burisma, for a ‘science project’ involving high biosecurity level labs in Ukraine. And although Metabiota is ostensibly a medical data company, its vice president emailed Hunter in 2014 describing how they could ‘assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia’– an unusual goal for a biotech firm.”
The Daily Mail added more details about Metabiota and Hunter Biden’s role in brokering relationships for the research company in Ukraine. Included throughout the article were copies of the emails ostensibly obtained from Hunter’s laptop that confirmed The Daily Mail’s reporting. The article also added details shedding light on Hunter’s “business” dealings in Ukraine during the time his father served as vice president and America’s point person on issues related to that country. Friday’s exclusive is not the first time The Daily Mail has published never-before-seen material from Hunter Biden’s laptop. Last August, the outlet published“unearthed footage” of Hunter Biden telling a prostitute that, in the summer of 2018, another laptop went missing and he believed Russia had stolen it. At the time, Hunter also expressed concern that the laptop might prove fodder for blackmail since it contained compromising material.
What distinguishes the emails contained in last week’s Daily Mail article from those published last year is that the most recent release came the day after Russia’s State Duma speaker, Vyacheslav Volodin accused President Biden with being “involved in the creation of bio laboratories in Ukraine,” with Volodin claiming that “an investment fund run by his son Hunter Biden funded research and the implementation of the United States’ military biological program.”
Soon after Volodin made the charge on Thursday, the Telegraph called Russia’s accusation of Hunter Biden funding Ukrainian biological laboratories an “unsubstantiated claim” “designed to build on negative coverage about [the] president’s son in Right-wing US media.” But with Friday’s release of previously undisclosed emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop, Russia’s claim, at least concerning Hunter Biden’s connection to Ukrainian biological laboratories, appears accurate.
While none of the emails released on Friday support Russia’s claim that the Ukrainian labs were used to research or create bioweapons, propaganda need only hold a sliver of truth to serve its purpose. And the cache of emails contained on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop provides Putin and his comrades enough evidence to seemingly confirm the Russian government’s earlier claim that Hunter Biden helped implement a bioweapon program in Ukraine. This false framing also provides Russia ammunition to justify its attack on its neighbor to the west.
Russia’s ability to point to the Hunter Biden emails as confirmation of its claims of a biolab in Ukraine raises a serious question with huge national security implications: How did Russia know the day before The Daily Mail’s exclusive that the Hunter Biden’s investment fund, Rosemont Seneca, had invested in Metabiota and been involved in Metabiota’s operations in Ukraine? The timing of events last week suggests Russia has access to the same emails as The Daily Mail or that Vladimir Putin’s agents might well have obtained access to Hunter Biden’s first laptop—the one the president’s son believed Russians had stolen in 2018. In either case, the Biden family corruption documented on the laptops has gone from a potential national security risk to a real one—and in the midst of a war launched by Russia on a country bordering North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies.
Together, the Biden family, the intelligence agencies, and the corrupt media—social and legacy—hold full responsibility for the danger Americans now face. Biden knew full well how compromised his family was, and that there were two laptops, not one, with evidence of the corruption floating about. Yet Biden lied to the American public, with an assist from the former high-level members of the intelligence community who signed the letter suggesting the laptop scandal represented Russian disinformation.
Then there is the FBI which, by December 2019, had access to the abandoned laptop and thereby also knew that Hunter believed Russians had stolen his laptop in summer 2018. To date, there has been no indication that the FBI provided Joe Biden a defensive briefing on the national security risk posed by those laptops. Or if FBI agents did brief Biden on the risks in a timely manner, that means he nonetheless lied to the American public and ran for president knowing the propaganda at Putin’s fingertips.
Even when coupled with the complicity of former members of the intelligence community, all of Joe Biden’s lies would mean nothing if the media had done its job and reported the story when it still matter. It’s too late now, however: Biden is our commander in chief and Putin potentially holds a cache of compromising information perfect for propaganda purposes.
Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
Last week, The New York Times quietly acknowledged that the emails recovered from the MacBook Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer store were authentic. The admission came nearly a year-and-a-half late, after the corrupt media — legacy and social — buried the scandal the New York Post broke just weeks before the November election.
Merely admitting the laptop is legitimate is not enough. Rather, by concurring in the authenticity of the laptop and the emails, the supposed standard-bearers of journalism have also implicitly acknowledged the validity of the scandals spawn by the porn-filled MacBook. And notwithstanding the salacious source of the documentary evidence of the scandals, the scandals are not about Hunter Biden: They are about now-President Biden.
Here are the eight Joe Biden scandals deserving further coverage.
1. Pay-to-Play in Ukraine
The most obvious scandal bared by the emails and text messages contained on Hunter’s laptop concerns the influence profiteering Joe Biden apparently participated in during his eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president, with Ukraine featuring heavily in the pay-to-play scheme.
The New York Times, in its likely “get ahead of the story,” coverage from last week, touched on the Ukrainian angle by noting Hunter’s connection to Burisma and then quoting emails recovered from the laptop indicating the younger Biden leveraged his dad’s position — then as vice president. But the Times’ surface coverage of the Burisma scandal doesn’t nearly suffice.
Surface it was: The Times made no mention of Hunter’s appointment to Burisma Holdings Board of Directors at a reported salary of $50,000 per month during his dad’s time as vice president. Hunter Biden had no experience in energy. So, a deep-dive on the entire Biden-Burisma connection is a first step.
2. China Gets in the Game
Ukraine is but a patch on the influence-peddling undertaken by Hunter on behalf of “the big guy,” as the younger Biden referred to his dad. China also played a large role in the family enterprise, as demonstrated by, again, passing coverage in November 2021. Then, the Times reported, in brief, that Hunter Biden’s joint global equity firm, the Bohai Harvest Equity Investment Fund, had helped coordinate the purchase by a Chinese mining company of the world’s largest cobalt source in the Congo.
That deal gave China control over a huge chunk of the world’s known cobalt supplies — an ingredient necessary to make electric car batteries. And the role of Hunter Biden’s company, Bohai, in the transaction again connects directly to Joe Biden, as Hunter reportedly launched that new joint enterprise with Chinese business partners less than two weeks after he traveled to China on Air Force Two with his then-vice president father.
In exploring this scandal, the press needs to push beyond the emails recovered from Hunter’s abandoned laptop, and do what Tucker Carlson did when the pay-to-play scandal first surfaced: talk to Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski. Bobulinski provides further proof that this scandal reaches the top of the Biden family.
3. Moscow, Kazakhstan, and More
While Ukraine and China likely hold the most significant revelations, once those threads are pulled, investigators should move on to Moscow, which according to a Senate report, holds another possible scandal. That report documents that Hunter also received a combined $3.5 million from the wife of the former Moscow mayor, a Kazakhstan investor, and several other individuals. After all, there is no reason to think that a person willing to let his son sell access to the vice president of the United States would close the money train to just a few countries.
4. Ukraine’s Firing of the Prosecutor Investigating Burisma
With the elite media now deigning coverage of Hunter’s laptop appropriate, the public knows the Burisma scandal was real and threatened to be spectacularly devastating to the elder Biden. That makes questions concerning then-Vice President Joe Biden’s demands that Ukraine fire the state prosecutor who was reportedly investigating Burisma ripe to revisit.
I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours.’ If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a b-tch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.
While the Obama administration attempted to spin Biden’s push for the firing of Shokin, by claiming the international community had demanded Ukraine terminate the state prosecutor, a State Department official contradicted that claim during congressional testimony. George Kent, who worked on issues related to Ukraine at the State Department, reportedly told lawmakers it was the Obama administration that “spearheaded the efforts to have Shokin removed from his position as the top federal prosecutor in Ukraine.”
Biden needs to answer questions anew over his threats to withhold money from Ukraine unless the country removed the state prosecutor responsible for investigating Burisma. Democrats have impeached a president for less.
5. Obama-Biden Administration Ignoring Conflicts of Interest
Biden also needs to answer questions about his decision to ignore the clear conflicts of interest involved with him negotiating with the same countries Hunter was shaking down. Of course, since “the big guy” was in on the scam, bowing out over conflicts of interest is the lesser of the evils, but it is still worth investigating to assess how Biden handled the concerns raised by the Obama administration’s State Department.
Here, the testimony of the State Department official charged with issues related to Ukraine again proves significant. Kent told lawmakers that after learning Hunter sat on the board of Burisma, he raised concerns with the vice president’s office about the relationship.
“I raised my concerns that I had heard that Hunter Biden was on the board of a company owned by somebody that the U.S. Government had spent money trying to get tens of millions of dollars back and that could create the perception of a conflict of interest,” Kent testified before House members in October of 2019. “The message that I recall hearing back was that the vice president’s son Beau was dying of cancer and that there was no further bandwidth to deal with family-related issues at that time … That was the end of that conversation.”
The question for now-President Biden, then, is whether anyone in his office raised concerns about the clear conflicts-of-interest with him personally, and if so, why did Biden ignore the problem?
6. The Intelligence Community’s Briefing of Biden
Another scandal reaching President Biden concerns his interactions with the intelligence community after the FBI, and presumably the CIA and other such agencies, learned in December of 2019, that Hunter Biden believed Russians had stolen Hunter’s laptop, rendering the Bidens susceptible to blackmail.
