In the years before Moscow invaded Ukraine, Democrats enriched themselves politically and personally from oligarchs and businesses in the region while empowering Vladimir Putin with energy and technology deals. //
Our best-selling book "Fallout: Nuclear Bribes, Russian Spies and the Washington Lies that Enriched the Clinton and Biden Dynasties" chronicled how a failed "reset" in U.S.-Russia relations led by Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton relied on an appeasement strategy that ultimately backfired with Russia.
Putin's spoils were measured in billions of dollars in uranium contracts with U.S. utilities, expanded oil imports and transfers of sensitive technologies.
The American dynasties counted their victories in millions of dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation, speech fees to Bill Clinton, and lucrative board seats and consulting deals for Hunter Biden. //
By 2013, Putin had taken Americans to the cleaners. He got massive energy supplies that he now uses as a strategic weapon; he got toothless disarmament treaties that history suggests he will not abide by; he compromised American utility companies, getting them hooked on his cheap nuclear fuel supplies; he got his spies freed and sent home to a hero's welcome in Moscow; he got advanced cyber and military technology; and, not least, he compromised key figures in America's political class.
What did Americans get in return? Not much. Here's a simple test: Has your utility bill gotten cheaper since 2009? //
But Obama, Clinton, and Biden got a lot. As just one example, before Obama even left office in 2017, he set up the Obama Foundation. One of his very first donors was Exelon Corporation, which had received billions in cheap Russian nuclear fuel sales thanks to the 123 Agreement. Exelon, which was known as "the President's Utility" pledged a staggering $10 million to Obama's foundation before he was even out of office.
Biden's family and its partners got hooked up with the former mayor of Moscow's family, who sent at least $3.5 million to a company cofounded by Hunter Biden. Thanks to the Hunter Biden laptop, we know that the Russian oligarch behind that $3.5 million may have invested upwards of $200 million in other Biden-linked entities and that Joe Biden personally benefited from his son's business dealings. And this is all before Biden was named Obama's point man in Ukraine.
One of the most important, two-hour telephone calls of the post-Cold War took place on Friday, March 18, 2022. U.S. President Joseph Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met to discuss the crisis in Ukraine. The discussion laid out the US and Chinese positions on the conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation, which is now in its 23rd day.
The United States noted our position — that we want to draw the conflict to an end by compelling Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin to abandon his invasion of Ukraine, through a regime of economic sanctions against Russia and military assistance to the Ukrainian government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. //
Tonight, while Mr. Putin may want to divide and conquer these two, highly co-dependent national interests, he has further to go to convince either of his position. It’s time to for Russia to stop believing its own propaganda and start listening to what the world is sobering up to.
Could a lot still go wrong here? Yes. That’s the scary part. But, it seems neither the US nor China want it to. And out of that, it may be possible for Ukraine and Russia to take the bell off the tiger.
Sometimes a newspaper story is just a story about someone. And sometimes the story inadvertently reveals far more about the newspaper itself.
That’s the case of The New York Times’ Thursday piece on Hunter Biden. What the discerning reader learns about the Times is far more important than anything disclosed about the president’s scheming son. //
The one bit of actual news is that Hunter Biden took out a loan to pay the federal government as much as $1 million in back taxes as part of a continuing criminal probe about his business ventures with foreign corporations and individuals.
But that fact, which comes in the very first paragraph, is dwarfed by the Times’ bombshell acknowledgment later on. Much later on.
It’s not until the 24th paragraph that the story mentions e-mails involving Hunter Biden and his associates in those deals, followed by these two sentences: “Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.”
Heart be still. It took the Gray Lady nearly 17 months to grudgingly concede even a fraction of what New York Post readers learned in October 2020. Of course, Times readers would have learned all that too if their paper was still in the news business instead of being a running dog for Democrats. //
The reason for that coverup was simple: Many of the e-mails to and from Hunter Biden implicated Joe Biden in the international influence-peddling business run by Hunter and Joe’s brother, Jim Biden.
If the whole country knew then that Joe Biden was corruptly using his office to help his family cash in, we would now be in the second year of Donald Trump’s second term. That’s a fact because 8% of Biden voters told pollsters they would have supported Trump had they known about the bombshell contents of the laptop. //
And now the Times has the gall to act as if it did heroic digging by claiming Thursday the e-mails “were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.” Oh, please.
