Putin uses Tucker Carlson interview to take shots at Zelenskyy  (AND TRUDEAU)

over Yaroslav Hunka affair 

HUNKA A WW 2 VET OF THE 

UKR NATIONALIST ARMY  (ALIGNED WITH THE NAZI'S)PROMOTED BY UKR NATIONALISTS IN CANADA

CBC
Thu, February 8, 2024 

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with U.S. media personality Tucker Carlson in an interview conducted in Moscow on Tuesday and released on his Tucker Carlson Network website Thursday evening. (Tucker Carlson Network/Reuters - image credit)

Russian President Vladimir Putin used an interview with U.S. media personality Tucker Carlson to take a shot at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for joining in a standing ovation for a veteran of a Second World War Nazi unit during his visit to Canada.

Zelenskyy gave an address to Parliament during the September visit. He was introduced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and thanked by then-Speaker of the House Anthony Rota.

During his remarks, Rota recognized a man from his riding, Yaroslav Hunka, and praised the Ukrainian Canadian for fighting the Russians during the Second World War. Zelenskyy, Trudeau and the rest of the House rose to applaud Hunka.

Media reports later revealed that Hunka fought with the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, also known as the SS 14th Waffen Division and sometimes the First Ukrainian Division. The unit was made up of Ukrainian volunteers from Galicia and was under Nazi command.

Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press

"The president of Ukraine stood up with the entire Parliament of Canada and applauded this man. How can this be imagined?" Putin told Carlson through a translator. Carlson posted the interview on X, formerly Twitter.

While historians say men joined the unit for a variety of reasons — including a desire to fight for Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union — the incident was a major diplomatic embarrassment for Canada.

Putin has repeatedly claimed he is waging war on Ukraine in order to "de-Nazify" the country and has jumped on the Hunka affair to justify his argument in the past.

Western allies, including Canada, have consistently pushed back against those claims, calling Russia's full-scale invasion a blatant violation of Ukraine's sovereignty.

During the interview, Putin suggested that the Hunka affair is "being silenced in Western countries," despite extensive media coverage of the incident last fall.

The Russian president has greatly limited his contact with international media since he launched the full-scale war in Ukraine in February 2022.

Western journalists were invited to Putin's annual press conference in December — the first since the war began — but only two were given the chance to ask a question.

Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters that Carlson was chosen for the interview because "he has a position which differs" from other English-language media.

Before his exit from Fox News, Carlson repeatedly questioned the validity of U.S. support for Ukraine following the Russian invasion and speculated about why Americans are told to hate Putin so much. His commentaries were frequently circulated on Russian state-run media.

Tucker Carlson Network/Reuters

Carlson's trip comes as he aligns himself with former U.S. president Donald Trump in a growing split in the Republican party over Putin and the Ukraine war. Trump has pushed to cut off aid to Ukraine, and the GOP majority controlling the House of Representatives has so far complied.

The U.S. has sent Ukraine more than $110 billion US in aid since Russia invaded in February 2022.

Putin's stance on wider war in Europe

Putin, speaking in Russian with his words dubbed into English, made lengthy remarks about Russia's relations with Ukraine, Poland and other countries during the interview, which was more than two hours long.

He said he had no interest in expanding its war in Ukraine to other countries such as Poland and Latvia.

Asked if he could imagine a scenario in which he would send Russian troops to Poland, a NATO member. Putin replied: "Only in one case, if Poland attacks Russia. Why? Because we have no interest in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else. Why would we do that? We simply don't have any interest."

Putin, who will be seeking a fifth term as president in this year's election, said Western leaders had come to realize it was impossible inflict a strategic defeat on Russia and were wondering what to do next.

"We are ready for this dialogue," he said.

Putin devoted a substantial part of the interview to complaining that Ukraine had been on the verge of agreeing a deal to end hostilities at talks in Istanbul in April 2022, but backed away, he said, once Russian troops withdrew from near Kyiv.

| Vladimir Putin says Russia will intensify attacks on Ukaine:

"Well now let them think how to reverse the situation," he said. "We're not against it. It would be funny if it were not so sad … this endless mobilization in Ukraine, the hysteria, the domestic problems, sooner or later it will result in an agreement."