Here, it is important to understand that there are two separate Hunter Biden laptops at issue. The most-discussed laptop was actually the second laptop. That laptop was the one Hunter had abandoned at the Delaware repair shop. Then, after the repair shop owner discovered concerning material on the MacBook, the store owner handed it to the FBI in December of 2019. The owner of the repair shop, however, had first made a copy of the hard drive, which resulted in The New York Post’s coverage in October 2020.
But there was another laptop — one Hunter believed Russians had stolen from him when he was binging on drugs with prostitutes in the summer of 2018 in Las Vegas. While the public did not learn about the existence of this earlier laptop until August of 2021, the FBI knew about it as early as December 2019, when they took possession of the second laptop Hunter had left at the repair store.
Among other material contained on the second laptop was a video of Biden recounting the circumstances of his first laptop disappearing with some Russians. Significantly, on that video Hunter Biden said his first laptop contained a ton of material leaving him susceptible to blackmail, since his father was “running for president” and Hunter talked “about it all the time.”
It is inconceivable that the FBI and the intelligence communities did not brief Biden on this discovery and the risk of blackmail, given that former FBI Director James Comey briefed Trump on the fake Steele dossier. On second thought, that is the initial question reporters should ask the president: “Did the FBI brief you, Mr. President, on the fact that Hunter believed Russians had stolen a laptop containing compromising information?”
From there, an inquiring press should investigate to ensure that Joe Biden did not direct the intelligence community to bury this national security risk to protect himself or his son.
7. Possible Collusion to Interfere in the 2020 Election
An honest press should also investigate whether now-President Biden or anyone connected to his then-presidential campaign pressured reporters, media outlets, or companies such as Twitter and Facebook to censor the Hunter Biden story. And what about the “fifty former intelligence officials” who publicly declared the laptop resembled a Russian disinformation campaign—something clearly untrue? Did Biden or his campaign coordinate with those individuals, several of whom had endorsed the Democratic candidate, in the release of the letter?
Given that polls show that 17 percent of Joe Biden voters would not have voted for him in 2020, if they had known about the Biden family scandals, the collective burying of the laptop scandal represents the most significant interference in elections ever seen in our country. So, “Did Biden or his campaign have anything to do with the decision to kill the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter’s MacBook?” And “What about the ‘fifty former intelligence officials?’”
From there the follow-ups flow quickly: “Who was involved in the push to silence the story and who were the executives or ‘journalists’ who bowed to the demands?” “Who coordinated with the intelligence officials?” “Were any threats or promises made?” “What were they?” “What did Joe Biden know?” “What about other Democrats and the Democratic National Committee?”
8. Joe Biden Is a ‘Lying Dog-Faced Pony Soldier’
The final Joe Biden scandal the press should push President Biden to answer concerns his lies to the American public. While there are too many to count, two merit further questioning.
First, the media should demand Biden answer for lying to the country when he seethed, “I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or with anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses. Period.” The evidence overwhelmingly shows that Biden not only knew of the family business deals but was part of them.
The second bold-faced fabrication from Biden came during his pre-election debate with Trump, when Trump raised “the laptop from hell.” When Trump asked Biden if he was saying the “laptop is now another Russia, Russia, Russia hoax?” the then-Democratic candidate replied, “That’s exactly what [I] was told.”
Unlikely. Biden also countered with this doozy, which again raises the question of whether Biden had a role in the intelligence officials’ statement:
There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant. They have said that this has all the … five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend, Rudy Giuliani.
We can now add The New York Times to Giuliani. It remains to be seen, though, whether the Old Grey Lady and the other legacy outlets will report on the further scandals the laptop revealed—the ones that reach the president of the United States.
Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
Over the course of his long career with the Department of Defense, Trent Telenko spent 10 years as an Army vehicle auditor.
Based in Sealy, Texas, he received and inspected the steady stream of military vehicles damaged in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. This experience has given Telenko an eye for details that others could easily miss as well as a unique perspective on Russia’s progress in Ukraine.
In early March, Telenko saw on social media a photograph of a Russian Pantsir-S1 missile system located near the Ukrainian city of Kherson. His eyes went immediately to the system’s tires. Rather than using high-quality, more expensive tires that could support the tremendous weight of the Pantsir-S1, the Russian army had opted for cheaper, low-quality, Chinese-made tires. He also noticed they were in terrible shape because they had not been properly maintained.
In a widely read Twitter thread, Telenko identified the problems caused by the Russian army’s failure to properly maintain not only this specific Pantsir, but neglect of the entire fleet.
This is a thread that will explain the implied poor Russian Army truck maintenance practices based on this photo of a Pantsir-S1 wheeled gun-missile system's right rear pair of tires below & the operational implications during the Ukrainian mud season.🧵
Telenko’s analysis captured the attention of media outlets from The Economist to ABC News.
In the clip below, Telenko explained to ABC anchors how the Russian military’s inattention to critical safety measures is bogging its forces down and undermining its progress in the war. He noted that he “could tell at a glance” what was wrong with the tires on Russian trucks: Neglected maintenance that would destroy the usefulness of the army’s vehicles.
Check out the whole interview. It’s worth watching.
Telenko published a new thread on Saturday in which he discussed “Operational Attrition,” a concept he defines as the “loss of vehicles without a shot being fired.”
“That is, just by operating vehicles, you lose some of them because they break,” he wrote. “This gets a lot worse in combat. Each mile traveled by a military truck in war is between 10 and 20 miles wear. This is simple. Truck drivers abuse trucks because they don’t want to die.”
My good friend at Sealy, Gilbert Duran, wrote an article about the 1st phase of the effort called:
Resetting the FMTV: the Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command Reset Program refurbishes FMTV trucks returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Telenko participated in three U.S. Army “Reset” programs from 2003 to 2008. The goal was to repair damaged FMTV trucks (family of medium tactical vehicles). And he was tasked with performing “induction inspections of IED blast damaged trucks.”
Describing their condition, he wrote, “None of those vehicles ran, but mainly because they had been picked over for parts. There were not that many miles on them, but goodness was there oil leaks, sludge, leaky radiators, carbon build ups & the suspensions were beat to h–l. Cab glass was noticeable by its absence.”
“This was in an Army that has professional NCO’s that lived, breathed and ate preventive maintenance as a religious catechism. And the US Army enforced rest periods for its truck drivers because it cared enough about having men & equipment future operations,” he explained.
The Russian Army doesn’t do any of these things, he wrote. And for the past 10 years, they were barely maintained. Now, these same trucks are being overloaded with artillery and ammunition and sent into the war zone.
None of that is true for the Russian Army.
Most of the time between 2012 and 2022 the Russian Army did not maintain their trucks.
The Russians don't have a professional NCO Corps so they ARE NOT DOING IT NOW.
Here’s what can and has gone wrong for the Russians.
Every truck is being sent out in whatever condition, overloaded with ammunition.
The engines are running white hot and no one has checked the oil or other fluid levels, let alone does an oil change, in these last three weeks.https://t.co/nLbvJWAJMn
…out of artillery range. The choppers were trash at that point.
However, after that, those guys slowed the <bleep> down & took their time dragging those choppers to their drop off point so they had as much "safe time" as they could before the next artillery ammo run. 15/
Telenko concludes that the lack of professional maintenance and wear, unprofessional use by undertrained troops and soldier exhaustion has already and will continue to cause high levels of “operational attrition” in their truck fleets. The “details” that are being ignored will lead to massive issues.
He predicts in six to eight weeks, the entire Russian Army military truck fleet will be “deadlined.”
“Between the end of April and Mid-May 2022, the Ukrainian Army will be able to counter-attack EVERYWHERE. Because there will be NOWHERE more than 20 miles/30 km inside Ukraine where Russian troops won’t be out of food and low on ammunition.”
Do you think Ukraine can turn back the Russian invasion?Yes No
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Let’s hope Telenko is right and pray that the Ukrainians can continue to hang on.
In February, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley told lawmakers a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine could take Kyiv in 72 hours. Nearly four weeks after the Russian invasion began Feb. 24, the Russian military has managed to reduce some cities to rubble and resorted to indiscriminate bombing and brutal tactics, yet the Ukrainian people are still standing.
The formidable Russian Army which greatly outnumbers the Ukrainian military in men, artillery and equipment isn’t quite as mighty as the world had thought.
Although the government of Russian President Vladimir Vladimir Putin had unlimited time to prepare for this invasion, Putin apparently grossly underestimated his opponent. His military commanders might have failed to plan the logistics of a protracted war, without which, even the strongest army will falter.
Elizabeth is a contract writer at The Western Journal. Her articles have appeared on many conservative websites including RedState, Newsmax, The Federalist, Bongino.com, HotAir, MSN and RealClearPolitics. Please follow Elizabeth on Twitter.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.
Source: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Great news for Joe Biden. After months of abysmal public approval numbers, President Biden’s favorability among registered voters has soared by 2 points to 45%! And all he had to do was bring us to the brink of World War III.