Unlike the Times, The Post didn’t rely on anonymous sources, saying openly that Rudy Giuliani gave the paper a copy of the laptop’s hard drive. Giuliani said it came from a repairman in Delaware, whom The Post also interviewed. He said a man who signed his name as Hunter Biden dropped the laptop off for fixes and never retrieved it. //
As I have written, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping know everything about these deals, including how many millions were wired from oligarchs and Communist-tied companies to bank accounts controlled by the Bidens. They also know what the Bidens did for the money.
The only people who don’t know all the facts are Americans. And for that, you can thank The New York Times and its corrupt co-conspirators.
Regime change, wrapped in all of its fantastical failure, is making a comeback in Washington, and no one seems to notice or even care. //
Sadly, history tells us how the war in Ukraine will end if we are lucky. Ukraine will be destroyed. Russia will take parts of its territory. Kyiv will join the European Union and NATO but not officially, integrating itself economically and getting billions in weapons to deter another Russian invasion. Russia will be massively weakened and completely dependent on China for its economic survival, selling anything it can to Beijing, including its best weapons, to survive.
What if we aren’t lucky, and the war drags on for months? Putin will keep upping the pressure, and we will do the same. With every bomb Russia drops on Ukraine, the moral outrage will keep rising and Western nations will give Ukraine more and more arms and sanction Russia in every way possible to the point that Russia will come close to collapse.
At some point, when Putin sees the Ukraine crisis as not a giant mistake but instead a fight for his own survival, true hell will break loose.
“Just because you have a lease doesn’t mean there’s actually oil and gas in that lease…” //
There are 9,000 federal drilling permits companies can use to bolster oil production!
Biden repeated this line in his speech about banning Russian energy sources, including oil. We’ve seen gas prices go up before Russia invaded Ukraine, but it’s only going to get worse. //
Mike Sommers, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, confirmed the industry continues to use “a higher percentage of federal onshore and offshore leases than at any time in the past, and it’s continuing to increase production to meet surging demand.”
But Biden leaves out necessary information because it voids his argument:
“There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the administration as to how the process actually works,” Sommers said in an interview on the sidelines of the conference.
“Just because you have a lease doesn’t mean there’s actually oil and gas in that lease, and there has to be a lot of development that occurs between the leasing and then ultimately permitting for that acreage to be productive,” he said. “I think that they’re purposefully misusing the facts here to advantage their position.”
The majority of our foreign oil comes from Canada. It’d be more if Biden opens the Keystone XL pipeline. Mexico and Saudia Arabia come next. Russia makes up about 8% of what we got last year:
Yet, while people are going so far as to ban cats and cutting opera singers, the Biden Administration is still buying Russian oil while cutting our ability. They’re still using a Russian negotiator in what is sure to be yet another horrible Biden mistake: coming to a new Iran nuclear deal which, as we reported, is very close (and very awful).
Ted Cruz
@tedcruz
This is absurd.
BOYCOTT Russian oil & gas.
Leave the cats alone.
The Washington Post
@washingtonpost
International Cat Federation bans Russian cats from competitions
https://wapo.st/3Ca0pHS
12:51 AM · Mar 4, 2022
Xi doesn’t see Russia as an equal partner but as a valuable pawn to realize his vision for China — to replace the United States as the sole superpower in a Sino-centered and autocracy-friendly new world order. An economically weak but militarily aggressive Russia suits Xi’s vision.
Xi deploys China’s economic power to support Putin, counting on the Russian military to keep the West, primarily the United States, occupied and to draw attention away from Beijing’s geopolitical expansion. Meanwhile, the more Russia is economically isolated from the western world due to sanctions and becomes more economically dependent on China, the less likely Putin’s Russia will present a threat to challenge China’s dominance.
Shockingly, the Biden administration has failed to recognize China’s strategic calculations so far. The New York Times reports that Biden administration officials shared intelligence on Russia’s troop buildup with China, hoping Beijing would help avert Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Chinese officials rebuffed the United States and apparently shared the information with Moscow.
The Biden administration’s weakness and incompetence were on full display in a New York Times article last week recounting the White House’s repeated—and failed— attempts to urge China to help avert war in Ukraine. The purpose of the article was to allow senior administration officials to take their duplicitous Chinese counterparts to task, but the account reveals above all that White House officials are out of their depth in dealing with China.
It is nearly impossible to read the Biden administration’s side of the story without perceiving the weakness, gullibility, and ineffectiveness that the Biden White House unwittingly presents. Administration officials describe how they were “repeatedly rebuffed” by Chinese officials even as the Americans scrambled for “half a dozen urgent meetings over three months” to try to avert the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The article repeats how “Each time, the Chinese officials… rebuffed the Americans,” as if to drive home the humiliating point. //
Biden officials disclosed to The New York Times that they shared intelligence with their Chinese counterparts only to be double-crossed when the Chinese quickly leaked that intel to the Russians.
