Category: China

Why is Trump being so hard on his former pal Putin?

Posted on by kos

Donald Trump is a Russian asset, whether willing or unwilling. His obsequiousness toward Russian strongman Vladimir Putin during his first term wasn’t just embarrassing—it became a grave national security threat. 

Trump literally sided with Putin over his own intelligence agencies. And why wouldn’t he? Russia was a major factor in his 2016 election victory. 

Meanwhile, Trump’s first impeachment was literally centered on his effort to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, drumming up a fake Hunter Biden investigation in exchange for anti-tank weapons to try to stave off a looming Russian invasion. 

Last year, Trump repeatedly promised to end Russia’s war in Ukraine within “24 hours” of taking office, which many took to mean pulling U.S. support for Ukraine and freezing the conflict in its current state—something Russia desperately needs. 

Yet a funny thing has happened. Trump slobbered over Putin, believing that he and Russia are strong and mighty, serving as an example for his own imperialist and undemocratic designs. But Russia is not strong and mighty. In fact, Russia has run out of tools to prop up its failing economy. And out-of-control inflation, sky-high interest rates, and lower global energy prices have put Putin in a precarious position. 

Somehow, Trump noticed this, and his disdain couldn’t be clearer. We just might have somehow lucked into a pro-Ukraine Trump presidency.

Trump shared his thoughts about Russia’s war in Ukraine on Truth Social Wednesday morning.

I’m not looking to hurt Russia. I love the Russian people, and always had a very good relationship with President Putin - and this despite the Radical Left’s Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX. We must never forget that Russia helped us win the Second World War, losing almost 60,000,000 lives in the process. All of that being said, I’m going to do Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR. Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don’t make a “deal,” and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries. Let’s get this war, which never would have started if I were President, over with! We can do it the easy way, or the hard way - and the easy way is always better. It’s time to “MAKE A DEAL.” NO MORE LIVES SHOULD BE LOST!!!

How does Trump always manage to get so much wrong? 

Russia didn’t lose 60 million lives in World War II; it lost 27 million. And, really, seven million of those were Ukrainian, as that total is for the Soviet Union, not Russia. That’s a lot, so why the need to exaggerate it? Probably because the total number of people killed in World War II is around 60 million, and Trump is just too stupid to know the difference—or to fact check. 

Furthermore, tariffs don’t mean shit to Russia, since the U.S. doesn’t really trade with them. In 2022, the United States imported just $15 billion in Russian goods and services. Thanks to deep sanctions, what little we exported, like intellectual property (movies and such), was either appropriated by Moscow or just stolen. 

But sanctions are something that could be hiked up, which would be a welcome response from the Trump administration. 

If Trump really wants the war to end (and to take credit and have statues raised all over Ukraine in his honor), then he needs to do what former President Joe Biden was loath to do: open up the arms spigot and remove all restrictions on their usage. 

More specifically, he needs to flood Ukraine with aircrafts—Ukraine now flies F-16s—and long-range missiles. 

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump

Russia has endless manpower to incrementally take ground in Ukraine. In October 2024, U.S. intelligence agencies estimated Russian casualties for the entire war at more than 600,000, including those killed and wounded. And that pace has increased year over year as Russia runs out of armor but continues to send soldiers on foot, motorcycle, and even civilian vehicles. 

Yet manpower continues to be sourced from Russia’s poorest, more remote regions, insulating the oligarch elites in Moscow and St. Petersburg from direct consequences. 

That economic instability, on the other hand, hits those oligarchs in the only place it matters, and a continued 10% inflation rate is taking a bite out of everyone’s earning power. 

How long can the czar remain in power if his people are starving? 

Meanwhile, the country’s banking system is on the verge of collapse as Moscow forces them to lend to the military industrial complex—at levels that far exceed their ability to cover the risk. With their inability to access foreign reserves due to sanctions, they are isolated and exposed. Wary of being caught up with retaliatory sanctions from the United States and the European Union, China is steering clear.

While Russia still has significant financial reserves to cover its massive defense-related budget deficits, they are on pace to be depleted by 2030, according to an analysis by Janes—and that’s assuming energy prices don’t crater. 

Saudi Arabia has been threatening to open the spigot, and if Trump’s policy to encourage additional domestic drilling pans out, global prices might further tumble to Russia’s great peril. And additional Western sanctions on oil and on countries that help Russia circumvent sanctions (cough, cough, looking at you, India) will further tighten the noose. 

Long-range missiles would help accelerate Russia’s economic woes. Ukraine’s biggest war gains the past year came from systematically targeting Russian economic engines like refineries and factories. On the ground, Ukraine needs to merely hold the line, extracting a steep price on Russian advances. But if they want to win the war, it will be with long-range missiles. 

Unfortunately, Trump didn’t threaten that, but once Putin ignores Trump’s demands for “A DEAL,” it would be a logical next step to ratchet up the pressure. Someone might even whisper  in his ear—with their fingers crossed behind their back—that if he helps end the war, a Nobel Peace Prize is on the table. 

Trump’s 180-degree turn on Putin clearly stems from Russia’s weakness not only in Ukraine, but also in Syria following the country’s humiliating defeat. 

One Russian Telegram channel claimed that secret negotiations between Russia and Trump representatives in December failed when the Americans made demands that Putin was unwilling to meet. 

All media, public authorities and controlled leaks of [Russian] economic data not only abroad, but also inside the country, the main goal was to convince first the ruling group of Biden, and in the last few months of Trump, about the normal state of the Russian economy, its moderate growth, the absence of critical problems, and the ability of the Russian Federation to continue the confrontation as long as necessary.

For example, our group had all the real indicators of the Russian Federation – a growing decline in GDP by 1-4%, inflation growth of up to 25% over the last year, etc. The main figures for the public space were carefully adjusted, the emerging holes were quietly filled with reserves from the National Wealth Fund. While there was a high probability of reaching an agreement with the US by demonstrating ‘muscles’, it was much more profitable and cheaper to demonstrate them with hidden doping.

There was a categorical ban not only on discussing serious restrictions and deprivations for the population, but also on actually working out such measures – because of possible leaks and confirmation of the ‘weakness’ of the Russian economy for US analysts.