The Russian leader said the U.S. had pressing domestic issues to worry about.

"Wouldn't it be better to negotiate with Russia? Make an agreement. Already understanding the situation that is developing today, realizing that Russia will fight for its interests to the end," Putin said.

Washington has made clear it has no interest in talking on Putin's terms.


U.S. journalist's release possible

Putin told Carlson that it might be possible to free Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who is awaiting trial on spying charges, in exchange for a Russian prisoner.

He said Russian and American special services were discussing the case and had made some progress.

The Russian president suggested that in return, Moscow wanted Germany to free Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted of the 2019 murder of a Chechen dissident in Berlin.

Gershkovich was arrested on March 29, 2023 in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg and accused of trying to obtain defence secrets. He and his newspaper strongly reject the charges and the U.S. government has designated him as wrongfully detained.

Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters

Russia and the United States have agreed high-profile prisoner swaps in the past — most recently in December 2022, when Moscow traded Brittney Griner, a U.S. basketball star convicted of a drugs offence in Russia, for Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout.

Putin, without mentioning Krasikov by name, referred to a person who "due to patriotic sentiments, eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals."

Last month a Moscow court extended Gershkovich's custody by two months. Putin said the reporter had been "caught red handed when he was secretly getting confidential information."

Putin likely chose Tucker Carlson because of his ignorance of Russia, and it showed

Tom Porter

BUSINESS INSIDER
Updated Fri, February 9, 2024 

• The former Fox News host Tucker Carlson interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin.

• Putin most likely chose Carlson because of his ignorance of Russia and its history.

• Putin steamrolled Carlson with two hours of dubious history that he used to justify war on Ukraine.

Tucker Carlson claimed to be venturing into territory no other Western journalist had dared in interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin itself had hyped Carlson's credentials, saying he was the only Western journalist granted permission to talk to Putin in two years because his position was "in clear contrast to the position of the traditional Anglo-Saxon media."

But when the interview was released on Thursday, another likely reason Putin chose the former Fox News host for the two-hour interview became clear.

For much of it, Carlson sat in silence as Putin expounded his dubious historical theories about Ukraine, aired his grievances, and pushed MAGA talking points designed to appeal to Carlson's core audience.

"This is a stage for Big Vlad to showboat," Ian Garner, an expert on Russian propaganda, wrote on X as Putin seized control of the interview.

Putin has used these theories to justify his brutal invasion of Ukraine, where, according to the UN Human Rights Council, Russia has used mass killings, rape, and torture in an attempt to subjugate the country. Putin even published an essay on the theories just ahead of the invasion.

It matters because Putin is seeking to erode support for Ukraine among the GOP voters who form Carlson's core audience as congressional Republicans continue to block a $66 billion Ukraine aid bill.

Carlson seemed to lack the knowledge or willingness to offer even the most cursory pushback. He can perhaps be forgiven for appearing bemused when Putin started lecturing him on obscure historical figures, such as Rurik of Novgorod, but offered no challenge even as Putin discussed more recent events.

For instance, he allowed Putin to claim that the 2014 Maidan protests, in which Ukrainians took to the streets to demand freedom from Russian control, were a CIA plot. There's no evidence of this.

He also allowed Putin to claim, unchallenged, that Russia sought peace with Ukraine before launching the 2022 invasion. There's no evidence of this, with Russia illegally seizing swaths of Ukraine in 2014 and stoking conflict in the east of the country.

Putin was also able to claim, unchallenged, that the invasion was a bid to "de-Nazify" the country and not the campaign of revanchist conquest it is in reality.

Putin was given a two-hour platform to further undermine Republican support for Ukraine and offer an alternative version of history in which the US and NATO were the true aggressors.

Carlson will probably see a huge boost in his audience from the interview. Since his ouster from Fox News in 2023, he's been reduced to interviewing fringe figures such as an online conspiracy theorist who goes by the name "Catturd."

But in increasing his own profile, he's allowed Putin to present his alternative and vastly destructive historical theories to a whole new audience.

In response to earlier allegations that he was a pawn of Putin, Carlson told Axios in 2022: "I could care less."