To add insult to injury, the Chinese also told the Russians that the Americans were “trying to sow discord,” and promised Moscow that Beijing would not interfere with Russia’s war plans. The Biden officials who leaked these details must not be aware of how embarrassing they are. //
When China was weaker and threatened by what was then the Soviet Union, it turned toward America. After decades of aid, investment, technology transfer, education, and lucrative trade with the United States, China is now much stronger than Russia. Its population is much larger, its gross domestic product is ten times bigger, and its technologies (many stolen from the United States) are better. China has much less to fear from Russia, and thus can leverage Russia against America—the only remaining superpower stronger than China.
One way to pit Russia against America is to give tacit support for a Russian war in eastern Europe that will consume America and her allies, while letting China see how the West responds to an invasion analogous to what China has planned for Taiwan. And that’s exactly what China did. //
Russia might even be reduced to a client state to supply commodities to China. That wouldn’t be a bad turn of events by the Chinese against a country that used to threaten them.
Matthew Dowd @matthewjdowd
If you are blaming Biden today for what Putin is doing in Ukraine please take down the American flag from your home or social media account and replace it with the Russian flag. It will help us all know where you clearly stand.
8:54 AM · Feb 22, 2022 //
Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg
One thing worth keeping in my mind today: There’s a straight line from Russia’s attack on the US election in 2016 to 1/6 to today’s new invasion of Ukraine. The chaos that Russia unleashed with the election of Trump weakened us to the point Putin feels confident invading Europe.
7:05 AM · Feb 24, 2022 //
John Harwood @JohnJHarwood
another way of stating Garrett's point:
the Russian thug now attacking Ukraine helped Donald Trump become president because he thought that would some day make this kind of attack easier to pull off
he was right in the short term
longer term, TBD //
Europe was never going to be enough to deter Russian movement into Ukraine. It was always going to come down to whether or not the U.S. would be tough enough to deter it a bit longer. Afghanistan showed that we are not, and so Putin began speeding up his plans.
That’s not to say that Russia is doing this because of anything happening in Washington. It’s simply to say that the last barrier to doing it was the U.S. and Biden completely tore down that barrier himself.
So, no, Russia didn’t get Trump elected, much less as part of a plan to take over Ukraine. And, no, Trump isn’t responsible for what’s happening now. Weak leadership in the U.S. at this very moment gave Putin all the confidence he needed.
Today has been the proof of the pudding for the geopolitical strategy developed by Anthony Blinken under the guidance of our very own Metternich and Machiavelli, that would be Joey SoftServe and Kamala Harris. Unfortunately, the results have not been encouraging. About four hours ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a speech that recognized the autonomy of Donetsk and Luhansk, two major Russian-speaking areas in Eastern Ukraine. He also expounded upon the theory of perpetual Russian victimhood in a way that would have had CRT guru Ibrahim X. Kendi running for his notepad. //
Shortly after the speech, Putin ordered Russian peacekeepers into Eastern Ukraine. //
keep in mind that the root cause of this crisis is the decision made during the George W. Bush administration to not only expand NATO to nations like Hungary and Poland, but also to former Soviet states like Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. That decision was made on the assumption that Russia was a spent geopolitical force, an assumption that, in retrospect, seems ill-advised.
How this plays out now is anyone’s guess. The White House has already ruled out sanctions on Russia for recognizing the autonomy of Donetsk and Luhansk and the peacekeepers seem to fall within the “minor incursion” parameters that Joe Biden established in January. I don’t know what level of risk the Ukrainians are willing to take by accidentally, or not, killing Russian troops. I’d just note that under the UN “peacekeeping” definition, both sides have to agree to a ceasefire before deployment. That hasn’t happened in this case which leads one to believe that the primary purpose of the Russian troops is to get some of them killed. So we haven’t seen the last of this melodrama.
In a unique action of political courage and foresight, on January 13, the Senate entertained a bill to impose sanctions on the Russian Nord Stream 2 project to send a message to Putin that his adventurism would not be tolerated. Egged on by the White House, Senate Democrats killed the bill. No other attempt to sanction Russia has been introduced by Chuck Schumer or any Democrat.
On January 19, Biden publicly signaled that his junta would be okay with some Russian movement into Ukrainian territory. //
What we have just experienced was one of two things. Either Putin punked Joe Biden and left all the world to gape in amazement at the ease and audacity of the act, or he worked hand-in-glove with Biden and Anthony Blinken to carve up Ukraine at virtually no cost to Putin–sort of reminiscent of how Poland was dismembered in 1939. Either way, US credibility suffered the same damage and Putin was able to show that Joe Biden is just not up to the task of responding to challenges. What happens over the next few years will be ugly.
