Sometimes it seems like the media in this country sounds like a bunch of chattering magpies. They all use the same terminology, the same themes, and report the same news without much variation.
After the President's Warsaw speech, in which he inserted nine words and made a clear, firm statement that expressed exactly how he feels about what Vladimir Putin is doing to Ukraine, the media terminology started to come out. I heard "walking back" to describe Secretary of State Blinken's remarks attempting to explain exactly what President Biden meant by the remarks and I heard the word "gaffe" applied to the President's words themselves.
Baloney.
On MSNBC's Morning Joe program yesterday (3/29) Joe Scarborough really did a great job of putting the whole statement in its perspective. He was one of a few journalists who took the President's remarks at face value. Well, Scarborough has been around long enough, has enough experience and knows how bi-partisan politics work. He's also been around for most of Joe Biden's career in politics and he knows him, who he is, how he operates, what he thinks. And he thinks President Biden didn't mince any words in expressing himself.
It was not a gaffe, certainly not one of the kind of "off the top of his head" remarks that Trump came up with every time he held a microphone in his hand, making himself look confused, contradicting what he'd said before and demonstrating his ignorance. Nor was it the first time, looking back, as Scarborough pointed out, that a President of the United States has talked tough to Russia, or about Russia. The President was sending a message. And you can bet it was clearly received. There's no need for anyone to try to walk this back and the President has made that very clear.
So much for Republican talking points about this President being "weak."
No NATO Alliance Without President Biden's Leadership
The support that President Biden has rebuilt among our NATO allies is the result of his years of experience in foreign policy, his grasp of the way things are right now, especially with Russia and Putin, and his reputation for his past work that the leaders of NATO countries have either seen first-hand, or know by reputation. The involvement of the United States was crucial to getting sanctions at a level that has crippled and devastated the Russian economy in just a month. The President's Warsaw speech, on top of everything else he has done, is the icing on the cake. Those nine words say an awful lot, not only about how the President feels about what's happening, but they also put Republican criticism of his "weakness" in the trash bin. This is neither a weak President, nor a demented one.
And the same cannot be said about his predecessor.
If Trump had remained in office, there would be no sanctions. He wanted to throw out the ones that were in place from Putin's invasion of the Donbas and Crimea, but was prevented from doing so by constitutional limits on his powers. The Europeans, who are much closer to the Russian threat than the United States, would very likely have gone ahead with sanctions of their own, but without the power of the world's largest economy behind them, would have not had anywhere near the devastating effect that they have produced. Pulling this alliance back together is a critical move in preserving liberty and representative democracy in the world, and Trump wasn't interested in doing that at all. The question wouldn't be one of Ukrainian resistance and survival, it would have been which Eastern European democracy was Putin going to destroy next.
Putin Must Still Be Defeated in America
I haven't heard any of the media talking heads actually ask a Ukrainian, especially one of the refugees, what they think about the seditious Trump insurrection of January 6, 2021. The answer might prove to be too embarrassing, especially with the images of the destruction occurring in Kharkiv, Kiyv, Mariupol, and other Ukrainian towns and cities. Americans, who live in liberty, trying to subvert their own constitution and fighting against the votes and the will of the people, would not make sense to most Ukrainians, many of whom still remember what life was like under the Soviet Union.
Putin's fingerprints were all over that January 6th Trump insurrection. That violent insurrectionist mob was fighting against everything that the Ukrainians are now fighting for. Maybe seeing the images of Ukraine's ruined cities, and the refugees flooding into Eastern Europe will get not only Democrats, but all Americans moving to make sure that everyone who was associated with the planning and conducting of that Trump insurrection is brought to justice. We can't afford to be apathetic or indifferent, or afraid of the inflated balloon of "political consequences." We're providing weapons and money to help the Ukrainians get Putin out of their country. We need to provide the incentive and put the pressure on our politicians to get him out of ours.
President Biden was right.
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