"It's too stupid," he added. "I don't speak Russian. I've never been to Russia. I'm not that interested in Russia. All I care about is the fortunes of the United States because I have four children who live here."

That ignorance of Russia may be coming back to haunt him.

Who is Tucker Carlson, the man interviewing Vladimir Putin?

BBC
Thu, February 8, 2024

Tucker Carlson speaks during 2022 FOX Nation Patriot Awards at Hard Rock Live at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood on November 17, 2022 in Hollywood, Florid

American journalist Tucker Carlson is the first Western journalist to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin since his country's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The televised sit-down will air on Thursday, bringing a fresh wave of attention to Mr Carlson, once one of the highest-rated hosts in US network news and now an industry outsider.

In April of last year, around 8pm on a Friday night, Tucker Carlson addressed his viewers.

During his nightly broadcast on Fox News, he had run through a number of segments, all with his signature right-wing bent.

He lambasted President Joe Biden's plans to address racial biases in housing, attacked Mr Biden's son, Hunter, and mocked a commonly used acronym for gay, lesbian and transgender people.

At the end, he gave a cheery sign-off.

"We'll be back on Monday," he said. "In the meantime, have the best weekend with the ones that you love, and we'll see you then."

But Mr Carlson never returned.

That next Monday, the Rupert Murdoch-controlled Fox announced the network and its most popular personality had agreed to "part ways". Tucker Carlson Tonight was no longer.

For six years, the hour-long prime-time programme had ruled the conservative airways, consistently drawing about three million viewers each evening.

And for Mr Carlson, now 54, the show had marked the peak of a career decades in the making.

The Californian - son of an artist and a roving journalist - had first entered the media world in the 1990s, writing for several prominent publications, including New York Magazine, Esquire and The New Republic.

In 2010, with his former university roommate Neil Patel, he founded the conservative news website The Daily Caller, seen as an alternative to left-leaning websites like Huffington Post. The site promised to emphasise original reporting over punditry, but was criticised for publishing unproven allegations against Democratic politicians and promoting racist and sexist stereotypes.

Mr Carlson cut ties with the site in 2020.

Mr Carlson pictured in the office of the Daily Caller, the conservative site he launched in 2010

As he grew his influence online, Mr Carlson also made a foray into broadcast. He worked as a commentator for CNN in the early 2000s before joining MSNBC to host a nightly programme.

It was here that Mr Carlson sharpened his conservative stances, growing increasingly critical of immigration - which he sometimes called an "invasion" - and becoming a voice for the Republican party's nativist wing.

After moving to Fox in 2009, Mr Carlson bounced around the network's minor leagues, including a 2013 stint as weekend co-host of its morning show, where he once fell asleep on air.

By 2016, he was ready for prime-time, launching Tucker Carlson Tonight just a few days after Donald Trump was elected president.

The debut episode attracted nearly four million viewers. But the host caught an even bigger break the next year, when Fox News fired Bill O'Reilly, its most popular host at the time.

Now there was an opening for the next network star, and Mr Carlson promptly took it.

With Mr Trump in the White House, he rode the wave of populist outrage that fuelled the Republican's political victory. His popularity ballooned, and his programme frequently set the agenda for conservatives and, by extension, the Republican party.

As he became appointment viewing for the political right, Mr Carlson also drew fire from fact-checkers and activists, who accused him of pushing racist and nationalist talking points, including the so-called "great replacement" conspiracy theory which claims a cabal of people is plotting to change the demographics of Western countries.

In one episode, he advocated for the US invasion of Canada. In another, he called the metric system the "yoke of tyranny".

And on several occasions, he used his perch at Fox to defend Russia's President Putin.

His controversial statements did not go unnoticed by Fox, who saw several large companies pull advertisements in protest. But for the most part, the network left him to his own devices.

With Donald Trump in the White House, Mr Carlson's popularity ballooned

Then, in April of last year, Mr Carlson's run at Fox came to a sudden end.

The network gave no formal reason for his dismissal, but Mr Carlson's departure was just days after Fox News paid an extraordinary $787m (£633m) settlement to Dominion Voting Systems over false election claims. The lawsuit revealed, among other things, that Mr Carlson derided Mr Trump's election fraud claims in private messages while backing them publicly on the air.