The main scenario assumed that the newly elected U.S. president, who had his hands ‘untied’ at the beginning of his term, would be convinced of Russia's ability to continue the conflict throughout his presidency would want to resolve the crisis quickly, and that this would be the best time for agreements.

There were tense secret negotiations between Russia and Trump's representatives through almost all of December, but the conditions put forward by the Americans were completely unacceptable for the pro-Chinese elite group in Russia, which at this stage has the greatest weight [...]

​​China will not allow an agreement with the US (probably, China leaked the real data of the Russian economy to the US, hence such tough conditions from their side), it will not only receive resources below the cost price and supply its products with 200-300% markup but it will also solve its geopolitical task – talking about friendship and partnership of the Russian Federation, Russia's forehead will hit the US and the EU, bargaining for agreements for itself and preventing its open conflict with the US.

That is quite the conspiracy theory.

The United States doesn’t need China to know the state of the Russian economy. Heck, I’ve linked to a bunch of Western media sources and analysts who have had their finger on Russia’s true economic situation throughout the entire war. 

But the underlying point is quite interesting. Not only is it against China’s interests for the war to end, but Russia is also reliant on it for just about everything right now. Plus, China loves to see EU and U.S. dollars and assets spent on Putin’s theater rather than on Taiwan. 

The end result is a weak Russia and a pathetic Putin, groveling before North Korea for weapons and manpower. And if there’s one thing Trump abhors, it’s weakness. 

By aligning himself against China, Republicans’ favorite geopolitical boogeyman du jour, Trump is further susceptible to influence from pro-Ukraine voices inside the GOP and his administration. 

If he wants to end the war, Trump needs to give Ukraine the means and permission to further target Russia’s failing economic engine. Long-range missiles are the way to do it.

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Watch yet another House GOP hearing go totally off the rails

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

A House Oversight Committee hearing into China’s “political warfare” against the United States went off the rails Wednesday when Republican Rep. James Comer interrupted Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin to push attacks on President Joe Biden and his family.

Raskin was using his allotted time to point out that the “smoking gun” whistleblower who Comer and Rep. Jim Jordan were hanging their entire impeachment case on was in fact a Russian mole.  

“That's just simply not true,” Comer interrupted. “But go ahead.”

It is true and the two did go ahead, in an argument that escalated and went on for more than five minutes. 

Of course, Raskin had the benefit of facts and reality on his side. When Comer, who chairs the Oversight Committee, tried to repeat a thoroughly discredited claim that Biden received money from Chinese interests, Raskin reminded him that it was then-President Donald Trump who actually received millions of dollars from China.

Raskin then called Comer’s bluff and asked him to put up or shut up on impeaching Biden, something fellow Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz has previously attempted. That led to this exchange:

Raskin: Where is your impeachment investigation? If Joe Biden took a $9 million bribe from China, why aren't you impeaching him for that?

Comer: Well, who says we're not?

Raskin: I can invite Mr. Moskowitz to come back in. Do you want to move for impeachment today? Because I thought that that was your main agenda item. You said it was the paramount priority of the committee?

Comer: No, this is a hearing on China. And you all have an obsession with Russia and Trump. It's disturbing.

Raskin: We can talk about China and Trump, or Russia and Trump --

Comer: --You need therapy, Mr. Raskin.

Raskin: No, no, you need therapy. You're the one who's involved with the deranged politician, not me. Okay? I've divorced myself from Donald Trump a long time ago. You're the one who needs to disentangle from that situation. 

And I will tell you this: If you believe that it would have been illegal for Joe Biden to take $5 million from Ukraine, it certainly would have been. What do you think about Donald Trump taking more than $5 million from the Chinese government while he was president?

At one point, when Comer claimed that the ongoing GOP investigations into the Biden family didn’t cost many millions of taxpayer dollars, Raskin snarked, "Oh, it's been for free? Okay. All right. Well, you know what, then? We get what we paid for it because you got nothing. You got nothing on Joe Biden."

When Comer tried to continue on with a new speaker and dismiss “Mr. Raskins,” Raskin vociferously demanded his time back—but not before putting Comer’s disrespect on notice:

Let me start with this. My last name is Raskin. Okay? We've sat next to each other for more than a year. You don't have to add the S. Number two, I would like my time restored. Number three, you have not identified a single crime. What is the crime that you want to impeach Joe Biden for and keep this nonsense going? Why? Well, what is the crime? Tell America right now.

You can watch the full exchange in the video below.

YouTube Video

Zachary Mueller is the senior research director for America’s Voice and America’s Voice Education Fund. He brings his expertise on immigration politics to talk about how much money the GOP is using to promote its racist immigration campaigns.

Embedded Content

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Another Republican admits there is zero evidence of corruption on the part of President Joe Biden

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo continues to tilt at Biden corruption windmills. On Tuesday, she had Republican Lisa McClain of Michigan on her show to dish the dirt on the Biden crime family! McClain is all-in on trying to prove President Joe Biden is corrupt—or at least create the appearance that he is corrupt. The big problem the right-wing-o-sphere continues to have is that not only do they lack a smoking-gun piece of evidence, they lack smoke entirely.

Bartiromo did what she does best: Create some misinformation before being informed there was no evidence to back those claims up, and then asking a direct question about evidence. In this case, that question was: “Have you been able to identify any actual policy changes that Joe Biden made as a result of getting money from China?”

McClain’s response? “The short answer is no.”

YouTube Video

Spoiler alert: The long answer is also no. Bartiromo, a proven misinformation machine, has so little to go on these days it seems that the entirety of the project is to have some conservative “investigator” on, spout conspiracy theories, and then be told there is no evidence to support any of those theories.

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The Ukraine War is core to our American domestic politics

Posted on by kos

I attempted to run this story last Thursday, but a nasty site bug ate most of it, so readers only saw the first couple of paragraphs. Normally, I go into comments to check reaction and note any corrections, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do so that day. So ultimately, the comments were full of confused “this is the shortest Ukraine Update ever!” Sorry about that. Unfortunately, Ukraine is still a big factor in our domestic politics and the original story is still timely, so we’re running it in full. 

It might not be obvious, but the war in Ukraine has always been an issue of utmost domestic importance to the United States.