Curtis Houck @CurtisHouck
This is just an almost comically false statement by Putin:
"Despite the known problems, Russia has always cooperated and worked with Ukraine in an open and honest manner, with respect to its interests."
He adds Ukraine blackmailed them.
Lol okay.
2:13 PM · Feb 21, 2022 //
Putin’s “history lesson” on Russian territorial claims and the Soviet Union is obviously not an accident. He is clearly is laying the groundwork not just to take Ukraine, but to rebuild large swaths of the former USSR under his rule. That’s not exactly a new goal for Putin, as the former KGB agent has long spoken lovingly of the Soviet Union, blaming its downfall for Russia’s current malaise.
Perhaps the most important development from Putin’s speech came towards the end, though. The Russian leader recognized the “sovereignty” of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Eastern Ukraine. //
It’s not hard to game out what happens next. With those areas now being “independent” states as far as Russia is concerned, the separatist leadership there can now invite Russian military forces to enter. In other words, Putin has just taken a chunk of Ukraine without firing a shot. If Ukraine or NATO try to prevent the entry of Russian forces into those areas, it’ll set off a hot war that can be blamed on Western “aggression.”
It’s actually a very cunning move, and it shows just how idiotic Joe Biden’s strategy has been in dealing with this situation. While the administration has been focused on using the threat of sanctions as a deterrent, Putin was busy going in the backdoor, getting what he wants without triggering the repercussions set up by the Western nations. Further, Biden also lifted sanctions on the Nordstream 2 pipeline, giving Putin enormous leverage over Europe, while receiving nothing in return. //
Let’s recall that Sen. Ted Cruz tried to get a sanctions bill targeting Russia passed back in December. He would have had the votes, too, if not for a vigorous lobbying effort by the White House on behalf of Putin. Perhaps those sanctions would have caused enough financial hardship to change the situation? We’ll never know for sure, but what we do know is that the defeat of that bill was the green light for Putin to start amassing his invasion force.
Ali Rogin @AliRogin
NEW: In a conference call with reporters on responding to Putin, and what comes next, a senior admin official suggested that Russian troops in Donetsk/Luhansk alone may not warrant the "swift and severe" sanctions the admin has been previewing.
5:47 PM · Feb 21, 2022 //
Exactly why should Putin care about Biden’s piddly sanctions? He doesn’t. He wouldn’t care unless you make him personally hurt. But that should have been done long ago. The sanctions on Nord Stream 2 should never have been waived. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that Putin would be making more moves on Ukraine. He’s made moves against the other republics now for years since the Soviet Union broke apart.
Ted Cruz @tedcruz
Joe Biden becoming president is the best thing to happen to Vladimir Putin.
10:05 AM · Feb 20, 2022
“No, it hasn’t worked at all. If you look at what the Ukrainians want, they’ve been very explicit,” Cruz said. “They’ve asked the United States explicitly, ‘Put sanctions on Nord Stream 2, right now, today.’ Joe Biden could do that this morning. He refuses to do it. And they said, number two, provide lethal military aid, give us the weapons to defend ourselves.”
Cruz explained that Joe Biden personally lobbied against the bill to put sanctions on Nord Stream 2. As we noted at the time, not only did they do that but they used the filibuster rule to defeat the bill, requiring 60 votes. Not only were they helping Putin but they were being hypocritical once again on the question of the filibuster. The Democrats had previously been for the sanctions and then they flipped because of who was in the White House and the lobbying from Biden. Cruz skewered their flip-flopping.
Watching the Biden Administration do foreign policy, particularly in the middle of a crisis, is like watching a slow train wreck. You know they’re going to hit that car that’s lying up ahead in the tracks, but they just keep speeding headlong into it. //
Zelensky notes – quite accurately – that the United States made certain commitments to Ukraine for giving up their nuclear weapons years ago as part of the Budapest Memorandum. Under that agreement, the U.S. said that they would help back Ukraine. Because of that commitment from us, Ukraine gave up their weapons which could have helped them now.
