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Blaming Zelensky For Ukraine War, Trump Attacks Media And Spews Fake History

President Donald Trump is victim-blaming Ukraine after Russia carried out a missile attack on civilians at a Palm Sunday celebration in the city of Sumy, killing at least 34 people, including two children.

On Sunday night after the bombing, Trump said in an interview on Air Force One that the ballistic missile attack was “a mistake" and a “horrible thing”—even though a ballistic missile attack has to be directed and thus could not have been a benign error as Trump suggested.

But on Monday morning, Trump’s tone grew angry as he blamed former President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the attack that Russia carried out, writing in one of his embarrassing Truth Social missives:

The War between Russia and Ukraine is Biden’s war, not mine. I just got here, and for four years during my term, had no problem in preventing it from happening. President Putin, and everyone else, respected your President! I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS WAR, BUT AM WORKING DILIGENTLY TO GET THE DEATH AND DESTRUCTION TO STOP. If the 2020 Presidential Election was not RIGGED, and it was, in so many ways, that horrible War would never have happened. President Zelenskyy and Crooked Joe Biden did an absolutely horrible job in allowing this travesty to begin. There were so many ways of preventing it from ever starting. But that is the past. Now we have to get it to STOP, AND FAST. SO SAD!

Let’s set aside the fact that it’s sociopathic to bring everything back to the 2020 election, which Trump still says was rigged, even though it wasn’t. To again blame Biden and Zelensky for a war that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is 100% responsible for is sick and twisted—and raises questions about why Trump refuses to assign Putin any fault for his actions.

Trump dug in later on Monday as well. In the Oval Office, Trump told reporters, “[Zelensky is] always looking to purchase missiles. … Listen, when you start a war, you gotta know you can win a war. You don't start a war against somebody that's 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles.”

Trump has repeatedly blamed Zelensky over Putin.

In February, Trump repeated Russian propaganda when he ridiculously accused Zelensky of being a “dictator” for not holding an election in his war-torn country.

Later that month, Trump attacked Zelenskyy in a disgraceful Oval Office ambush, in which Trump and Vice President JD Vance teamed up on Zelensky to demand he be more grateful for American aid in the war.

And on March 31, Trump threatened Zelenskyy with “big, big problems” if Zelenskyy were to back out of a minerals deal.

Trump’s change of tone on Monday over the horrific attack Russia carried out on Ukrainian civilians is likely a response to an interview Zelensky gave to 60 Minutes, which aired on Sunday night.

"I believe, sadly, Russian narratives are prevailing in the U.S.,” Zelensky said. “How is it possible to witness our losses and our suffering, to understand what the Russians are doing, and to still believe that they are not the aggressors, that they did not start this war? This speaks to the enormous influence of Russia's information policy on America, on U.S. politics, and U.S. politicians.”

That clearly pissed off Trump, who demanded CBS News lose its broadcast license for airing the segment. Trump wrote on Truth Social:

They [“60 Minutes”] are not a “News Show,” but a dishonest Political Operative simply disguised as “News,” and must be responsible for what they have done, and are doing. They should lose their license! Hopefully, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), as headed by its Highly Respected Chairman, Brendan Carr, will impose the maximum fines and punishment, which is substantial, for their unlawful and illegal behavior. CBS is out of control, at levels never seen before, and they should pay a big price for this. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Trump is angry that he hasn’t been able to end the war on Day 1, as he repeatedly promised during the campaign.

Worse for Trump is that his embrace of Putin and attacks on Zelensky are losing him support from voters.

A Gallup survey released on March 18 found that 46 percent of Americans believe the United States is not doing enough to help Ukraine fend off Russia’s attacks—a 16-percentage-point increase since December.

An NBC News poll from about the same time found that 61 percent of registered voters side with Ukraine over Russia. Yet a plurality (49 percent) thinks Trump sides with Russia over Ukraine.

“I cannot recall a moment in history when American public opinion and voters’ views of a president, as to which country they are more aligned with, have been more in conflict with each other,” Jeff Horwitt, a Democratic pollster who jointly conducted the poll with Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, told NBC News.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

'Hellfire Missiles' For Mexico: Anti-Migrant Rhetoric Escalates At CPAC

Anti-migrant rhetoric took center stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference as right-wing pundits and politicians unleashed a torrent of xenophobia over the course of several days, signaling the central role that nativism will likely play in the 2024 presidential election.