The media are thrilled with the possibility of nuclear war with Russia. Catastrophes are terrific for ratings, and flood-the-zone coverage of a war between two faraway countries that has almost zero effect on the lives of most Americans allows journalists to act like deep-think, geopolitical strategists (after having quickly looked up “Ukraine” on Wikipedia).
They dragged out the COVID panic porn for two straight years. By now, the only people still interested in pandemic updates are hysterical liberal women in Manhattan claiming to have “long-haul COVID.”
Of course, when American kids are murdered expressly as a result of our own government’s policies, the journalism protocol is: No crying, no coverage.
There will be no tears for the 5-year-old Florida girl killed in October when an illegal alien from Guatemala, Ernesto Lopez Morales, tanked up on six 32-ounce beers, then plowed into the little girl and her mother as he was driving to get more beer.
Nor for Texas teenager Adrienne Sophia Exum, killed instantly one Sunday afternoon in 2020 when Heriberto Fuerte-Padilla, an illegal alien from Mexico, smashed into the car she was driving, then fled the scene. There’s even some news: The Biden administration announced that Fuerte-Padilla will not be deported.
And there will be no weeping for the still-unidentified mother and daughter, aged 59 and 22, killed last December when a human smuggler (a “U.S. citizen,” aka “anchor baby”) carrying six illegals across the border into Texas, sped through a stop sign and T-boned the pair.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, but the media’s obsessive focus on Ukraine is terrific for the interests of the Democratic Party. Recall that, in his 2012 book, “Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind,” then-UCLA professor Tim Groseclose demonstrated that media bias alone costs Republicans about 8 to 10 percentage points in elections.
And that was 2012. One can only imagine what it is in post-Trump 2022. If only we could return to the junior varsity media bias of 2012!
Until the war in Ukraine, the Democrats were facing midterms after having spent the previous two years mandating masks and an endless series of vaccinations — even for the vaccinated or previously infected.
Democrats flung open the border to illegal alien murderers, drug dealers, gang members and welfare recipients.
Democratic district attorneys have turned city after city into feces-smeared murdertopias that make Charles Bronson’s “Death Wish” look like “The Sound of Music.”
These days, the left’s main casus belli is teaching little kids about anal sex, transgenders and the inherent evil of white people.
What could even Stalin’s media do with that record?
Option 1) Implement a collective mind wipe, perhaps through an electromagnetic pulse, to erase voters’ memory of everything that’s happened since Joe Biden was sworn in.
Option 2) WAR! (Someplace in the world that’s not here.)
What crisis at our border? We’re reporting on a WAR.
How can you talk about murder rates when CHILDREN ARE DYING IN UKRAINE?
What vaccine mandates? COVID is over. Now we’re talking about war!
Everything bad that’s happening is Putin’s fault! He’s like Hitler!
Talk about Russian collusion! Putin gave Trump Facebook ads; he’s giving Biden a military invasion.
By now, the media have whipped the public into such a frenzy over Ukraine that a majority of Americans want the U.S. to start shooting down Russian planes, starting World War III with nuclear armed power.
A small price to pay for Democratic dominance.
But much like American military interventions around the globe, things don’t always go as planned.
Those astronomical numbers came as a result of the conclusion of the Persian Gulf War, when we went to war with Saddam Hussein because he had invaded neighboring Kuwait — violating that nation’s sacred sovereignty! — and proceeded to commit unspeakable war crimes, including using poison gas. The first week of that war, Bush’s poll numbers shot from 64% to 82%.
Republicans had a lock on the next year’s presidential contest. No serious Democrats were willing to challenge him, and the party ended up with a horny hick from Arkansas as their nominee.
And then it all collapsed. By Election Day 1992, Bush’s public approval rating was down to a pathetic 34%. The h*rny hick won the election, and Bush became an embarrassing one-term president.
On the military side, at least the Middle East was finally at peace. We never heard a peep out of Hussein again. Wait — what happened?
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
By now it should be obvious that a concerted and bipartisan effort is underway in Washington to escalate U.S. involvement in the Ukraine war. This effort has been ongoing since the war began three weeks ago, but now it’s entering a new and dangerous phase. In a letter sent Tuesday to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, a half-dozen top Republican lawmakers called for the Biden administration to provide Ukraine with “Soviet- or Russian-made strategic and tactical air defense systems and associated radars to Ukraine.”
That means long-range surface-to-air missiles, like the Soviet-made S-300 system, which is designed to shoot down enemy aircraft and intercept ballistic missiles. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged the United States to help Ukraine acquire S-300 air defense systems from countries that have them, like North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members Bulgaria, Greece, and Slovakia, and he might do so again on Wednesday when he addresses Congress.
In action, S-300 air defense systems look something like this:
The provision of such heavy weaponry to Ukraine, whether by the United States or our NATO allies, would represent an unprecedented level of direct military support for Ukraine that would undoubtedly — and rightly — be interpreted by Moscow as a sharp escalation by the West.
Top Republican lawmakers, though, are undeterred by such concerns. The letter, signed by GOP Sens. James Inhofe, Marco Rubio, James Risch, and Reps. Mike Rogers, Michael Turner, and Michael McCaul, also calls for an array of other weapons to be sent immediately to Ukraine, including more Javelin antitank and Stinger antiaircraft missiles, which the United States has been providing to Ukraine in large quantities, as well as myriad small arms, ammunition, and other supplies. It also calls for the delivery to Ukraine of Polish MiG-29 fighter jets “in the near term,” and for the United States to “re-engage Warsaw” on ways to backfill those aircraft. The Republican signatories then declare: “We encourage the department to re-evaluate the flawed conclusion that the transfer of these fighter jets to Ukraine would be ‘escalatory’ in comparison to the weapons systems that have already been delivered to Ukraine by the U.S. and our allies and partners.”
On the contrary, it would indeed be escalatory simply because the weapons that have already been delivered to Ukraine are nothing compared to, say, dozens of advanced fighter jets. Poland certainly considers such a course of action “escalatory.”
After all, the entire fighter jet transfer scheme was abandoned last week when Poland, responding to some loose talk from Blinken about giving a “green light” to the transfer, offered to deploy its MiG-29s to Ramstein Air Base in Germany and place them at the disposal of the United States. Poland was essentially asking the United States to bear the risks of sending fighter jets into Ukraine, which Moscow would almost certainly consider an act of war. The Biden administration, recognizing these risks, declined Poland’s offer.
None of this seems to daunt these Republican lawmakers, though. They seem to think we should press ahead and arm the Ukrainians with everything short of NATO soldiers and nuclear weapons. The idea of sending long-range surface-to-air missiles to Ukraine is essentially identical to the MiG-29 transfer idea: funnel advanced weapons systems to Ukraine but somehow maintain the fiction that the United States and NATO are non-belligerents. At some point, we will cross the line of belligerence, and whether and when we cross that line isn’t something we alone get to decide.
It’s not enough, as these GOP lawmakers are doing, to wave away the risks that such policies carry. Moscow clearly views this war as existential, and it will not simply allow NATO to funnel increasingly more powerful weapons into Ukraine. As I argued last week, this isn’t Afghanistan or Syria. Controlling Ukraine is central to Moscow’s conception of its national security, and it won’t simply walk away from this war without widening it first.
Lawmakers in Washington aren’t the only ones who refuse to see this. Open the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal these days and you’ll see the same kind of hand-waving over the risks of escalation. On Tuesday, the Journal published an op-ed by Douglas Feith and John Hannah (along with a supporting editorial) that argued for a “humanitarian airlift” for Ukraine without acknowledging the risks involved.
What, exactly, would that look like? An international airlift, openly organized and funded by the United States, would “provide food, medicine and other nonmilitary supplies for days, weeks and maybe longer,” write Feith and Hannah, who both served as national-security officials in the George W. Bush administration. “Countries viewed as not hostile to Russia — perhaps Brazil, Egypt, India and the United Arab Emirates — could take the lead in flying planes into Ukraine.”
But since NATO and the United States aren’t willing to impose a no-fly zone (yet) it’s hard to imagine pilots from those non-NATO countries will be lining up to volunteer for the mission. What happens if they get shot down?
Feith and Hannah don’t say. Russian President Vladimir Putin, they argue, “would either consent and facilitate distribution of supplies or provoke more denunciations of Russia for its inhumanity.” Or he might shoot down a supply plane, launch a missile attack on the NATO airbase where the airlift is based, or do any number of things to widen the war in response.
Feith and Hannah, along with the Journal’s editorial board, make no serious attempt to grapple with the risks involved in such an operation, let alone the potential for rapid escalation once things go sideways. Like the aforementioned Republican lawmakers, they refuse to engage in even the most rudimentary risk analysis.
Why? One possible explanation is that perhaps the people making these arguments want the United States to get involved as a belligerent, and don’t really believe their hand-waving about the risks associated with their schemes. Feith and Hannah, for example, laughably assert that there is “little to no downside” to their proposal, which they also note “doesn’t preclude efforts to arm the Ukrainians better, or eventually to establish a no-fly zone, but because the airlift is far less risky it should be more readily doable.”
Well, yes, a humanitarian airlift into an active warzone is certainly less risky than a no-fly zone, which is indistinguishable from going to war with Russia, but that doesn’t mean it’s risk-free, much less prudent. But maybe that’s the point: dial up the risk and see what happens.