Ukraine was at the center of Donald Trump’s first impeachment, and featured heavily in internal Republican machinations. Remember, the one change that the Trump camp made to the 2016 Republican Party platform was watering down support for Ukraine.

And then there are the strategic considerations. Russia is a big part of the reason that the United States’ defense budget is north of $800 billion … and fast approaching $900 billion. Not only does Russia’s battlefield defeat have budgetary implications, but it will inform whether we have to fight a hot war against either China or North Korea that would cost trillions of dollars, claim untold lives, and  destroy the world economy.

This is all quite clear to Democrats and old-guard Republicans. But Trump’s MAGA cult has lined up behind their authoritarian pro-Putin leader, rupturing the Republican Party and leading to a seemingly inevitable government shutdown at midnight on Sept. 30. [Edit: the shutdown was averted, but only after all Ukraine aid was stripped from the legislation.]

In my list of Republican presidential debate winners and losers Wednesday night, I listed Ukraine as one of the few winners. It started with the running of this excellent ad from Republicans for Ukraine:

It got even better when the moderators adopted the ad’s narrative when asking the assembled candidates about Ukraine.

“So, Governor DeSantis, let me go to you. Experts say President Putin has ordered assassinations across Europe, cheated on arms control treaties with the U.S., and seeks to work with China to force our decline,” former White House press secretary and debate moderator Dana Perino asked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “President Reagan believed that if you want to prevent a war, you better be prepared to fight one. Today the Republican Party is at odds over aid to Ukraine. The price tag so far is $76 billion. But is it in our best interest to degrade Russia’s military for less than 5 percent of what we pay annually on defense, especially when there are no U.S. soldiers in the fight?”

DeSantis, hack that he is, had nothing. “It is in our interest to end this war, and that’s what I will do as president,” he answered impotently, spewing empty words. “We are not going to have a blank check.” He then awkwardly pivoted to border border border. But it did open up the field to more forceful defenses.

“[O]ur national vital interest is in degrading the Russian military,” said South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott. “By degrading the Russian military, we actually keep our homeland safer, we keep our troops at home.” Former United Nations Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley added, “A win for Russia is a win for China.”

After tech bro Vivek Ramaswamy claimed that supporting Ukraine was “driving Russia further into China’s arms,” former Vice President Mike Pence made the obvious point that, “Vivek, if you let Putin have Ukraine, that’s a green light to China to take Taiwan. Peace comes through strength.” Remember, China and Russia declared they had a “friendship with no limits” right before Russia invaded. It would take an ignoramus conspiracy theorist like Ramaswamy, who has admitted to not knowing anything about foreign policy until six months ago, to think that supporting Ukraine would bring those two countries further together. They’ve been using the BRICS framework to try and balance out U.S. and Western power for years—since 2001, actually. China and Russia are already allies.

After that exchange, moderator and Fox Business host Stuart Varney teed up a softball for the rest of the pro-Ukraine candidates, asking, “[Former New Jersey Gov. Chris] Christie, President Biden’s first two years have brought China, Russia, and Iran closer together. Are we focused too much on Ukraine, and not enough on this threat from the new world order?” Christie smashed it out of the ballpark: “No, they’re all connected, Stuart. They’re all connected. The Chinese are paying for the Russian war in Ukraine. The Iranians are supplying more sophisticated weapons, and so are the North Koreans now as well, with the encouragement of the Chinese. The naivete on this stage from some of these folks is extraordinary.”

He wasn’t done. “And the fact of the matter is, we need to say right now that the Chinese-Russian alliance is something we have to fight against. And we are not going to solve it by going over and cuddling up to Vladimir Putin,” Christie added. “Look, Donald Trump said Vladimir Putin was brilliant and a great leader. This is the person who is murdering people in his own country. And now, not having enough blood, he’s now going to Ukraine to murder innocent civilians and kidnap 20,000 children.”

This isn’t hard. Ramaswamy is clearly trying to ingratiate himself with the MAGA seditionist crowd, so perhaps his willful ignorance makes sense. But DeSantis? This is one of the most momentous issues facing the world community today, and rather than deliver a forceful defense of the international rule of law and America’s clear interest in defeating Russia, he pulled a Trumpian “I’ll immediately bring peace” and tried to pivot to something else. His weakness permeates everything he does and says, and he can’t mask it with hateful attacks against trans and gay people. He is a small and scared man, and people see through him. That’s why he’s gone nowhere but down in the polls.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been on an on-again, off-again merry-go-round on whether to include new Ukraine aid in the defense budget, and it is currently out. The House Freedom Caucus’ MAGA-aligned nihilists wanted it stripped out, but there’s no indication that they’ll vote for the clean spending bill anyway, so no one knows how things will proceed without cutting a deal with Democrats.

One person losing patience is Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who must really regret not impeaching Trump when he had the chance. “We’re lined up here against China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran,” McConnell said while speaking at the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank on Sept. 27. “That ought to tell you right from the beginning that you’re on the right side. If Putin is to win this, some NATO country will be next. And I think it’s a lot smarter to just stop this invasion, to push him back.”

It’s smart to message the new China-Iran-Russia-North Korea axis. The MAGA cult pretends that focusing on Ukraine and Russia somehow detracts from China, but they are all one and the same fight. Any future Chinese war against Taiwan would feature strong Russian support, if not outright participation. North Korea would similarly need strong Chinese and Russian support for any sustained war against South Korea.

It is U.S. and Western pressure, and the threat to China’s rickety economy, that is keeping them from overtly supplying Russia with military support. But make no mistake, those repressive expansionist regimes are all working to undermine Western democracies and national self-determination. And even if it refuses to provide direct (and overt) military aid to Russia, China has still offered a lifeline and sanctions evasion to keep Russia’s economy from completely collapsing.

At the other end of the Republican spectrum, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has gone off the deep end into nutso conspiracy land. “And over in Ukraine, Charlie, by the way we haven't even talked about this, the country that Mitch McConnell and Schumer and Lindsay Graham and Tom Cotton and everybody can't wait to give another 100 billion dollars to, Ukraine is one of the worst countries on the Earth for child sex trafficking and they're harvesting children's organs over there,” she said on Charlie Kirk’s radio show, amplifying one of the more bizarre Russian-spread conspiracy theories.