After a few weeks of quiet, Mr Carlson announced he would begin a new show on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

"Facts have been withheld on purpose along with proportion and perspective. You are being manipulated," he said in the announcement.

That December saw the birth of a paid streaming service, the Tucker Carlson Network, which Mr Carlson framed as free from corporate influence.

His content and guests have become increasingly fringe.

In July, he published a two-and-a-half hour interview with Andrew Tate, the British-American influencer accused in Romania of rape, human trafficking and forming an organised crime group to sexually exploit women.

He also posted a surprise Christmas Eve fireside chat with disgraced actor Kevin Spacey, as he reprised his role as House of Cards lead character, the fictional President Frank Underwood.

Largely, Mr Carlson has failed to re-create the popularity and attention he enjoyed at Fox. Mr Putin's appearance promises be a boon for him, and possibly a way for his star to rise again.

With reporting from Kayla Epstein & Madeline Halpert

Guy Stern, German-Jewish American GI who interrogated Nazi troops as one of the Ritchie Boys – obituary

Telegraph Obituaries
Fri, February 9, 2024 

Guy Stern on entering the US Army: after escaping to America in 1937, he never saw his family again

Guy Stern, who has died aged 101, was a German-born member of the Ritchie Boys, an American Military Intelligence interrogation unit, in the Second World War.

The Ritchie Boys were composed of German, Austrian and Czech refugees and immigrants, many of them, like Stern, Jewish. They were encouraged to converse in the language of their enemies and were selected for their linguistic skills, cultural background and intelligence.

In June 1944, shortly after D-Day, Stern embarked at Southampton and landed in Normandy. Within minutes, he was using abandoned crates as makeshift interrogation tables and chairs. The first German PoW that he interrogated was a tough artilleryman.


The man had been thoroughly briefed on his rights and was showing no sign of cooperating when a German shell came right over their heads. Both men knew that more were probably on their way. Stern’s questioning became urgent and menacing. He wanted answers at once. The man gave way.

After several successful interrogations, Stern was promoted to sergeant and given the task of collating and analysing reports from multiple sources. He was able to assess the state of German morale and to answer the question of how they managed to repair bombed railway tracks and rolling stock so quickly.

Guy Stern, left, on VE Day, May 1945, in Germany, with his fellow soldiers Walter Sears (centre) and Fred Howard (right)

Were there diseases among the German troops which might infect the Allied forces? What were the Allies’ most (and least) effective propaganda leaflets in Germany? Were the Germans close to launching a new rocket or embarking on chemical warfare? What progress had they made towards making an atomic bomb? Stern’s reports provided vital information.

He and his team were also in constant demand from bomber pilots who wanted the exact coordinates of important strategic targets. Their work, however, was hindered by the difficulty of persuading the most intransigent PoWs to give information.

They resolved, therefore, to tap into their prisoners’ greatest dread, the fear that they would be handed over to the Russians and sent to gulags in Siberia where they would probably starve to death. Stern was re-invented as Commissar Krukow, an irascible, semi-demented Russian liaison officer.

A uniform was found for him and he adopted a harsh Russian accent and a range of alarming growls and gesticulations. As the Allies advanced through Belgium, Holland and Germany, he and his comrades were constantly engaged in psychological warfare and, for the most part, this new stratagem worked.

After a Nazi officer specifically ordered the killing of captured German Jews, two fellow Ritchie Boys from another team were executed. Stern and his colleagues found the makeshift graves of their comrades. They resolved to gather every piece of evidence and this led to the reported capture, trial and execution of the man after the war.


Guy Stern's parents, Julius and Hedwig, and his siblings Werner and Eleonore, in 1938, the year after he had been sent to America: he never saw them again

Stern carried out mass interrogations of members of the Volkssturm to assess their capability to fight. These were over-age men and under-age boys who had been drafted into the German army in the final stages of the war. By the end of hostilities, Stern held the rank of master-sergeant and had been awarded the Bronze Star Medal.

He was born Günther Stern, the son of Julius Stern and Hedwig (née Silberberg), at Hildesheim, Germany, on January 14 1922. He had a younger brother and sister. His father sold clothing materials and was often travelling and away from home.