Guess who was a big part of that denuding of Ukraine’s defense? Barack Obama, when he was a junior senator from Illinois. We paid a lot of money to help them get rid of conventional weapons that they could have used when Russia invade Crimea in 2014. Obama then was, of course, basically missing in action, leaving Ukraine twisting in the wind, despite his part in helping leave them defenseless. //
Tommy Pigott @TommyPigott
The last two times Russia has escalated in regards to Ukraine, Joe Biden has been in the White House
RNC Research @RNCResearch
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on why Vladimir Putin did not escalate during the Trump administration: "Ask him"
Embedded video
10:05 AM · Feb 20, 2022
It’s portrayed with urgency and alarm by the Biden administration. But do the facts support the assertion?
Around 100,000 Russian troops have been on the Ukrainian border since April 2021. A report in September 2021 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) noted their arrival as the “Spring Scare of 2021.” At the time, the US think tank community raised concerns that Russia was preparing to annex Ukraine much the same way Putin’s government annexed Crimea after the Russian puppet government of Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in 2014. //
The objective question one must ask then is, given that these troops have now been on the border for almost a year and the separatist war seems to be a steady as she goes scenario, is this really a new level of provocation by Russia?
Or is it the United States’ infamous attention deficit disorder in foreign policy waking up and looking for a new shiny obsession after totally blowing it so badly in Afghanistan?
How many Americans know that we are importing a lot of oil from Russia? Not only did Biden beg OPEC to produce more oil, he doubled the amount of oil imported from Saudi Arabia from December of 2020 and October of 2021 and we’ve also tripled the oil from Russia from what we were importing from February 2019 to September 2021.
In May of last year, Biden surged the Russian oil imports by 23 percent to 844,000 barrels a day from the prior month, which was almost 10 percent of all our oil imports for the month. The only country we import more oil from is Canada. Exactly why are we importing and dependant on such an adversary?
MacCallum pressed Sullivan, asking if he does concede we are no longer energy independent, “and we were before.” His answer is very revealing.
“What I would say is that the U.S. is investing massively in being a leader in an energy transition in which – yes, for now we continue to use fossil fuels – but over the course of years and decades, we become a clean energy superpower.” He claimed that’s where the “strategic advantage” would lie.
Just to summarize that: he’s admitting they’re killing our energy position on purpose. That’s what he just said, because of their insane “clean energy” goals. That’s all just cool to them, if we help Russia now, as Russia menaces us and their neighbors. //
MacCallum had the best response. “Some people would look at that answer and say that Russia and China could feel like they were in a “pretty good position,” MacCallum said.
Exactly. Russia and China are probably looking at all this and laughing that we could put these horrible folks that help them in office. And the Democrats called President Donald Trump a Putin stooge, when he was dropping bombs on Russians’ heads and making us more energy independent. These actions make no sense, unless you are insane and/or are trying to help Vladimir Putin. They hurt our ability to defend ourselves and our allies. They hurt every American.
But the idea that Iran “returns to its commitments under the JCPOA” is ludicrous. Those commitments are beyond salvaging, including Iran restraining its enrichment activities not to exceed 5%. Today, they have a stockpile of enriched uranium at the 60% level. They have also vastly improved the efficiency and modernization of their centrifuges and have yet to promise to supply the IAEA with data they refused to hand over that was denied the agency for nearly six months. //
Which country is going to take possession of Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched beyond 5%? Russia stepped forward last time — a dubious choice considering it’s in Russia’s interest to strengthen Iran against the U.S. But what about those ultra-modern centrifuges? What kind of access will be granted to the IAEA? And what to do about many unresolved nuclear issues from the past decades?
Those questions are irrelevant. Joe Biden is in deep, deep, political trouble and needs an international “success” to bolster his standing and give the Democrats a shot in the arm going into the November midterms.
And his new friends in Tehran will be more than happy to oblige.
The elites told us that Joe Biden would protect black people and believe black lives mattered. They also said he would ensure the community’s prosperity and success. Here’s the problem: His presidency has been the antithesis of all that. //
What about black prosperity? In the Trump era, African-American unemployment had reached the lowest on record — 5.5 percent in September 2019, shortly before the start of the pandemic. There had never been so many African Americans who were part of the workforce. This was essentially thanks to the economic policies pushed by Republicans. Tax cuts, wage increases, and GDP growth helped create an economy where everyone benefited.
In the Biden era, Joe takes credit for a lower unemployment rate. But what he won’t tell you is that the rate is lower now thanks to a decline in labor participation among African-Americans. This is nothing to celebrate. If anything, it’s one of the most significant indicators of black poverty.
RNC Research
@RNCResearch
Biden: “Unless the product I’m purchasing for the American people was made in America...we ain’t buying it.”
Biden just paid Communist China $1.2 billion for COVID tests.
2:37 PM · Feb 4, 2022