At some point, reason will likely prevail and Ukraine aid will pass through both chambers with overwhelming bipartisan support. But that doesn’t mean the issue will be domestically dead. Expect the MAGA crowd, fueled by an aggrieved Trump, to keep agitating against Ukraine and building more opposition to further U.S. assistance. How it plays in the 2024 presidential election remains to be seen, but I wouldn’t assume it plays to President Joe Biden’s advantage, particularly given how reluctant he and many of Ukraine’s European allies are to provide Ukraine everything it needs to win quickly and decisively.

Slow-rolling Ukraine aid hasn’t served anyone’s interests except for Russia’s, using the delays to further entrench itself in occupied territory.

It’s Year 5 Of The Biden Crime Family Coverup

Posted on by RealClearWire

By Frank Miele for RealClearWire

A truism that came out of the Watergate scandal is that often the coverup is worse than the crime. But that is not the case in the unraveling Bidengate scandal. The alleged crime here is so bad that it is probably the worst ever committed by an American president.

Yet the coverup should be studied, too. It deserves superlatives for its longevity, inventiveness, and sheer audacity. The strategy has been simple: deny, deflect, destroy. Deny the facts. Deflect with distractions, and when all else fails, work tirelessly to destroy Trump, who was among the first to raise questions about the Biden family’s shady dealings. At Year 5, it may be the most successful coverup in modern history, especially since so many of the facts have been in plain sight for the entire time.

So what exactly is Bidengate? A decade-long influence-peddling scheme that saw Joe Biden, the former vice president, using his son Hunter as a conduit for millions of dollars in payoffs from foreign entities in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere in exchange for favorable treatment. The most famous instance of this scheme was the millions of dollars paid to Hunter Biden for his role as a board member of the corrupt Burisma energy company in Ukraine. Even Hunter acknowledged that his only qualification for being on the board was his last name.

Trading on one’s name to gain employment is not a crime in itself, but using your father’s public office to influence U.S. policy is definitely against the law – especially when the clout is used to protect your corrupt foreign employer.

That’s just what happened in March of 2016 when Vice President Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine if prosecutor general Viktor Shokin were not immediately fired. Biden even bragged about this escapade a few years later when he told the story to the Council on Foreign Relations.

It’s hard to know whether Biden’s threat to withhold aid was approved by the State Department or whether it was “on the fly” diplomacy, but we do know that Shokin has publicly stated that he was fired because he was investigating Burisma’s alleged corruption, and that after he was fired there was no further substantial investigation of Burisma. Quid pro quo.

Another famous mantra from the Watergate era is “Follow the money.” It almost makes you think Biden was taunting his accusers, quipping to a reporter on June 8, “Where’s the money?” when asked about allegations of corruption.

“That’s what we want to know,” the reporter should have demanded, but of course there was no follow-up question. There never is.

Biden’s cheeky response suggests he had reason to think that he could count on the source of any ill-gotten wealth being kept private. And he may have had good reason for that belief.

On July 20, a little more than a month after Biden asked “Where’s the money?”, Sen. Chuck Grassley released an unclassified FD-1023 FBI informant form alleging that Biden and his son Hunter had split a $10 million payment from Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma. Among the many intriguing breadcrumbs in that document was the informant’s claim that the payment to the Bidens was so well disguised that it would take years to uncover:

Zlochevsky responded he did not send any funds directly to the “Big Guy” (which [the FBI source] understood was a reference to Joe Biden). [The source] asked Zlochevsky how many companies/bank accounts Zlochevsky controls; Zlochevsky responded it would take them (investigators) 10 years to find the records (i.e. illicit payments to Joe Biden).

So that’s one possible answer to Joe Biden’s taunt: “Where’s the money?” Perhaps it’s well-hidden.

Related: Jill Biden’s Ex-Husband Comes Back To Haunt Her – ‘I Can’t Let Them Do What They Did To Me To President Trump’

There are so many flashing red warning lights in the Biden scandal that a casual observer would be forgiven for assuming he was in Amsterdam. Case in point: The FBI informant reported in his June 2020 statement that Zlochevsky had called Joe Biden the “Big Guy” in 2019.

That’s the same gangster nickname that one of Hunter Biden’s business associates used to refer to Joe in an infamous email on the “Laptop from Hell” when discussing what percentage of capital equity was being held by Hunter for Joe in a Chinese investment scheme. The laptop was in FBI hands since December 2019, but the email in question wasn’t circulated in public until the New York Post published it on Oct. 15, 2020. The informant’s use of the phrase prior to that time is strong circumstantial evidence that the FBI’s trusted human source was indeed privy to confidential and damning information about Biden.

But what’s truly maddening about the Biden coverup is just how long it has lasted while more and more evidence has mounted. Recent congressional hearings unearthed a trove of detail about bank payments to Biden family members, and IRS whistleblowers have laid bare the protection racket that the FBI and DOJ have been running for the Bidens. Most of that is just confirmation of what we already knew.

Remember, the first time most Americans heard about the Bidens’ bribery schemes was in September 2019 when the transcript of a phone call between President Trump and then-new Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was released. In it, Trump raised the issue of former Vice President Biden’s alleged corruption and asked Zelensky to cooperate with U.S. authorities by “looking into” rumors of criminal activity by the Bidens.

Imagine if Congress had opened an inquiry then into the question of Hunter Biden’s huge salary for sitting on the board of Burisma Energy, the company controlled by oligarch Zlochevsky. Hunter Biden might be in prison now, and his father would have retired to Delaware to live out his final years in shame.

Instead, Democrats in Congress put Trump on trial for daring to notice that which must not be named – the influence-peddling scheme run by Joe Biden and his kin. The impeachment was America’s crash course on Ukrainian corruption, but somehow the mainstream media missed the story and tried to convince the public that Biden was the victim. They hid the evidence then, just as they did last week when Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal fell apart.

Related: Hunter Biden Pleads Not Guilty After Plea Deal Falls Apart

The Democrat-adjacent media seem to have a hard time understanding the case against Hunter Biden – and Joe Biden – even after five years. It’s not uncommon to hear cable news anchors lamenting that the Republicans are persecuting Joe and that they haven’t proven the president did anything wrong.