With former President Donald Trump now the de facto Republican presidential candidate, the entire right-wing media ecosystem has embraced his signature anti-immigrant positions. At CPAC, which took place just outside of Washington, D.C., this week, speakers baselessly blamed migrants for a host of perceived social ills and proposed radical policies to punish them and their home countries.

Fox News contributor Tom Homan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Trump, pledged that his former boss would bomb Mexican drug cartels if given a second term.

“President Trump will declare them a terrorist organization, he will send a Hellfire rocket down there, and he’ll take the cartels out,” Homan said.

Even though launching missiles at the United States' neighbor and largest trading partner poses a number of obvious risks, Homan has long supported designating Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations to empower federal law enforcement to wage war against cartels on their home soil. Under Trump, Homan was one of the architects of the administration’s family separation policy, and he has extensive ties to the nativist Tanton network.

During a panel discussion about immigration, Homan — who has promised to return to government if Trump gets reelected and once again nominates him to lead ICE — repeated his promise to carry out the largest deportation operation in the country’s history.

"For the millions of illegal aliens that have been released in this country — don’t get too comfortable, because we’re coming looking for you,” Homan threatened. “There has to be an historic deportation operation at the end of historic illegal immigration,” he added.

Trump adviser Stephen Miller made similarly extreme comments and repeated his call for the military to establish “large-scale staging grounds for removal” of migrants. In Miller’s telling, “You grab illegal immigrants, and then you move them to the staging grounds, and that’s where the planes are waiting.”

“The military has the right to establish a fortress position on the border, and to say ‘No one can cross here at all,’” Miller added.

If a future Trump administration attempted to enact Miller’s policy wish list, it would almost certainly run into a number of legal, diplomatic, and logistical obstacles — not least of all that federal law bars the military from engaging in domestic law enforcement.

The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles dismissed the central role immigration played in the development of the United States.

“We are told that we must tolerate the destruction of our borders, and the invasion of our country, because we are a nation of immigrants,” Knowles said. "As a matter of history, we are not, in fact, a nation of immigrants,” he added.

Knowles is exactly wrong, though he is correct that the United States has a long history of anti-immigrant bigotry.

Last year, Knowles said that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely,” a comment he referenced in his speech this year, folding it into his anti-immigrant rant.

“We know the difference between a man and a woman,” Knowles said. “We know the difference between an American and everyone else.”

Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law and current hopeful to co-run the Republican National Committee, fearmongered about the “millions and millions of people flooding into our country illegally” across the southern border who have been “given a red carpet rollout and reception by Joe and Kamala."

Ben Carson, who served as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Trump, warned that immigration is an existential threat to the United States.

Carson asserted: “Our leaders are determined to repeat every mistake that led to the collapse of empires before us.” Among those mistakes, he cited “mass immigration and infiltration by foreigners who don't share our values and culture or even our language."

For months, Trump and his advisers have previewed extreme plans to deploy the military and use law enforcement to deport as many as 10 million people living in the United States without authorization. The speakers at CPAC are joining others in right-wing media in helping to lay the foundation for that horrifying proposition — to standing ovations from an audience that demands nothing less.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

China To Parade High-Tech Weaponry In Signal Of Strength, And Shop Window

By Megha Rajagopalan

BEIJING (Reuters) – From ballistic missiles to fighter jets, China has rolled out a host of high-tech weaponry ahead of a parade next week commemorating victory over Japan in World War Two, in a signal of Beijing’s growing confidence in its military might.

China has poured capital into developing its home-grown weapons industry with an eye toward export markets as it projects greater military power in disputed waters in the South and East China Seas.

Qu Rui, a military official and deputy director of the office organizing the parade, says all the weapons and equipment on show would be Chinese-made, 84 percent shown for the first time. “They represent the new development, new achievements and new images of the building of the Chinese armed forces,” he said at a recent briefing.

Chinese officials have repeatedly said the military parade is not directed at any other country, but diplomats and experts say countries with which Beijing has territorial disputes, including Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, may react with uneasiness to the broad display of military power.

“It’s possible that Japan and Southeast Asian countries will interpret this as a kind of warning to them,” said Xie Yue, a political scientist at Tongji University. “I can’t say whether that’s warranted or not.”

State media has reported that the parade, which involves more than 10 foreign military delegations including Russia, is the first in which China has showed off such a broad array of weapons.

BIGGEST DISPLAY YET

Qu said 12,000 Chinese troops would take part, along with 500 pieces of equipment and nearly 200 aircraft. Air echelons on display will include bombers, fighters and carrier-based aircraft.