After the Nazis came to power in 1933, the treatment of Jews became increasingly oppressive. At young Günther’s school, during a history lesson, the teacher handed out razor blades and the class had to cut out the pages in their text books indicated on the blackboard. All Jewish achievements were excised and replaced by distortions and falsehoods.

One evening, his father was putting letters in the mailbox when he was brutally beaten by a uniformed SS man. He only managed to get home with the help of a policeman.

Aged 14, young Günther was removed from high school by his father and an English tutor was hired to teach him. His Uncle Benno and Aunt Ethel, who lived in St Louis, Missouri, agreed to help him get to America and become his guardians.

With the help of a consular official in Hamburg, in November 1937, Günther left Germany and embarked for New York. He never saw his family again.

After completing high school, he enrolled at St Louis University and worked as a waiter in restaurants to pay for his tuition. When America entered the Second World War, Stern was enrolled in US Army Military Intelligence.

Together with many other foreign-born GIs, he became a naturalised American citizen and formally changed his name from Günther to Guy. After several weeks of basic training at the Induction Center, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, he was posted to the Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie, Maryland.

With the Ritchie Boys, Stern studied enemy intelligence, uniforms, aerial maps and orders of battle. He received close combat and weapons training, as well as instruction in encoding and deciphering messages and in conducting interrogations.

After a final examination, in which he interrogated German PoWs captured in North Africa, he and his intake were taken on manoeuvres. The camp was set up on the edge of a swamp, the small tents anchored in mud. They were visited by unfriendly tarantulas and an aggressive herd of razorback pigs.

At night, their team leader, in a cosy nightshirt, stretched out comfortably in a hammock sent to him by his rich family. This infuriated Stern and his comrades who had to sleep in the mud in their underwear. Determined to avenge themselves, one morning, while their leader was at HQ, they dug a slit trench under the hammock and filled it with garbage.

Late that night, a single file of pigs led by a large hungry boar tipped the team leader out of his hammock and started rooting around in search of a midnight feast. The unfortunate man fled, crying out: “Help! The pigs are after me!”

In 1944, Stern embarked for England in a banana boat. Equipped with field glasses, he was on night watch looking out for the periscopes of U-boats. The south of England had been turned into an armed camp in preparation for D-Day. Clifton College, Bristol, had been requisitioned by the US Army and Stern was billeted in the city.


Guy Stern at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies

After the war, he visited Hildesheim and learned that his former home had been confiscated by the Nazi government and his family had been sent to the Warsaw Ghetto. He never discovered whether they had perished there or in one of the Nazi concentration camps.

He went back to New York City and, in 1948, he received a degree in Romance Languages from Hofstra University. He was up at Columbia University until 1955 and, after being awarded a doctorate, he became an assistant professor at Denison University, Ohio.

In the 1960s, he was head of the department for German language and literature at the University of Cincinnati. He was later head of German and Slavic Studies at the University of Maryland, then served as professor of German literature and cultural history at Wayne State University, Detroit, until his retirement.

Stern was the director of the Harry and Wanda Zekelman International Institute of the Righteous at the Holocaust Memorial Center, Farmington Hills, near Detroit. In 2017, the French government appointed him to the Legion of Honour. He was also made an honorary citizen of Hildesheim.

He published Invisible Ink (2020), an autobiography, and several books on German literary history.

Guy Stern married, in 1948, Margith Langweiler. Their child died in infancy and they adopted a month-old son, Mark, who predeceased him. After the marriage failed, he married Judith Owens, a schoolteacher, who also predeceased him.

In 2006, he married Susanna Piontek, a Polish-born writer, whom he met in Germany and who survives him.

Guy Stern, born January 14 1922, died December 7 2023

How Trump wins from his damaging trade wars


Rick Newman
·Senior Columnist
Fri, February 9, 2024 

Donald Trump’s trade wars flopped.

The former president promised to boost American manufacturing through import tariffs and other protectionist measures, and it didn’t work. Yet the voters Trump was appealing to rewarded him anyway, according to a new study by prominent trade economists. That may explain why Trump now says he’ll intensify his trade wars if elected to a second term.