Either they don’t understand the meaning of the word proven, or they don’t understand our system of justice. It is not the job of Congress or reporters to prove anything, but rather to investigate and unearth evidence. For anyone who has eyes to see, there is a mountain of evidence against both Hunter and Joe Biden. But what we are still waiting for – what the nation is waiting for – is justice. To get that, we need a prosecutor who will present the evidence to a jury and ask for a verdict. Then and only then will the president’s guilt be proven or unproven.

How many more years do we have to wait?

Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.

The post It’s Year 5 Of The Biden Crime Family Coverup appeared first on The Political Insider.

Blinken warns of ‘problematic behavior’ from China during Tonga visit

Posted on (Updated by Miranda Nazzaro

Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned of "problematic behavior," from China during his visit to the Polynesian island of Tonga on Wednesday.

"What I think one of the things that we've seen is that as China's engagement in the region has grown, there has been some, from our perspective, increasingly problematic behavior," Blinken said, pointing to concerns over China's "unlawful maritime claims," "predatory" economic activity and investments that "promote corruption."

The comment follows Blinken's high-stakes trip to China last month, where he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping amid rising tensions between the countries. The trip to Tonga is Blinken's third visit to the Asia-Pacific region over the past two months, having also visited Indonesia.

The trip comes as part of the White House's efforts to push back on China's growing influence in the Pacific islands region and increase the U.S. presence. In a notice sent to Congress earlier this month, the State Department said it is planning a sharp increase in diplomatic personnel and spending for new U.S. embassies in the Pacific islands.

Meeting with Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi ‘Ofakivahafolau Sovaleni on Wednesday, Blinken dedicated a new U.S. embassy in Tonga that opened two months ago.

"We acknowledged a changing global landscape, the impacts of conflict and the strategic importance of the Pacific Island region," Sovaleni said.

He also told reporters that Tonga's growing partnership with the U.S. is rooted in a "shared respect for democracy, the rule of law, and the rights of freedom of others." Solvaleni said he and Blinken discussed the focuses of the partnership, including the climate crisis, education and defense.

When asked about Tonga's debt to China, Sovaleni said the country has officially started to pay off the debt and does not "have any problems or concerns," about it.

"When we talk about 'free and open,' we mean a region where all countries are free to choose their own path and their own partners; where problems are dealt with openly; where rules are reached transparency and applied fairly; where goods, where ideas, where people can move freely and lawfully," Blinken said.

The secretary of State will next head to New Zealand to meet with officials and watch the Women's World Cup soccer match between the U.S. and Netherlands. He will then visit Brisbane, Australia, to meet with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and their Australian counterparts.

The Associated Press contributed.

Senate, House Republicans on collision course over defense spending 

Posted on (Updated by Alexander Bolton

Senate Republicans are looking for a way to get around the caps on defense spending set by the debt limit deal that President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) negotiated last month, putting them on a collision course with House Republicans.

Republican defense hawks on the Senate Appropriations Committee vented their frustration with the allocations for the Defense Department set by Senate Democrats and House Republicans, which represents an increase of more than 3 percent over current spending levels. 

“If you’re looking at China’s navy and you think now’s the time to shrink our Navy, you sure as hell shouldn’t be in the Navy. We go from 298 ships under this budget deal to eventually 291. ... You sunk the Navy. The Congress has sunk eight ships. How many fighter squadrons have we parked because of this deal?” fumed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) at a committee hearing Thursday morning. 

“GDP to defense spending is going to be at a historic low under this deal,” he said, arguing that the defense spending cap will also hurt Ukraine in its war against Russia. “There’s not a penny in this deal to help them keep fighting. Do you really want to be judged in history as having, at a moment of consequence to defeat Putin, to pull all the money for Ukraine?” 

Graham suggested Thursday afternoon that Senate Republicans may attempt to renegotiate the defense spending cap set by the debt limit law later this year. 

“There will be conversation among senators and hopefully the House to increase our spending to deter China. Reducing the size of the U.S. Navy doesn’t deter China,” he said. 

Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), the top-ranking Republican on the Appropriations Committee, said she was concerned that "the new debt limit law caps regular defense funding in fiscal year 2024 at the inadequate level requested by the president" and that it "fails to meet the security challenges facing our nation.”

House Republicans have proposed $826 billion for the annual defense appropriations bill, while Senate Democrats have proposed $823 billion for the defense spending bill, keeping in line with the spending caps McCarthy negotiated with Biden.  

Those numbers don’t include defense spending spread across other departments, including the Department of Energy, which oversees the nation’s nuclear arsenal; the Department of Homeland Security; and money allocated for military construction and veterans affairs. 

Graham and Collins are hoping to increase defense spending levels later in the year — possibly by passing a supplemental defense spending bill that includes money for Ukraine — but McCarthy has already poured cold water on the deal.  

“I’m not going to prejudge what some of them [in the Senate] do, but if they think they’re writing a supplemental because they want to go around an agreement we just made, it’s not going anywhere,” he told Punchbowl News earlier this month. 

Adding fuel to the fire, House Republicans have proposed cutting an additional $119 billion from discretionary spending by setting spending targets for the annual spending bills that cumulatively fall well below the caps that Biden and McCarthy agreed to for those programs — $886 billion for defense and $703.7 for nondefense programs.  

House Republicans are proposing finding those additional savings by cutting from nondefense discretionary spending programs, which will likely put pressure on the Department of Homeland Security. 

Meeting the House Republican targets for nondefense programs could entail spending cuts ranging between 15 percent to 30 percent for the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Interior, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.  

Such a showdown over spending levels heightens the chances of Senate Democrats and House Republicans failing to agree, and then not passing the regular spending bills, which means they would have to resort to a stopgap spending measure. If they fail to pass all 12 appropriations bills by Dec. 31, that would trigger an across-the-board, 1-percent rescission for all defense and nondefense discretionary spending.  

Senate Republicans warn the 1-percent spending sequester would hit defense programs harder than nondefense programs. 

Graham and Collins also spoke out Thursday against the spending allocations Senate Democrats set for homeland security. 

Homeland Security Department funding is under pressure because of the spending cap Biden and McCarthy agreed to as part of the debt limit deal.  