As the war in Ukraine stretches into its third week, with heavy Russian bombardment of Ukrainian cities intensifying and civilian causalities mounting, we’re going to hear more and more arguments out of Washington that the United States and NATO need to do more, that we can’t stand aside and let Putin do as he pleases in Ukraine. The people making these arguments will deny that their proposals for aiding Ukraine, however unprecedented, could risk escalation with or retaliation from Moscow. They will not even engage that question in good faith.
Instead, they will insist, with the force of what they believe is moral authority, that we keep plunging down a slippery slope that eventually leads to war between NATO and Russia — and that we do so without even acknowledging what we’re doing.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
Russia has asserted numerous justifications for its invasion of Ukraine, and one of them is finally gaining traction with some observers: the allegation that the United States was developing bioweapons at labs in Ukraine to use against Moscow. It’s true that there are bioresearch facilities in Ukraine, some of which are partnered with the Department of Defense, as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland admitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week. But there is no evidence that the labs were being used to develop biological weapons, or that Russia was under such direct threat from them that they needed to invade Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin used the Kremlin’s media machine to try to justify his war in Ukraine in multiple ways. First, Moscow said it needed to protect ethnic Russians in the Donbas region who were facing a “genocide” from Kyiv. They also claimed that they needed to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, a country led by a Jewish president and home to more than one million Holocaust victims. There was also the claim that the war was really about NATO expansion, as well as an alleged false flag attack to frame Ukraine as the aggressors against Russia.
Those narratives, with some exception for the NATO complaint, largely failed to gain traction in the West. However, after the war had already began, Putin pivoted to the bioweapons claim. According to the Kremlin, the United States wants to use bioweapons created in Ukrainian labs to attack Russia, including by infecting birds with them and releasing them into Russian territory.
Ps worth noting this isn’t even a new conspiracy/tactic form Russia. Ex after they got called out for cyber attacks, they spread the same claims about the biolab in Georgia in 2018. Only then instead of birds, we were going to use infected insects. https://t.co/CbvbxB3hvZpic.twitter.com/nbkQlwyu5u
In 2005, the United States and Ukraine reached an agreement to work together to dismantle or secure Soviet-era bioweapons left behind at facilities in Ukraine. The Pentagon’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program (CTR) has been working with former Soviet republics for 30 years to clean up biohazards left behind in their countries, from places like Ukraine to Uzbekistan.
Fox News's Jennifer Griffin expertly dismantles Russian propaganda about bio-labs in Ukraine "Those are Soviet-era bio-labs that the U.S. has been engaged [in] since 2005" as a way to clean up and convert what the Soviets left behind, essentially de-proliferate Soviet-era weapons pic.twitter.com/dvjeuP4SyZ
The day after Russia invaded Ukraine, Robert Pope, the head of the CTR, did an interview with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. This occurred before Moscow’s propaganda campaign about Ukrainian labs ramped up again. Pope explained that he was concerned Russian attacks could knock out power leading to security breaches at biolabs in Ukraine, or that Russia could take over some of the labs and gain access to dangerous pathogens inside them.
“I would say from every facility that we have worked with them in, we have confidence that as long as the electrical power is turned on and the people we have trained are present at the facility, the biosafety officers, that these pathogens are safe and secure to international standards,” Pope said. “Should these facilities be damaged by onflict, that could change.”
“Should Russian forces occupy a city with one of these facilities, we are concerned that Russia will fabricate ‘evidence’ of nefarious activity in an attempt to lend credibility to their ongoing disinformation about these facilities.”
Pope said there are various activities happening at the 26 labs in Ukraine the U.S. partners with, six of which receive direct support from the Pentagon. Some are destroying or securing former Soviet bioweapons. But some are simply used to conduct vaccine and disease research on pathogens. He did make clear that there is no new bioweapons research occurring at any of the facilities and said any claim that there is is a lie: “There is no place that still has any of the sort of infrastructure for researching or producing biological weapons.”
“Scientists being scientists, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of these strain collections in some of these laboratories still have pathogen strains that go all the way back to the origins of that program,” Pope said. He added that the CTR and Ukraine, before the war started, had been working toward an agreement for Ukraine to reduce the amount of dangerous pathogens it was studying for safety reasons.
According to the Pentagon, Russia took control of two Ukrainian labs in 2014 when it made its initial incursion on Crimea and the Donbas. Now, American intelligence officials are reportedly concerned that Russia will gain control of more labs and potentially get access to the dangerous pathogens inside some of them. If they do, there are worries that Russia will stage a false flag attack to frame the United States and Ukraine as chemical weapons users.
A similar concern about a false flag attack was shared by the Biden administration before the invasion of Ukraine began. The State Department alleged that Russia could produce a video framing Ukraine for an attack on Russia or the Donbas, justifying a Russian response.
Russia deployed this same tactic in Syria, where it supports the regime of dictator Bashar Al-Assad. When Assad used chemical weapons on civilian populations, Russia sometimes claimed that it was rebel groups using chemical weapons on themselves, not Assad.
The debate about the biolabs, and the spread of misinformation by some, has sparked an intense debate within American politics. Some on both the right and left have spoken about the issue, from raising legitimate concerns about the potential for a lab-leak during the war to parroting Russian allegations of bioweapons activity. Others have called them conspiracy theorists.
Republican Utah Sen. Mitt Romney accused former Democratic Hawaii Rep. and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard of spreading treasonous lies and parroting Kremlin propaganda. Gabbard tweeted a video in which she said there should be a ceasefire in Ukraine until international authorities can secure 25+ U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine and destroy the dangerous pathogens within.
There are 25+ US-funded biolabs in Ukraine which if breached would release & spread deadly pathogens to US/world. We must take action now to prevent disaster. US/Russia/Ukraine/NATO/UN/EU must implement a ceasefire now around these labs until they’re secured & pathogens destroyed pic.twitter.com/dhDTH5smIG
.@MittRomney, you have called me a ‘treasonous liar’ for stating the fact that “there are 25+ US-funded biolabs in Ukraine which if breached would release & spread deadly pathogens to US/world” and therefore must be secured in order to prevent new pandemics. Bizarrely, …
Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Democratic Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top officials on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, have been working together to debunk falsehoods that the U.S. is funding bioweapons research in Ukraine.
Some have added the claim that the biolabs in Ukraine were “secret,” or that the United States had been covering up its involvement in the facilities. But that isn’t true either. The 2005 agreement between CTR and Ukraine was public, as are various other documents published by the Pentagon since outlining the work being done at the labs and the funding provided for some of it by the United States. The government has also addressed the allegations of bioweapons research before; in 2020, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine put out a release to “set the record straight” on bioresearch collaboration between the two countries.
It was Rubio who asked Nuland about the biolabs during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, sparking much of the controversy being dealt with now. Critically, Nuland confirmed that there are biolabs in Ukraine with dangerous pathogens in them that could be exploited by Russia.
Rubio also asked Nuland if there is a biological weapons attack were to take place in Ukraine, potentially stemming from one of these facilities, if Russia would be responsible. “There is no doubt in my mind, Senator. And it is classic Russian technique to blame on the other guy what they’re planning to do themselves.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich ripped the leadership of President Joe Biden’s administration in handling Russian President Vladimir Putin on a Tuesday interview for “The Faulkner Focus.”
“We should know after Afghanistan, this is the most timid, cowardly and pathetic administration in modern American history,” Gingrich said. “There aren’t any words to express it. If you watch Kamala Harris in Europe, it was an embarrassment to have that person represent the United States because she’s so totally, utterly incompetent. And I think the Europeans have taken our measure. I don’t think anybody in Europe looks to the United States right now to provide any leadership of any kind.”
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Gingrich said Biden has not provided “any leadership of any kind,” adding that he thought the U.S. could defeat Putin if the country could “unleash” the “competent people” in handling the conflict.
“But instead, we’re intimidated by him [Putin], we’re allowing him to get away with war crimes. These are all war crimes … It’s beyond words if you’re a serious person to try and describe what a complete, utter embarrassing failure Biden is,” he continued.
“This is not who we are,” host Harris Faulkner replied. “We’re not weak, we’re not.”
“You can’t be nuttier than this administration,” Gingrich continued. “It combines cowardice and crazy ideas into a really dangerous, historically threatening model. People should really worry about the next three years.”
The president imposed sanctions on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine and announced a ban on all imports of Russian oil and gas March 8. The administration has received criticism from some lawmakers for not doing enough to aid Ukraine, particularly after the State Department declined to send Polish MiG jets to Ukrainians from an airbase in Ramstein, Germany.
Vice President Kamala Harris received a wave of backlash for bursting into laugher during a joint press conference Thursday alongside Polish President Andrzej Duda.
In an unexpected situation that surprised everyone in Venezuela and Florida, the Biden administration decided to take a u-turn in the White House’s maximum pressure policy against the socialist tyranny of Nicolas Maduro.
While the world’s eyes watched the violent tragedy taking place in Ukraine, senior U.S. officials arrived in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, to meet with the Maduro regime. The reasons behind the visit were simple: to liberate nine Americans detained in the country, break the Kremlin-Miraflores alliance and restore the oil commerce with Venezuela so the U.S. can replace the oil it stopped buying from Russia. In exchange the U.S. would ease the sanctions imposed by the former Trump administration against the Venezuelan oil industry. A situation that would legitimize Maduro after being an international pariah for years.