Several ballistic missiles – including one that analysts say is capable of reaching a U.S. base in Guam – were spotted during parade rehearsals, Shao Yongling, a senior colonel from the PLA Second Artillery Command College, told the state-owned Global Times newspaper.

The Second Artillery Force, the nuclear force, is set to display seven types of missiles including conventional and nuclear models, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing unnamed military sources. “The scale and number of missiles will surpass any previous outing,” the source told Xinhua.

The parade will also involve modern tanks and missile-launchers, state media has reported. An upgraded long-range bomber will also be on display, flying in formation over Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on Thursday, a leading pilot of the formation told Xinhua.

The latest version of the J-15 aircraft carrier-based fighter jet has also been seen in rehearsals, Beijing-based air defense expert Fu Qianshao told the Global Times. Medium-sized early warning and control aircraft, used for surveillance and other missions, will lead ten formations at the parade.

A formation of military helicopters flew over Beijing during a parade rehearsal last weekend as tanks rolled through parts of the capital.

Sino-Japan relations have long been affected by what China sees as Japan’s failure to atone for its occupation of parts of China before and during the war. Western and Chinese historians estimate millions of Chinese civilians were killed.

Jack Midgley, a defense expert at Deloitte, said next week’s parade was not necessarily meant to send a message to the West or other countries in the region.

“It’s to demonstrate China has achieved first-world status with its military, and to display its products for foreign buyers,” he said, adding much of the weaponry will already be familiar to foreign military analysts and intelligence services.

(Reporting by Megha Rajagopalan; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

Photo: Paramilitary policemen and members of a gun salute team fire cannons during a training session for a military parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the World War Two, at a military base in Beijing, China, August 1, 2015. China will hold the parade on September 3, Picture taken August 1, 2015. (REUTERS/Stringer)

North Korea Claims Ability To Mount Nuclear Warhead On Missile

By Andrew Davis, Bloomberg News (TNS)

HONG KONG — North Korea said it has developed the technology to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile, signaling the country may now have the ability to launch a nuclear attack against the United States.

South Korea and the U.S. military have been divided over whether North Korea could shrink a warhead sufficiently to fit it on a nuclear-tipped missile. A spokesman at the National Defense Commission in Pyongyang said the military has mastered the engineering and will diversify its nuclear weapons, the official Korean Central News Agency reported Wednesday.

North Korea has successfully detonated three nuclear devices at a test site and has been improving the range of its ballistic missiles in defiance of United Nations sanctions over its weapons program. The U.S., China, and South Korea have been unable to convince the Kim Jong Un regime to return to disarmament talks, and there are signs that North Korea is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal.

The announcement comes weeks after the country released video of Kim watching what the official media said was the launch of a ballistic missile from a submarine. U.S. and South Korean officials have questioned the veracity of the test, with Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min Seok saying on May 11 that the North was still likely years away from being able to master a submarine missile launch.

South Korea has also questioned whether its rival can miniaturize a warhead, with Kim Min Seok saying in February there was no evidence that the government in Pyongyang has the ability to tip a missile with a nuclear warhead.

That assessment contrasts with the position of William Gortney, the head of the U.S. Northern Command, who said April seventh that North Korea does have the technology and has also managed to deploy a road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile — the KN-08 — capable of reaching the U.S.

“Our assessment is that they have the ability to put a nuclear weapon on a KN-08 and shoot it at the homeland,” Gortney said. “We have not seen them do that” and “we haven’t seen them test the KN-08.”

North Korea last tested a nuclear device in February 2013; just how many warheads North Korea has been able to build remains a mystery. Top Chinese nuclear weapons experts have increased their estimates of North Korean warhead production beyond most previous U.S. projections, the Wall Street Journal reported on April 23.

The Kim regime has 20 warheads and has the capacity to produce enough weapons-grade uranium to double its arsenal by next year, the paper reported, citing people briefed on the matter. That compares with the estimate of 10 to 16 warheads released in February by U.S. researcher Joel Wit.

Photo: Steve Herman via Flickr

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Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

Blaming Zelensky For Ukraine War, Trump Attacks Media And Spews Fake History

'Hellfire Missiles' For Mexico: Anti-Migrant Rhetoric Escalates At CPAC

China To Parade High-Tech Weaponry In Signal Of Strength, And Shop Window

North Korea Claims Ability To Mount Nuclear Warhead On Missile

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