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said the debt limit deal squeezed federal funding priorities across the board.  

“We were given a top-line [spending number] that was extremely challenging and difficult,” she said. “I would dare say no one on this committee, certainly Sen. Collins or I, would have negotiated that agreement. We were not in the room but we have been given that order.” 

Graham said that under the spending caps agreed to last month, the Homeland Security Department would not have enough money to stem the flow of fentanyl and other drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border. 

“If you’ve looked at the border and you feel like we can spend less on homeland security, you shouldn’t be allowed to drive. This place is falling apart. and fentanyl is killing Americans. We need more, not less, to address that,” he said.  

Graham suggested that the consequences of the spending caps would be severe if kept in place over the long-term. 

“We’re in a tough spot. I like the idea we’re not going to be perpetually bound by this,” he said. 

Collins raised similar concerns.  

“Due to the inadequacy of funding for Homeland Security and the need for additional defense funding, unfortunately I cannot support the 302(b) allocations,” Collins said of the money proposed for the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. 

“Our crisis at the southern border continues. We are on pace for another 2.2 million encounters with migrants this fiscal year,” she added. “Despite this ongoing calamity, the proposed 302(b) allocation would actually reduce funding for the Department of Homeland Security, limiting our ability to have sufficient personnel and technology at the southern border.” 

Graham and Collins made their comments in reaction to the $56.9 billion in budget authority that Senate Democrats proposed for the annual Homeland Security appropriations bill.  

The Republican-controlled House Appropriations panel has approved $63.9 billion in budget authority for homeland security appropriations. 

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, told colleagues at the hearing Thursday morning that he agrees with Graham and Collins that the defense funding levels set forth by the Senate and House are “inadequate.”  

“Am I happy with the defense number? No. I think it’s inadequate, quite frankly,” he said. 

He later told The Hill that he found it ironic that Republicans, who usually like to bill themselves as fiscal hawks, are the ones now looking to get around the spending caps. 

“I just felt like we had flipped positions today. Democrats were able to take the conservative [debt limit] number, and Republicans wanted the more liberal number,” he said.  

Joe Biden ‘Will Be Impeached’ Over Report Allegedly Linking Him to ‘Criminal Scheme,’ Says MTG

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene confidently predicted President Joe Biden “will be impeached” following a bombshell report alleging he engaged in criminal activity.

House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) announced Wednesday that a whistleblower had come forth claiming the DOJ and FBI possess a file describing an alleged “criminal scheme” between Biden and a foreign national while he was serving as Vice President.

Grassley has described the whistleblower as “credible.”

Comer subpoenaed the form in question which the accuser claims “describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions.”

They claim the DOJ has the document in their possession.

Axios describes the claims as “the most direct allegation against President Biden himself.”

Comer’s subpoena is demanding the document within a week.

RELATED: GOP Senator Grassley Accuses FBI of Covering Up Biden Family ‘Potential Criminal Conduct’

Could Biden Be Impeached Over Alleged ‘Criminal Scheme’?

Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) posted a ‘breaking news’ video along with a copy of the joint letter from Grassley and Comer suggesting she now has “evidence” to prove President Biden’s alleged “criminal scheme.”

While the House Oversight Committee has not procured the document claimed to be in possession of the DOJ as of yet, Greene insists the group will continue to investigate Biden’s potential pay-for-play scheme with foreign nationals.

Greene claims the material would allegedly contain “proof and information that Joe Biden, as Vice President of the United States, actually interacted with a foreign national and made a deal with a foreign national in exchange for money.”

In a subsequent interview on Steve Bannon’s podcast, Greene suggests impeachment might finally be on the table.

“Now on the Oversight Committee, because we have real subpoena powers, we have the power to investigate and we have the power to do what we’re doing now,” she said.

“And that form shows the proof that Joe Biden took a money payment from a foreign national in exchange for policy decisions while he was vice president of the United States,” Greene claims.

She added: “This means that Joe Biden will be impeached.”

RELATED: Joe Biden Named in Email Discussing Call With Hunter About Major Gas Deal With China

Will the FBI Produce the Document?

Grassley, in an interview with Fox News’ Sandra Smith, reiterated that the whistleblower is viewed as “credible” by the Committee.

“So the Justice Department, the FBI needs to come clean to the American people, what they did with the document, because we know the document exists from very credible whistleblower information that we got,” insists Grassley.

“We really need to know what steps did the Justice Department and FBI take to investigate and to vet the document to determine if it’s accurate or not?”

If they saw the name Biden and viewed it as evidence of a ‘criminal scheme’ those steps most likely involved burying it as deep as humanly possible.

“If the Justice Department and the FBI have any hopes of redeeming their once trusted position with the American people, Garland and Wray must answer this subpoena and tell us what they’re doing with this information that we think is very credible based upon what whistleblowers are telling us,” added Grassley.

The Iowa congressman has been at the forefront of investigating corruption in the Biden family.

Prior to this report, Grassley accused the FBI of hiding ‘potential criminal conduct’ by the Biden family.

Representative Comer recently suggested at least a dozen relatives of President Biden could be exposed in foreign money deals.

A statement from the White House does not expressly deny any of the accusations but blows off the whistleblower claims as more of the same from Republicans.

“For going on 5 years now, Republicans in Congress have been lobbing unfounded politically-motivated attacks against [Biden] without offering evidence for their claims,” tweeted spokesman Ian Sams.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has suggested the allegations of criminal activity involving the “big guy” are so prevalent that he’s transferring the nickname ‘Crooked’ from Hillary Clinton to ‘Crooked Joe Biden.’

Comer has been indicating a press conference may come early this month where he intends to discuss the committee’s findings regarding “influence peddling” by Biden family members.

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Biden Pledges BILLIONS to Africa Under the Ruse of Climate Change

Posted on by Kathleen J. Anderson

The U.S. dollar printing press is burning up under the Biden administration, with the President throwing money around like he’s the Oprah of the free world.

But, this time, instead of well-to-do college graduates or Ukraine, it’s the continent of Africa that will receive cash prizes from the United States.