Basically, the Biden administration is looking for a trifecta with a sweet bonus: the possibility that gas prices won’t go up even more. But, is this really possible? The truth is that the White House could be entering into a significant fiasco that could have some unpleasant consequences for Democrats in the midterm elections, in addition to destroying Venezuela’s hopes for a return to freedom and democracy.
It is unlikely that Maduro break ties with Putin.
Believe it or not, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin could have some reasons to feel happy with Maduro’s negotiations with the U.S. After all, Caracas will get more dollars in the short term if everything moves forward, meaning that the Venezuelan regime could finally start paying the massive amount of money that it owes Moscow. On the other hand, establishing any type of alliance with the U.S. doesn’t automatically move you out of Russia’s sphere of influence — just look at the Nicaraguan regime. However, the depth of the Caracas-Moscow alliance makes it quite unlikely that Maduro will break ties with the Kremlin. We’re talking about billions of dollars in weapons, intelligence support, political consulting and a sophisticated mechanism created by Moscow to allow Venezuela’s oil industry to thwart the sanctions and keep selling oil to different countries.
Moreover, the Kremlin has gathered plenty of “Kompromat” on some of the most important members of the Venezuelan regime, including Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez, who is known for being a close friend of his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu. In addition, Russia currently has control of billions of dollars that top Venezuelan officials and Venezuela’s oil company PDVSA saved in Gazprombank, which decided to freeze this money in 2019 to avoid getting sanctioned by the Trump administration.
The Venezuelan oil industry is in shambles.
In 2021, Russia exported 670,000 oil barrels to the U.S. In 2018, which was the last year before the Maduro regime suffered the oil sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, Venezuela managed to export only 586,000. Currently, the total amount of oil barrels that the South American nation produces is about 700,000, but Caracas takes 150,000 for internal use and sends nearly 60,000 to Cuba.
This way, even in the best-case scenario, the Venezuelan regime won’t be able to fully replace the amount of oil that the U.S. gets from Russia. Even worse, even if the Biden administration relaxes oil sanction on Venezuela, it would do nothing to alleviate the current oil crisis.
According to Francisco Monaldi, Fellow and Director of the Latin American Energy Program at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, if the sanctions imposed against the Kremlin impact Russian oil exports for a long period, the Venezuelan regime could only reach two percent of the world’s supply in no less than five years. To make this happen, the Biden administration would have to cancel all sanctions, while the Venezuelan oil industry would need a significant investment of $12 billion over a seven-year period.
Turning Venezuelans into the new Cubans.
In short, we’re talking about a deal that could easily go wrong, and the effect that the Venezuelan oil could have on gas prices will be minimal. Also, negotiating with a socialist tyrant like Maduro won’t necessarily move him away from Russia or China, so the U.S. might end up financing a band of human rights violators just to get an insignificant amount of oil.
A negotiated transition probably won’t solve the Venezuelan situation. Like it happened in Nicaragua in the early 1990s, this would only change the tyrant but not the political system. However, guaranteeing free and fair elections in the shortest time possible is a mandatory demand that U.S. officials must include at the negotiating table. Otherwise, President Joe Biden would be doing something worse than what former President Barack Obama did with Cuba.
He would be stabilizing the worst tyranny in Latin America’s modern history — the socialist dystopia that is responsible for the second-largest migrant crisis in the world and has been formally accused by the U.S. State Department of narcoterrorism. It also hosts and protects terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and ELN and is being investigated by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
In the 2020 presidential election, a majority of Venezuelans in the U.S. voted for then-president Donald Trump. However, with Biden’s latest actions with Maduro, a Democratic administration could be about to turn the Venezuelan community in the U.S. into a potential Republican voter base.
That’s what happened with Cubans after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. But in this case, it would come after condemning a nation’s future in the name of a deal that looks flawed from every angle.
Luis Orozco is a Venezuelan journalist and political analyst.
A group of House and Senate Democrats introduced legislation Thursday that would implement a new tax to prevent Big Oil corporations from “profiteering.” The effort, led by Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and California Rep. Ro Khanna, would introduce the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax to the U.S. tax code, according to the announcement. Whitehouse said the tax would ensure the world’s largest oil companies don’t take advantage of the ongoing Ukraine crisis to boost gas prices and rake in greater profits, adding that American consumers have “seen this script before.”
“We cannot allow the fossil fuel industry to once again collect a massive windfall by taking advantage of an international crisis,” Whitehouse said in a statement. “I propose sending Big Oil’s big windfall back to the hardworking people who paid for it at the gas pump.”
Under the legislation, oil companies that produce or import at least 300,000 barrels of oil per day will be hit with a tax worth 50% of the difference between the current cost of oil and the average cost between 2015-2019. Smaller oil companies, which account for the majority of domestic energy production, would be exempt from the tax, according to the announcement.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse speaks during a Senate Judiciary hearing on Sept. 15. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Revenue generated from the windfall tax would then be rebated back to Americans as a tax deduction, according to the announcement. Single filers would receive about $240 each per year and joint filers would receive $360 per year when the price of oil hits $120 per barrel. There would be a phase out for single filers earning more than $75,000 per year as well as $150,000 for joint filers, the announcement said.
“Americans want to put pressure on Putin, but they need help with high gas prices,” Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said. “So let’s tax oil companies’ war profiteering and send gasoline rebate checks to Americans.”
However, the U.S. oil benchmark declined to $105.89 per barrel on Thursday. Still, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused uncertainty in global energy markets, leading to higher oil and gasoline prices.
On Monday, the average cost of gasoline nationwide surpassed $4.104 per gallon, breaking the all-time record. Gas prices have continued to surge, hitting $4.32 per gallon on Thursday, up nearly 54% year-over-year.
“As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sends gas prices soaring, fossil fuel companies are raking in record profits,” Khanna said in a statement. “These companies have made billions and used the profits to enrich their own shareholders while average Americans are hurting at the pump.”
“I’m glad to introduce this legislation with Senator Whitehouse that will provide an incentive to cap gas prices and put money back in the pockets of consumers,” he added.
Whitehouse, Khanna and the White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Screenshot CNN, CNN Newsroom With Poppy Harlow and Jim Sciutto
President Joe Biden announced Friday that the U.S., alongside the G7 and European Union, are moving to revoke Russia’s “most favored nation” status. The status is referred to as “permanent normal trade relations (PNTR)” in the U.S., and Biden said revoking it will “make it harder for Russia to do business with the United States.” By doing it alongside key allies, Biden said the move “will be another crushing blow to the Russian economy” amid its invasion of Ukraine.
“Each of our nations are going to take steps to deny ‘most favored nation’ status to Russia,” the president said Friday morning at the White House. “A most favored nation status designation means two countries have agreed to trade with each other under the best possible terms – low tariffs, few barriers to trade and the highest possible imports allowed.”
Lifting a nation’s “most favored” status requires Congress to pass legislation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already said she supports the move, and Biden thanked her for holding off on revoking PNTR in the House until he was able to “line up key allies to keep us in complete unison.”
The president also touted lawmakers’ bipartisanship during his remarks. He noted that while “many issues divide us in Washington … standing for democracy in Ukraine … should not be one of those issues.”
“The free world is coming together to confront Putin,” Biden said. “Our two parties here at home are leading the way. With that bipartisan cooperation, I’m looking forward to signing into law the bill revoking PNTR, which is, again, most people think it’s ‘most favored nation status.’”
Biden announced other efforts aimed at continuing to cripple the Russian economy Friday. He said the administration plans to act further to ban “signature sectors” of the country’s economy, naming the seafood, vodka and diamond sectors as examples. The administration is also adding new names to the list of oligarchs and family members previously targeted by sanctions, declaring that “they support [Russian President Vladimir] Putin” and “steal from the Russian people.”
“Putin is an aggressor,” Biden said. “He is the aggressor, and Putin must pay the price. He cannot pursue a war that threatens the very foundations … of international peace and stability, and then ask for financial help from the international community.”
Friday’s announcement comes on the heels of the administration’s decision to ban U.S. imports of Russian oil. The president made that announcement Tuesday, calling it “another powerful blow to Putin’s war machine.” European allies did not announce any such decision in coordination with the U.S., but the countries were consulted as Biden weighed making the move.
American institutions are taking anti-Russian sanctions into their own hands, further normalizing a financial social credit system that can ostracize users for holding unacceptable beliefs — a move purported to punish Russia but that actually evokes the authoritarian country’s own system of tracking its citizens’ political views.
Visa and Mastercard have suspended operations in Russia over the country’s invasion of Ukraine, blocking “cards issued by Russian banks from working in other countries and block[ing] people with cards issued elsewhere from purchasing goods and services from companies in Russia.” American Express has also dropped its Russian operations. Meanwhile, tech companies like Apple and Microsoft have ceased sales of their products in the country.
It could be tempting to cheer the move for targeting Russia’s authoritarian regime and condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked attacks on the people of Ukraine. But the actions by private companies against Russians are part of a larger swing by U.S. corporations to deny services to those whose opinions they deem unacceptable — and that’s exactly the kind of social credit system Russia is building to impose on its own people.
