Biden announces sanctions against Russia

February 21, 2024

Hi, all!

The newsletter will be short and sweet tonight due to travel and a reader meeting on Tuesday evening.

Here’s the takeaway: Joe Biden continues to keep his word, Donald Trump is “meaner and more offensive by the day,” the FBI informant who lied about Biden received help from Russia, the Alabama in vitro fertilization ruling is causing chaos, and major media is trying to tell grassroots volunteers they are exhausted and delusional.

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President Biden will announce new sanctions against Russia on Friday.

When Putin arrested Alexei Navalny, President Biden told Putin that Russia would face “devastating consequences” if Navalny died in custody. Minutes after Navalny’s death, Republicans were hectoring Biden for not announcing new sanctions against Russia in the first hours after Navalny’s death.

It may be surprising for Republicans to learn that major foreign policy decisions cannot be made “on the fly” between rounds of golf. Today, in a press briefing, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the following:

Whatever story the Russian government decides to tell the world, it’s clear that President Putin and his government are responsible for Mr. Navalny’s death.

In response, at President Biden’s direction, we will be announcing a major sanctions package on Friday of this week to hold Russia accountable for what happened to Mr. Navalny and, quite frankly, for all its actions over the course of this vicious and brutal war that has now raged on for two years.

Kirby went on to explain that House Republicans could help President Biden in his efforts to punish Putin by passing the supplemental aid bill to Ukraine:

One of the most powerful things that we can do right now to stand up to Vladimir Putin, of course, is to, again, pass the bipartisan National Security Supplemental bill and support Ukraine as they continue to fight bravely in defense of their country.

Meanwhile, Trump continued to compare his legal woes to the assassination of Navalny. In an interview with Laura Ingraham, the Fox entertainer asked Trump how he would pay the $354 million in penalties (plus $100 million in interest) imposed in the New York civil fraud trial.

Rather than explain how he would come up with collateral for an appeal bond, Trump said that the civil penalty was “a form of Navalny.” Watch the shocking video here: Biden-Harris HQ: "It is a form of Navalny."

So, President Biden is taking strong but measured actions against Putin for killing Navalny—as Biden promised to do if Navalny died in custody. Trump is lost in a fantasy world in which he plays the part of a martyred Russian patriot—a worrying sign of delusion in a man who wants to re-occupy the Oval Office.

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Nikki Haley says the truth: Trump is “meaner and more offensive by the day.”

Nikki Haley delivered what she described as a “major” speech ahead of the South Carolina GOP presidential primary on February 24. In the speech, Haley announced that she was not dropping out of the race even if she loses in South Carolina. But she had a few choice words for Trump. As reported by Politico,

Haley unleashed a torrent of criticism against the former president, calling him a “bully” who’s “getting meaner and more offensive by the day.” She argued that Trump is “completely distracted” from the campaign as he splits his time in courtrooms. She repeated her oft-used refrains that Trump has “gotten more unstable and unhinged.” And the former U.N. ambassador painted Trump as weak on national security, bashing him for “inviting” Russian President Vladimir Putin to “invade NATO countries.”

Three days before the GOP primary, the media is focused on the fact that Trump leads Haley by 30 percentage points (on average) in polling. The real story is that one-in-three  (33%) Republicans in South Carolina will vote for Nikki Haley—which, in this environment, should be viewed as a measure of the anti-Trump vote in a red state!

Trump is likely to do worse in South Carolina than Joe Biden did in New Hampshire—a state where Biden’s name did not appear on the ballot!

As it was in Iowa and New Hampshire, Trump's performance in South Carolina will be a measure of weakness for a man who is becoming “meaner and more offensive by the day.” But the media will not tell that story. You should. Trump is a weak candidate even in a red state.

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The FBI informant who lied about Joe Biden was getting information from Russian agents.

This is important. Take a moment to let it sink in.

Recall that last week, special counsel David C. Weiss indicted an FBI informant who was the primary source of bribery allegations against Joe Biden. (Weiss is the special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, so the fact that he indicted an important informant against Hunter and Joe Biden is remarkable, to say the least).

It turns out that the informant was not merely making up lies. He was passing on lies that he obtained from Russian intelligence agents. As posted by Charlie Sykes, CNN’s Reliable Sources disclosed the following information:

The informant . . . admitted during an interview with law enforcement that "officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing" along dirt about Hunter Biden.

That's according to documents Special Counsel David Weiss filed in court Tuesday.

As Todd Zwillich put it on X: “Just so everyone's clear: This would mean that Russia successfully used [Chuck] Grassley, [James] Comer, Fox News and others to damage the President of the United States and make fake info about him an article of faith on the right.”