Naturally, the song the Biden administration is singing is that our investment in the vast continent is about renewable energy and elevating a valuable international partner that should be seen as an equal to the United States. But, unfortunately, the reality is quite a bit different.

Like a child stuck between two divorced parents, African leaders found themselves in the uncomfortable and insulting position of listening to President Biden tell them how special they are and try to buy their love in the hopes that they will rethink their partnerships with China.

But, as usual, our reactive foreign policy will cost the taxpayer billions and do little to help anybody, except maybe China.

It’s Only Money

This week President Biden promised a cumulative of about $55 billion over the next three years to the continent of Africa, chump change in comparison to our investment in Ukraine, but still quite the Christmas check if you ask me. However, it was an announcement related explicitly to South Africa that caught a fair amount of criticism.

President Biden announced:

“Today’s announcement joined a portfolio of partnership for global infrastructure investment projects already underway in Africa. Including mobilizing $8 billion in public and private finance to help South Africa replace coal-fired power plants with renewable energy sources.”

Keep in mind that South Africa is the third largest economy in Africa, behind Egypt and Nigeria. In addition, President Biden continued to list out other investments across the continent:

“…develop cutting edge energy solutions like clean hydrogen, a deal worth $2 billion to build solar energy projects in Angola, $600 million high speed communications cables that will connect Southeast Asia to Europe via Egypt and the Horn of Africa…”

So why the push to cozy up to Africa, particularly when plenty of these African countries can fund their own projects?

Stuck In The Middle

Say what you want about China, but you can’t deny their foreign policy and international strategic maneuvering are impressive. For example, over the last few years, China has dumped close to $700 billion into infrastructure loans in Africa.

Why the interest in Africa? Just as Africa was known for its diamonds, its also highly sought after for its minerals, specifically cobalt and lithium.

For China, that means cornering the market on minerals used in the coveted batteries everyone needs, particularly our country, to power everything from our phones to our war machines. For the Biden administration, that means stripping Africa of the materials needed to build all those electric vehicles they want to force us all to purchase. 

RELATED: Record-Breaking ‘Defense’ Bill Wastes Unfathomable Amounts on Dysfunctional, Unwanted Weapons Systems

The investment in Africa has also enabled China to build its first overseas military installation in Djibouti in 2017, and they have their eyes set on a second base in Equatorial Guinea.

China has already extended its global reach economically and politically, and now that they have started stretching its military reach into Africa, that will undoubtedly have future repercussions for the United States and the world at large.

We Just Want To Be Friends

Suppose you listen to what the President said to the African leaders this week.

In that case, you’d almost believe that our pledge to invest in their countries isn’t about China but our desire to treat them as equals. According to the President, the goal “is not to create political obligation or foster independence” but to do our part to help Africa “succeed.” 

RELATED: Climate Activist Pete Buttigieg Took Twice as Many Taxpayer-Funded Private Jet Flights as His Predecessor

Copying a page from his domestic policy speeches, the President promised:

“The United States is all in on Africa’s future. Together we want to build a future of opportunity where no one, no one is left behind.”

He even went so far as to do what Democrat leaders tend to do best and apologize for how terrible our country is, harkening back to the past:

“We remember the stolen men and women and children who were brought to our shores in chains, subjected to unimaginable cruelty – my nation’s original sin was that period.”

Curious if the African countries view their ancestor’s role in selling their men, women, and children into slavery as their original sin. It brings up an interesting follow-up question: are the African nations ready to be considered on par with the United States?

Strange Bedfellows

Africa isn’t necessarily known for its civility, democracies, or advancement in human rights. It’s known for government corruption, with South Africa, in particular, making international news not that long ago.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa narrowly dodged an impeachment over a scandal dubbed ‘FarmGate.’ Allegedly he had neglected to disclose to authorities after his farm was robbed that anywhere from $4 million to $8 million in U.S. cash was snatched that he had stored in his sofa.

There is nothing suspect there at all; utterly normal behavior for an African leader. But unfortunately, the continent has also become a welcome location for terrorist organizations to set up training and planning camps.

RELATED: Democrat Claims Any Desire to Track Money Sent to Ukraine is Evil Russian Propaganda

The two most notable groups are Boko Haram in west Africa and Al-Shabaab in the Horn of Africa. No doubt, two groups that have also benefited from China’s ongoing investment in Africa.

So while the Biden administration never backs off of an opportunity to accuse its own citizens of racism, extremism, and violence, it has no problems sending your taxpayer dollars to countries that welcome terrorists, steal from their own people, and in many ways still participate in the original sin our President apologized for.

Modern-Day Risk

I don’t believe any of the African leaders here this week for the summit think they are being used as anything other than cold war pawns between us and China. But, unfortunately, our interest is typically too much too late.

The Chinese infrastructure investments have included spreading Huawei communications far and wide, a company that came under fire in our own country for posing a significant national security risk. As the deputy assistant secretary for African affairs, Chidi Blyden, explains:

“China’s Huawei network, which is very robust across the continent, makes it hard for us to be able to work with African partners who may adopt some of these systems.”

But, thanks to the cover story of climate change, our country has thrown money at other countries in an attempt to build up our international presence and their dependence on us. For example, at the G20 summit, we pledged to partner with the United Kingdom in sending $10 billion to Indonesia to transition their country to renewable energy.

And we also bought into sending part of the $15.5 billion to Vietnam for the same. The world is starting to look more and more like the board game Risk; who will end up winning? Doubtful it will be Africa or any other countries we pretend to care about.

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This is the day the world changed: Three years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic began

Posted on by Mark Sumner

On this date three years ago, a man walked into Hubei Provincial Hospital in Wuhan, China, reporting flu-like symptoms. Within two weeks, there were 27 cases showing similar symptoms. Then, just four days before the end of the year, the head of the hospital’s respiratory department, Dr. Zhang Jixian, made a report to state health officials that the cases were caused by “a novel coronavirus.” At that point, the number of known infections was approaching 180.

Dec. 1 may have been the official start of the local novel coronavirus outbreak that would become a national epidemic that would become the COVID-19 pandemic. But it certainly wasn’t the first actual case. As early as March 2020, a review of health records suggested that the first case had actually been seen in Wuhan as early as Nov. 17, and that there had been a steady trickle of new cases for two weeks before that first official case.