(12) You think this western (WEF/NATO) compliance and financial gateway system they are establishing for all of us would not be fully supported by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping?
Ha. Of course, they would. It mirrors their same system. And we are doing it to ourselves. 😲 pic.twitter.com/r1W9eFf8vs
Moscow will use “digital profiles” to track citizens’ “loyalty,” according to a Moscow Times 2020 report. “Moscow City Hall has since 2017 been collecting the gender, age, income level and relationship to other people signed up to its mos.ru website as part of the internet activity monitoring system,” the report notes. “The digital profiles will now include information about Muscovites’ violations, fines, debts and participation in various events, according to the cited documentation.”
Lest you think the system is limited to the capital city, Russian officials have said that 80 percent of Russians will have such a digital profile by 2025 through the government’s $53 billion Digital Economy Program.
And now, with Visa and Mastercard cutting ties, Russian banks are turning to China — a country with an even more invasive social credit system. The Chinese Communist Party tracks its people’s economic decisions and even things like being a good or bad driver to reward or punish behavior. Punishment might include anything from slower internet speeds to being barred from flying or staying in certain hotels. There have also been reports of people being denied higher education and having their pets confiscated.
If you think comparisons between Russia and China’s authoritarian credit systems and the increasing dragnet in the United States are outlandish, just think about how Mastercard and American Express blocked donations to Americans whose beliefs about the 2020 election were found unacceptable, while Visa’s political action committee used the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021 to “temporarily suspend[] all political donations.” Paypal, Venmo, and Shopify all went after people who were supposedly involved in the riot.
Just last month, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cracked down on truckers who were protesting Covid mandates, freezing hundreds of bank accounts purported to be associated with the peaceful protest. Crowdsourcing fundraising platform GoFundMe confiscated millions of dollars from protest organizers.
Previously, GoFundMe suspended a fundraising campaign for Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of all charges after he shot three men in self-defense. The platform also used the Jan. 6 riot to nix fundraisers for “travel to a political event where there’s risk of violence by the attendees,” and those that “spread misinformation about the election, promote conspiracy theories and contribute to or participate in attacks on U.S. democracy.”
Meanwhile, Big Tech companies use their powers of censorship to shut down users whose speech is deemed unacceptable, and to nuke alternative platforms from app stores. We shouldn’t cheer U.S. firms for appointing themselves the arbiters of who deserves to participate in our economy (and by extension, our society). If they can do it to Russia, they can do it to you.
But we also shouldn’t cheer such actions because they move us one step closer to blurring the line between ourselves and the authoritarian tyrants we purport to denounce. If we defeat Russia or China by making our differences unrecognizable, we’ve already lost.
Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.
President Joe Biden’s Press Secretary Jen Psaki tried to evade White House responsibility for soaring gas prices Monday, casting blame solely on overseas turmoil in Ukraine. Gas prices hit a national average of $4.06 a gallon, according to AAA, this week reaching a new high not seen since 2008 when prices reached their all-time peak at $4.11.
“The increase,” Psaki said, “is a direct result of the invasion of Ukraine,” adding “there was an anticipation” of rising prices.
PSAKI: “The increase [in gas prices]…is the direct result of the invasion of Ukraine"
In anticipation, however, the White House has only exacerbated a self-inflicted crisis by doubling down on the administration’s war on domestic energy production in the name of climate change and environmental justice. As the impending invasion of Ukraine foreshadowed turbulence in global energy markets, President Biden’s Department of Justice reinstated the administration’s suspension of new oil and gas leases on federal lands through a legal filing in Louisiana.
Despite Psaki’s blame on Russian aggression for the spike in energy costs, gas prices began to soar upon Biden’s first days in office after the president’s inaugural orders shut down the Keystone XL pipeline and unilaterally suspended new oil and gas leases on public land.
According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), American gas prices eclipsed an average of $3 per gallon by May as President Biden unleashed a cascade of taxes and regulation on the industry while moving to lock down lucrative reserves. In other words, gas prices have been rising since Biden took office, not since Russia launched its invasion of neighboring Ukraine.
Biden’s suspension of new drilling on federal lands, while temporarily overturned by a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana mid-summer, killed incentives in the capital- and labor-intensive industry for operations to keep up with demand, suppressing production. Producers require long-term planning and assurance their operations will remain in place before they pledge billions in new capital to drill in a particular area. That means new leases must always be on the horizon.
Cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline alone axed some 830,000 barrels of Canadian crude flowing to Gulf refineries while the U.S. simultaneously doubled imports of Russian oil. Last year, the U.S. welcomed an average of more than 600,000 barrels of Russian crude and related petroleum products daily, financing the Kremlin war machine. As the world’s third-largest oil producer providing more than 10 percent of global supply, Russia raked in $119 billion in resource revenues.
Biden is reluctant to sanction President Vladimir Putin’s energy sector, with the White House claiming the solution to rising prices is to pivot in favor of cleaner energy sources that are often unreliable and more expensive. Russian gas operations, meanwhile, produce 30 percent more methane than American operators. Iran, where the administration is hoping to lift sanctions and welcome its oil, hosts operations with 85 percent more intense methane emissions than their U.S. counterparts.
Biden could have brought down energy prices at any point in his presidency but instead has continued to escalate the administration’s animosity towards domestic production and the American worker. An enhanced regulatory regime combined with Wall Street pressure to restrict investment in the capital-intense industry has limited diplomatic options to counter Russian aggression by limiting domestic capacity to supplement supply shocks.
In Alaska for example, Democrats have sought to lock down decades worth of oil and gas reserves stored under a fraction of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) with reinstated environmental protections poised to become permanent.
Instead of unleashing American energy potential to reclaim the independence once briefly achieved under the Trump administration, Biden officials are now pleading with authoritarian adversaries in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia to ramp up production abroad.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
The German delegation appeared to laugh at former President Donald Trump during a 2018 United Nations (U.N.) speech in which the president warned about relying on Russian oil. While speaking at the 73rd U.N. General Assembly, Trump criticized Germany for relying on Russian oil exports.
“Reliance on a single foreign supplier can leave a nation vulnerable to extortion and intimidation. That is why we congratulate European states, such as Poland, for leading the construction of a Baltic pipeline so that nations are not dependent on Russia to meet their energy needs,” Trump said. “Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course.”
Trump made similar comments warning about Germany’s energy dependence during a 2018 meeting with German and NATO leaders.
“It’s very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia,” Trump said. “Where, you’re supposed to be guarding against Russia and Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia. So, we’re supposed to protect you against Russia, but they’re paying billions of dollars to Russia, and I think that’s very inappropriate.”
“Germany is totally controlled by Russia because they will be getting 60-70% of their energy from Russia and a new pipeline, and you tell me if that’s appropriate, and I think it’s not,” he said while addressing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
Trump approved sanctions to deter the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would allow Russia to bypass Ukraine to get gas to Europe and served as a major geopolitical win for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Upon taking office, President Joe Bidenrevoked the sanctions, only recently putting them back in place following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has released a list of four demands it’s calling preconditions for ending its invasion of Ukraine. A Kremlin spokesman identified the terms on Monday, according to Reuters.
First, Dmitry Peskov said, Ukraine must halt all military action.
Russian propaganda has consistently invoked the “demilitarization” of Ukraine as an objective of the invasion, demanding that one of the largest countries in Europe remain defenseless.
Second, Russia wants Ukraine to recognize Crimea as Russian territory.
Russia forcibly annexed Crimea in 2014, seizing the region of southern Ukraine in response to growing pro-NATO and European Union sentiment in the former Soviet republic.
Third, Ukraine must recognize two regions of its territory as independent countries, following Russia’s recognition of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic last month.
Pro-Russian secessionist groups control population centers within the two regions of Eastern Ukraine, where conflict has occurred since 2014. Such a move could lead to Russian annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk.
After Russian troops poured into Crimea in 2014, the region was briefly declared an “independent country” before its inhabitants supposedly voted to join Russia while facing the gun barrel of a Russian military occupation.
“We have also spoken about how they should recognize that Crimea is Russian territory and that they need to recognize that Donetsk and Lugansk are independent states,” Peskov told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Finally, Russia wants Ukraine to amend its constitution to bar the country from pursuing NATO membership.
“They should make amendments to the constitution according to which Ukraine would reject any aims to enter any bloc,” Peskov said, according to Reuters.
“And that’s it. It will stop in a moment,” he said.
Peskov said Ukraine was aware of the conditions. The list of demands was outlined as Russian and Ukrainian diplomats begin a new round of talks at the border of Belarus and Poland. Some Ukrainian leaders, such as former President Petro Poroshenko, have expressed doubt that negotiations will lead anywhere.
The terms, which undermine the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, are extremely unlikely to lead to a diplomatic agreement to end the conflict.
Many people, organizations and countries have made their disapproval of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine very clear since it began last week.
Companies have stopped working with Russia. The royal family, generally quiet on political matters, has publiclycondemned the invasion. Even Switzerland has moved to sanction Russia.