In the court filing, Weiss also underscored the weight of Alexander Smirnov's alleged lies: “The false information he provided was not trivial. It targeted the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties in the United States,” Weiss wrote. “The effects of Smirnov’s false statements and fabricated information continue to be felt to this day.”

In short, the FBI informant engaged in election interference with the help of Russia to prevent Joe Biden from being elected! And that information formed the core of the sham impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden in the House!

This is a big deal. It deserves a LOT of attention from the major media outlets that devoted hundreds of major articles and broadcasts to repeating false information about Joe Biden that Russian intelligence agents planted!

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Alabama's decision that in vitro embryos are “human children” reverberates through America.

The decision by the Alabama Supreme Court holding that frozen embryos are “human children” protected by Alabama’s wrongful death statute has sent shockwaves across America. The implications of the ruling are staggering—in part because other conservative states will follow suit. In short order, it is likely that the legal risks associated with in vitro fertilization and contraception will cause healthcare providers and patients to forego IVF and contraception in dozens of states.

I will return to this subject in future editions but for now, see WaPo, Shock, anger, confusion grip Alabama after court ruling on embryos (Accessible to all).

If anyone needed a reminder of the ramifications of overruling Roe v. Wade, the Alabama decision will (sadly) bring the issue to the forefront once again. It is no exaggeration to say that the Republican agenda aims to deny women all control over their reproductive decisions—an outcome that can only be described as creating a “second-class” of citizens.

The only way to stop the inevitable subjugation of women to the state is to take control of state legislatures, governorships, the House, the Senate, and the presidency—at which point we can enlarge and reform the US Supreme Court.

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Concluding Thoughts.

My Managing Editor and I met with a second group of readers in Minneapolis on Tuesday. (Picture below.) As always, the readers were smart, motivated, and engaged. They are also fired up and willing to do the hard work necessary to win up and down the ballot in November.

For the most part, the major media has ignored the grassroots movement. Until recently. Having learned that Democrats have a secret weapon—hundreds of thousands of motivated volunteers—the media’s natural inclination is to explain why those volunteers don’t matter. The latest effort is by Katie Glueck in the NYTimes in an article titled, Anti-Trump Burnout: The Resistance Says It’s Exhausted.

There are many problems with Glueck’s article, some of which are described in a letter to the editor by The Grassroots Connector, which was published on Substack in an article by Bruce Watson entitled, "Anti-Trump Burnout?”.

Bruce Watson writes, in part,

The Times based its “burnout” on a curious collection of sources.  These included a D.C. woman selling “resistance-era apparel” and a Milwaukee woman who did not vote in 2020.  The Times did not cite a single volunteer.  Small wonder you missed the legions already devoting long hours to the coming election.

Got that? The Times writes about “anti-Trump” burnout among volunteers but has apparently never attended a meeting of actual volunteers doing the hard work of defending democracy.

If Glueck had bothered to attend a meeting of Indivisible, Swing Left, PostCardsToVoters, Field Team Six, Giving Circles, Markers for Democracy, Sister District, etc. she might have come away with a different perspective. But, hey, why let facts and research get in the way of a snappy, clickbait headline?

Indeed, Glueck would have been blown away by the dedication, passion, and determination of people who are giving their all to preserve democracy against an existential threat—a threat that Glueck sums up with this bizarre understatement: “Certainly, Mr. Trump is hardly a morning-in-America candidate.”

Curiously, Glueck never examines an obvious question: Why is there a perceived asymmetry in the exhaustion factor between those opposing Trump and those opposing Biden?

Could it be that one candidate attempted a coup, incited an insurrection, stole defense secrets, sexually abused women, calls his opponents “vermin,” wants police to act as storm troopers, threatens to withdraw from NATO, and proclaims his desire to be a “dictator for a day” while the other candidate works to protect and serve the American people?

Can Glueck not see that opposing a candidate who is an existential threat to democracy and opposing a candidate who is a decent man and great president are two different things?

Trump's strategy is to exhaust his opponents by flooding the zone with outrageous behavior—a strategy not acknowledged, much less discussed, by Glueck. And in accepting Trump's asymmetrical strategy as proof of a “crisis” among Democrats, Glueck and the NYTimes aid and abet Trump in executing on his strategy. Shame on them!

I write about the Times’s article not to upset you but to forewarn you. The media food chain works with the NYTimes at the top, setting an editorial agenda, which downstream outlets copy over the next several weeks. We will be living with derivations and variants of Glueck’s article for the next several weeks. Just remember, Glueck purports to describe a phenomenon without speaking to the people who could tell her whether the thesis of her article is true.

If she had been in Minneapolis on Tuesday evening with readers of this newsletter, she would have come to an entirely different conclusion.

Talk to you tomorrow!