It would take another two years before scientists were able to pin down what had been suspected all along—the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was almost certainly the “wet” market in Wuhan, where a wide variety of wild-caught animals were sold for food and traditional medicine. A similar market was the source of the original SARS virus in 2002. A combination of health care records and genetic information suggests that the virus made the jump from animals to humans at least twice in the closing months of 2019, though exactly which animal played host to the virus before it made the jump remains unclear.

With all that, it’s hard to give an official date for when the pandemic that has now generated at least 650 million cases and 6.6 million deaths around the world really began. But today is as good a day as any to say, “This is the day the world changed.”

To mark this third anniversary, it seems like a good time to hit some “highlights” of the pandemic’s early days and how it was covered at Daily Kos—much of which, I’m going to tell you right now, easily devolves into “look at all the stuff I got wrong.”

Dec. 31, 2019 — A doctor in China unofficially notifies World Health Organization (WHO) that it has detected a cluster of cases involving “a pneumonia of unknown etiology.” China would send an official notification to WHO on Jan. 3. 

Jan. 21, 2020 — China confirms that the disease is spreading from person to person. At this point, the number of known cases in China is approaching 300, and there are single cases known in Japan, Thailand, and South Korea.

Jan. 23, 2020 — The first article on the outbreak at Daily Kos. That article got some things right.

The outbreak that began near the city of Wuhan is caused by a coronavirus, one of a number of viruses in a poorly understood group that also includes SARS. … The ease with which the new virus is apparently spread through the air, or through superficial contact, suggests that it may be transferred even more readily than the SARS virus, which killed at least 800 in its initial outbreak.

And some things very, very wrong. 

...officials everywhere have been faster to act, faster to impose restrictions, and faster to identify the underlying cause of the outbreak than they had been in the case of SARS. Restricting the spread of an emerging disease remains a near-impossible task, but health officials around the world are giving it a really extraordinary try.

Jan. 31, 2020 — It would be a week before the novel coronavirus reached the front page of Daily Kos again. In our defense, there were a few things going on at the time—such as Donald Trump facing his first impeachment trial in the Senate. That second article actually came on the same day that the House impeachment managers wrapped up their case. Even at this point, what would become a very familiar theme was starting to emerge. And so was that theme of getting something right, followed by getting something else so very wrong.

... it is time to consider the possible effects of prolonged disruption from interrupted supply chains, shortages of items manufactured in China, or further restrictions of travel and trade. Companies, educational facilities, and city managers are already looking at what it could mean if there is an extended disruption of normal activities—not because the coronavirus is likely to have the devastating reach of the 1918 flu, but because the steps necessary to arrest its spread may mean taking unfamiliar actions.

At that point, the frequency of covered increased sharply—which included me providing now highly cringe-worthy praise of China’s management of the outbreak—and it wouldn’t be a week before the “P” word was being thrown around.

Feb. 5, 2020 — What had started with a tiny cluster of cases a month earlier was now approaching 25,000, and small numbers of cases had appeared in an astounding 24 countries. It was a testimony to both how easily the SARS-CoV-2 virus could be spread, and to how interconnected our world has become.

Still, 2019-nCoV is not yet a global pandemic. Despite some alarming cases, including a number of infections aboard a now-quarantined cruise ship, it remains an outbreak with just one real epicenter. However, keeping things that way is going to be difficult. And expensive.

Feb. 6, 2020 — Just a day later came news of the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, one of a group of doctors in Wuhan who had risked their careers to buck both local and state officials and get out the news about the initial outbreak. Li was a previously healthy 34-year-old. His death would make him not just a martyr to the case of transparency, but a signpost for how bad things might become. Even so, half of the post this day was devoted to staying hopeful that the outbreak in China was slowing down, that measures seemed to be preventing a similar outbreak elsewhere, and hey, didn’t SARS burn out just a few weeks after its first appearance?

It would be easy to present a version of this story that played up all the things that were right in these early articles—showing that this virus would be more transmissible than SARS, warnings about the need for quick intervention to isolate cases when detected, walking through the evidence to show that the virus was not the product of a weapons lab, and predictions about coming impacts to fragile international supply chains—but there was just as much wrong. That included praising policy in China that was not only brutal, but may have contributed to spreading the disease by encouraging people to hide symptoms. There was also a lot of happy, hopeful, “don’t panic” talk that utterly missed the boat on the real scale of the threat and the necessary steps to check the coming pandemic. Also, as happened way too many times over the next year, I repeatedly got lost in the statistics, grinding away at numbers to see if I could squeeze just one hint of a rainbow out of all those dark clouds.

The level of naivete can easily be expressed by this headline from Feb. 11, 2020.

Novel coronavirus deaths exceed 1,000. Are there more grim milestones ahead?

It’s safe to say the answer was “yes.” The number of deaths would double in one week, and of course, that was barely the start of a graph that would lead to 6,641,418, as of today.

Three years later, reviewing those early reports about what would eventually be the COVID-19 pandemic leaves me with a lot of embarrassment. It’s hard to find anything in there that seems all that prescient—or all that useful—this far down the line.

One thing that does stand out in these early reports is just how rarely Donald Trump gets mentioned in connection with the virus, because that’s how little he was involved in doing anything about it. It wouldn’t be until Feb. 26, 2020, that Trump finally got around to creating his infamous task force on the virus, the one that Mike Pence would nominally lead, but which Trump would turn into a platform for promoting quack cures and attacking science.

That came one day after what may have been the most accurate statement issued by any official to that point. 

On Tuesday, Nancy Messonier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, one of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned that Americans can expect to see the COVID-19 coronavirus spread within the United States, and that “disruption to everyday life may be severe.“ Messonier acknowledged in a press briefing, “This whole situation may seem overwhelming,” before revealing that she had been warning her own children that they needed to prepare for what’s coming. “Ultimately, we expect we will see community spread in this country. It’s not so much a question of if this will happen any more, but rather more exactly when this will happen, and how many people in this country will have severe illness.”

After making that statement, Messonier was carefully removed from public speaking roles, sidelined from her daily briefings, and not made a part of Trump’s task force.

But no one may have given a better summary of what was coming than she did less than two months after the first announcement from WHO.