Plenty of celebrities have used their social media platforms to decry Russia’s actions. Tim Allen has joined their ranks, stating in no uncertain terms how he feels about the situation.
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“My mind and body are full of anger and disgust at the coward putin ghouls that have attacked a sovereign country,” he tweeted on Thursday.
“This is the definition of wrong. My head, heart and soul pray for the people of Ukraine.
My mind and body are full of anger and disgust at the coward putin ghouls that have attacked a sovereign country. This is the definition of wrong. My head, heart and soul pray for the people of Ukraine. F-putin
Allen also shared his sentiments last week as news of war began circulating, asking for prayer for the Ukrainians under attack.
“‘Appeasement’ is the policy of feeding your friends to a crocodile, one at a time, in hopes that the crocodile will eat you last. – Franklin D. Roosevelt,” he tweeted on Feb. 24.
“Pray if you will for all those attacked today by the Russians.”
"Appeasement" is the policy of feeding your friends to a crocodile, one at a time, in hopes that the crocodile will eat you last. – Franklin D. Roosevelt Pray if you will for all those attacked today by the Russians.
While many in the replies pointed out that the quote was misattributed to FDR and actually comes from Winston Churchill, Allen’s point remains.
Other celebrities have posted in solidarity with Ukraine and pointed followers to charities that will help where the need is greatest.
Actress Mila Kunis, who is Ukrainian, and her husband Ashton Kutcher have started a GoFundMe for Ukrainian refugees, pledging to personally match up to $3 million.
In partnership with @gofundmedotorg, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher have just launched a fundraiser to support @Flexport & @airbnb—two organizations providing immediate relief to Ukrainians in need. They are also matching the first $3M raised.
The celebrity couple hopes to raise $30 million to help those fleeing the country through Airbnb, which is offering free temporary housing to refugees, and Flexport, which is “organizing shipments of relief supplies to refugee sites in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Moldova,” according to the GoFundMe page.
“While we are witnessing the bravery of Ukrainians, we are also bearing witness to the unimaginable burden of those who have chosen safety,” the page reads.
“Countless amounts of people have left everything they know and love behind to seek refuge. With nothing but what they could carry, these Ukrainian refugees are in need of housing and supplies right away.”
Amanda holds an MA in Rhetoric and TESOL from Cal Poly Pomona. After teaching composition and logic for several years, she’s strayed into writing full-time and especially enjoys animal-related topics.
The U.S. arm of a Russian state-owned media outlet shut down on Thursday after being expelled from several platforms over the Russian invasion into Ukraine. CNN first reported that Russia Today was ceasing operations and firing most of its staff in the United States. The memo obtained by CNN from the general manager of T&R Productions blamed the shutdown on “unforeseen business interruption events.”
“Unfortunately, we anticipate this layoff will be permanent, meaning that this will result in the permanent separation from employment of most T&R employees at all locations,” wrote Misha Solodovnikov.
The media network had been an outlet for pro-Russian propaganda but was removed from DirecTV this week and then later from Roku streaming services. On Tuesday, Google said that they had blocked mobile apps connected to Sputnik and RT from their app store and from their search tool. Apple made similar moves on its app store.
RT Deputy Editor-in-Chief Anna Belkina issued a statement angrily decrying the bans.
“This collective ‘establishment’ seems to be terrified of a mere presence of any outside voice for the fear of losing their historically captive audience, if that audience encounters a different perspective,” she said.
CNN also detailed a personal meeting between Solodovnikov and the hosts, correspondents, and producers of RT American in the Washington, D.C., bureau on Thursday based on a source who attended it. Solodovnikov told the employees that their jobs were being terminated with two months severance pay. One RT host spoke to CNN under the condition of anonymity about the somber meeting.
“I have never felt more heartbroken as they have nothing to do with this conflict and seriously were just trying to make a decent living to provide for their families,” the host said.
Another source told CNN that people were shocked, and many cried after the announcement.
Here’s more about the effort against Russia Today:
Google blocks RT, Sputnik from Play app store www.youtube.com
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
A bounty has been put out for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Alex Konanykhin, a Russian businessman, has offered a $1 million bounty to Russian officers to arrest Putin as a war criminal, Business Insider reported.
“I promise to pay $1,000,000 to the officer(s) who, complying with their constitutional duty, arrest(s) Putin as a war criminal under Russian and international laws. Putin is not the Russian president as he came to power as the result of a special operation of blowing up apartment buildings in Russia, then violated the Constitution by eliminating free elections and murdering his opponents,” Konanykhin wrote in a Facebook post.
The explosion to which Konanykhin referred is part of a theory that the Russian Federal Security Service, of which Putin was head from 1998 to 1999, blew up apartments in 1999, then blamed it on Chechens. That explosion, was part of what sparked the Second Chechen War, an effort that made Putin very popular in Russia. In 1999, Putin became the Russian prime minister, before being named acting president on Dec. 31 of that year. He was elected to the presidency in March 2000, the Independent reported. With obvious animosity, Konanykhin also noted that he felt it was his duty to oppose Putin’s war and keep assisting Ukraine against the Russian president.
“As an ethnic Russian and a Russia citizen, I see it as my moral duty to facilitate the denazification of Russia. I will continue my assistance to Ukraine in its heroic efforts to withstand the onslaught of Putin’s Orda,” he added in his post.
Konanykhin’s original Facebook post included a photo of Putin, with the caption, “Wanted: Dead or alive. Vladimir Putin for mass murder,” the Independent reported.
Facebook then banned his post.
But Konanykhin then re-posted with just the text informing about his bounty offer.
“Facebook banned my post; do you think it was a correct decision? I omit the picture as it was a ‘dead or alive’ poster, but this is the text,” he wrote.
Konanykhin is one of the many Russian businessmen who rose to wealth and prominence after the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to Newsweek. Konanykhin said he has not visited Russia since 1992, Business Insider reported.
The Russian businessman has a complicated history with the Russian government. In 1996 he was in the U.S. but was arrested after Russian authorities claimed he has embezzled $8 million from the Russian Exchange Bank, the Independent reported. However, the U.S. gave him political asylum after several FBI agents testified that the Russian mafia had put a contract on Konanykhin. Several years later, his asylum was revoked, but he was not deported. A U.S. district judge cancelled his deportation, saying that returning Konanykhin to Moscow “stinks.”
After placing a bounty on Putin, Konanykhin was asked if he feared that Putin would come after him for putting a bounty on his head.
“Putin is known to murder his opponents,” he said, Business Insider reported. “He has millions of them now.”
Abby Liebing is a Hillsdale College graduate with a degree in history. She has written for various outlets and enjoys covering foreign policy issues and culture.
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld said the U.S. government is “playing both sides” as they purchase Russian oil during a Wednesday appearance on “The Five.”
“Who is buying Russian oil right now?” Gutfeld began. “And how much is Russian oil? Is the price bottoming out, who’s keeping them afloat? If it’s us, if it’s our government, that sucks. Because we’re sitting here acting like we’re the white knights and what are we doing? We’re playing both sides.”
“We were there in Ukraine, too, so let’s not pretend like our hands are clean on this,” he continued.
Gufeld said it is similar to the U.S. government’s knowledge of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Technology. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) admitted to funding the procedure in October, despite repeated denial from White House senior medical advisor Anthony Fauci.
President Joe Biden’s administration implemented their first round of sanctions on a small portion of the Russian oil and gas sector Wednesday to restrict U.S. oil refining technology exports to Russia. The White House confirmed the restrictions will not immediately have an impact on Russian energy but will “overtime.”
Sanctioning Russian energy has gained bipartisan support from lawmakers, political commentators and elites. Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin criticized the U.S. for continuing to allow imports of crude oil and petroleum from Russia, while Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called for Biden and European allies to “hit” Russian President Vladimir Putin “where it counts” by harming Russia’s energy sector.
The administration invoked the Keystone XL Pipeline, which intended to carry 8,000 barrels of oil from Canada to Texas, then paused oil and gas companies from drilling on federal lands and receiving federal leases.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would support a ban on Russian oil imports, aligning herself with bipartisan lawmakers pushing for energy independence.
“I’m all for that,” Pelosi told reporters during a briefing Thursday. “Ban it.”
Several bicameral Republicans and centrist Democrats have advocated for the Biden administration to impose a sweeping ban on Russian oil and petroleum imports in the wake of the Ukraine crisis. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops to invade Ukraine on Feb. 21, leading to widespread condemnation from global leaders. Lawmakers have argued that U.S. dependence on Russian oil and petroleum products places the country at a strategic disadvantage. The U.S. imported more than 670,000 barrels of oil per day from Russia in 2021, U.S. Energy Information Administration data showed. (RELATED: Oil Hits 11-Year High As Big Oil Dumps Russia, White House Mulls Energy Sanctions)
“I am calling on the Administration and industry partners to take action immediately, up to and including banning crude oil imports from Russia,” Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement on Monday.
WATCH:
“I'm all for that. Ban it," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says about a proposed ban on oil coming from Russia amid Putin's invasion of Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/FCaDZCzj91
Republican Rep. Tom Cole and Republican Sens. Jerry Moran and Roger Marshall asked President Joe Biden to halt Russian oil imports in a letter on Tuesday. Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton has also joined in on calls for a ban.
While, the White House has announced a series of economic sanctions on Russia’s economy and its powerful oligarchs close to Putin, it has stopped short of imposing restrictions on its fossil fuel industry. The administration has argued that such sanctions would harm American and European consumers more than the Russian economy.
“The United States and our Allies and partners do not have a strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy – which is why we have carved out energy payments from our financial sanctions,” a White House fact sheet published Wednesday stated.
Russia’s federal government relies upon its oil and gas industry to fund a whopping 40% of its annual budget.
Oil prices have skyrocketed to their highest level in a decade in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the threat of indirect impacts of sanctions have roiled markets. Big Oil corporations have also pulled out of lucrative drilling and exploration ventures throughout Russia.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
I was watching the news this morning. FOX was reviewing last nights propaganda speech. The subject of the oil situation came up, especially about the so-called “oil reserve” Biden was releasing. It amounts to a three-day supply of oil in America.
Several thoughts came up regarding the situation between Putin and Biden. With all that the socialist put Trump through, (“Russia, Russia, Russia”) this geriatric dementia 80 something, is more in the pocket of Putin than the socialist accused Trump of being.
There is a meme going around of someone saying, “Instead of this Build Back Better businesses, how about just putting it all back the way you found it.” Indeed. We were oil independent, selling to other nations, and Putin was sitting on drilled oil. Our economy was robust, and we all could afford to drive our cars (there is a gas station a half block from us with prices of almost $6 a gallon). Do they really think we’re that stupid?
Everything these socialist’ have done is all designed around “control, control, control”. We all know now that this pandemic was more fear mongering than actual danger. Numbers inflated, bad advice, everything about it manipulated to grow fear in order for them to control almost every aspect of our lives.
After shutting down the Keystone Pipeline, and making us dependent on Russia for our oil (“Russia, Russia, Russia”), they shut down a robust economy buy shutting us up in our homes. Might as well have been house arrest. Supply lines cut off, making everything more expensive, and growing the fear that we might never have enough toilet paper.
Lie, after lie, after lie about face masks, numbers of deaths, and feeding more fear. Instead of a few weeks, or months, these manipulated lies have last two years. And miraculously, the China virus stopped it’s attack on the day of Biden State of the Union AS WE WANT YOU TO BELIEVE IT IS, BUT IN REALITY, WE HAVE DESTROYED IT FOR PUTIN AND XI.
Last night Biden threw up a speech someone else wrote, saying all the things he was expected to say, and meaning none of it, while stretching his dominion further. His greatest lies were those about Russia and Ukraine. We already have evidence of his manipulation of Ukraine leadership with his boast. Summed up, more Russian control of our economy by our dependence on Putin’s oil.
Now gasoline is over $5 a gallon, and climbing. Supply chains are growing, restaurants are so expensive, it’s prohibitive to eat out anymore. $9 for a Big Mac meal????? Heating our homes are down to multiple blankets, and electrical cost are criminal. And I think I have the reason all this has been engineered.
They locked us down to see if they could pull it off. Success. Once you give Socialist/Leftist power, THEY WILL NEVER GIVE IT BACK. So, make everything so expensive that Americans cannot afford to go out. Make gasoline so expensive that AMERICANS HAVE TO STAY HOME (LOCKDOWN). Add to that the Socialist/Leftist puts forth this geriatric dementia 80 something as a mock President, and you have a tyrannical government that is only interested in filling their own pockets, and those of the oligarchs that control them.
Angry enough America? Violence is not the answer, because that’s what they expect. Prayer? YES! Speak up, YES! Call them on their lies and manipulation? YES! Get out the vote and hold them accountable for their cheating? YES! Let’s start where we live and spread out nationally. I refuse to be controlled one more second. How about you?
New financial penalties levied on Russia for its continued aggression in Ukraine appeared to hit the country’s economy hard on Monday as Russia’s currency cratered to a record low value and its stock market froze. The Russian ruble’s value plummeted to less than one U.S. cent on Monday, Time reported, dropping more than 25% to 105.27 per U.S. dollar, down from approximately 84 per dollar late Friday.
After initially declining to do so, the U.S., Japan, and several European nations on Saturday agreed to enact more severe sanctions on Russia as its forces continued an assault on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, in an attempt to overthrow the government. The group of nations went after central bank reserves that underpin Russia’s economy and removed several key Russian banks from SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a vital international banking system.
Time noted the ruble’s calamitous decline would likely send inflation soaring, a development that would hurt all Russians and not just the elites who were targeted in earlier sanctions.
Critics had called for the forceful move to be enacted immediately upon Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but Western leaders initially balked. Even now, Time noted that the disconnection from SWIFT is “partial,” leaving room for the U.S. and Europe to escalate penalties.”
Yet the effects are reportedly being felt already, as Russian residents rushed to ATMs to withdraw cash amid the ruble’s free fall. In addition to the currency plunge, the Russian stock market also took a major hit on Monday. According to the New York Times, officials closed the Moscow stock exchange for the day, citing the “developing situation.”
“The economic reality has, of course, changed,” the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, reportedly told members of the press while announcing that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an emergency meeting with top finance officials.
Western restrictions effectively have placed a chokehold on the Kremlin’s ability to access its war chest of financial reserves and sent to the country careening towards an economic crisis. At the very least, the world intends to financially isolate Russia in a way not experienced since the Cold War.
“Putin embarked on a path aiming to destroy Ukraine, but what he is also doing, in fact, is destroying the future of his own country,” European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Saturday.
Yet even as Russia’s economy faced significant distress and delegations from Russia and Ukraine met in Belarus for peace talks, the Russian offensive showed no signs of letting up. Ukrainian officials claimed Monday that an air raid on residential areas in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, left dozens of people dead, including several civilians.
“Kharkiv has just been massively fired upon by grads [rockets]. Dozens of dead and hundreds of wounded,” the interior ministry said on Facebook, according to BBC News.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Belarus is preparing to deploy troops into Ukraine in support of the country’s Russian allies. A Biden administration official said that Belarusian leadership could order the deployment of forces into Ukraine as early as Monday, the Washington Post reported. The official said, “It’s very clear Minsk is now an extension of the Kremlin.”
The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and has allowed Russian troops to conduct military drills and store supplies within his country.
On Saturday, Ukrainian and Russian leadership agreed to hold peace talks along the Ukrainian-Belarusian border. Lukashenko’s planned invasion of Ukraine will, naturally, complicate these planned talks.
Breaking this morning: Ukraine has agreed to peace talks with Russia, per President Zelenskyy's office.
They will be held at the Belarusian border near the Pripyat River. The talks could come as soon as today. pic.twitter.com/qmZvlTcRx7
The Belarusian opposition leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, recently called for sanctions against Lukashenko and the Belarusian regime. Newsweek reported that Tsikhanouskaya referred to them as “accomplices of Russia’s brutal assault on Ukraine.” A Ukrainian government official told CNN that the Ukrainian government had intelligence indicating that Belarus is ready “to maybe participate directly” in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
The official said that the Belarusian government is allowing Russia to use Belarus to enter Ukraine, “in addition to allowing Russians to use their territory as well as letting them cross the border.” However, as of now, according to a senior U.S. defense official, the American government has not seen Belarusian troops “being readied to move into Ukraine” or “that they are moving or are in Ukraine.”
Anticipating Belarus’ participation in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration suspended all operations in the American embassy in Belarus. The State Department also encouraged non-emergency employees and family members of American diplomats to vacate the U.S. embassy in Russia.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “The U.S. Department of State has suspended operations at our Embassy in Minsk, Belarus and authorized the voluntary departure (‘authorized departure’) of non-emergency employees and family members at our Embassy in Moscow, Russia. We took these steps due to security and safety issues stemming from the unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces in Ukraine.”
Over the weekend, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine intensified as Russian officials threatened to drop the International Space Station on the United States and its allies and Putin ordered the Russian military to put its nuclear deterrence forces on high alert.
Putin blamed rhetoric and posturing from NATO allies and thoroughgoing economic sanctions against Russia for why he put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert.
Switzerland announced Monday it will be freezing Russian assets due to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, breaking a longstanding tradition of neutrality in foreign conflicts.
Swiss President Ignazio Cassis said Putin’s assets, along with those of Russia’s prime minister, foreign minister and 367 more individuals sanctioned by the European Union, would be frozen immediately, according to The New York Times. Cassis met with the Swiss Federal Council and determined that action was necessary due to the “unprecedented” aggression displayed by Russia in invading a sovereign European state.
JUST IN: Switzerland announces it will sanction Russia over the war in Ukraine, breaking its traditional neutral status.https://t.co/1SfYcwbLpL
Switzerland further joined the rest of the E.U. in shutting down its airspace to Russian aircraft, but said it will decide whether to join further European sanctions on a case-by-case basis.
The flight ban will prevent Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov from making a planned speech Tuesday to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. As of 2020, Russian companies and citizens owned more than $11 billion in assets in Swiss banks, according to the NYT.
Switzerland has historically maintained a neutral stance in global conflicts, in part due to its role as a global financial hub. Cassis said he was concerned that following along with all European sanctions could threaten the country’s reputation, but that some action was necessary.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
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