Economists bristle at the popular appeal of tariffs and other barriers to trade, which might sound like they protect American jobs but generally depress growth and raise costs. Trump disregarded such concerns as president, imposing new tariffs of up to 25% on about half of all Chinese imports to the United States. President Joe Biden left those in place after he took office in 2021, probably because repealing them could have made him look "soft on China."

Trump says he’ll add a new 60% tariff to all Chinese imports if he wins a second term. That would be economic folly, but it might have a political payoff — and a new analysis of Trump’s first trade war helps explain why. The study, by economists David Autor, Anne Beck, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson, found that Trump’s China tariffs did more harm than good to the US economy. Yet they boosted political support for Trump in key parts of the country. Whether through Trump’s hucksterism or some other machination, voters seemingly embraced a policy that helped nobody and hurt some.

Trump’s principal beef on trade is the large US deficit in goods with China.

We buy much more of their stuff than they buy of ours. Economists generally say trade deficits aren’t a problem, as long as the domestic economy is innovative and growing. But Trump insisted on tariffs to raise the cost of Chinese imports, which he said would spur more domestic production and create new American jobs. In 2018 and 2019, he imposed tariffs ranging from 7.5% to 25% on about half of all Chinese imports, or about $360 billion worth of products.

China retaliated with tariffs on imports from the United States, targeting agricultural products such as pork, soybeans, and cotton. China stopped buying some American products altogether, causing the US farm sector billions in annual losses. To help offset that, Trump set up a bailout fund for farmers hurt by the trade war.

All of that accomplished nothing and arguably worse than nothing.

The US trade deficit with China has declined from $379 billion in 2017, before Trump launched his trade war, to $279 billion in 2023. But the US trade deficit with other nations, such as Vietnam and Mexico, has soared, largely because Chinese producers began routing their products through third-party nations not subject to the tariffs. The nation’s trade deficit in goods with the whole world hit nearly $1.1 trillion in 2023, 34% more than in 2017.

To figure out whether the Trump tariffs boosted American output or employment, the Autor analysis isolated regions and sectors, such as manufacturing in the Midwest, which should have benefited from the Trump tariffs. They didn’t. The study has three conclusions: First, the Trump tariffs produced no boost in manufacturing employment. Second, China’s retaliatory tariffs reduced US agricultural employment. Third, Trump’s farm bailout helped offset some, but not all, of the job losses in agriculture.

A simple way of visualizing this outcome, or non-outcome, is to simply look at manufacturing employment during Trump’s presidency. It rose nicely during his first two years in office, but plateaued and then dipped in 2019, when the full force of the Trump tariffs went into effect. That happened well before the COVID pandemic arrived in 2020 and caused a short but deep recession.

Many other studies have reached similar conclusions.

The Tax Foundation, for instance, finds that Trump’s tariffs lowered US employment by 166,000 US jobs, with retaliatory tariffs killing another 29,000. The higher taxes paid by importers, meanwhile, amount to $74 billion in increased government revenue over a decade. Contrary to Trump’s insistence, however, it’s not China paying those higher taxes. It’s American firms that import the products, pay the tax and pass the higher costs onto consumers.

The tariffs worked to Trump’s advantage anyway.

The Autor study found that in local economies where the tariffs were supposed to help (but didn’t), Trump’s 2020 vote share rose by 0.67% compared with what it would have been absent the tariffs.

“The trade war appears to have been successful in strengthening support for the Republican party,” the study concludes. “Residents of tariff-protected locations became less likely to identify as Democrats and more likely to vote for President Trump. Voters appear to have responded favorably to the extension of tariff protections to local industries despite their economic cost.”

Trump obviously lost in 2020, but a vote swing of two-thirds of a percentage point can be bigger than it sounds. In 2020, Biden won Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin by smaller margins than that. If Trump won those three states, the electoral college vote would have been a 269-269 tie, and the House of Representatives would have decided the outcome, probably in favor of Trump. Many forecasters think this year’s race will be just as close as it was in 2020.

The Autor study proposes two possible reasons Trump gained politically from tariffs that didn’t really help anybody. The first is that “voters were misinformed about the employment impacts of the trade war.” Trump certainly did his best to misinform voters. He called the two-way tariff escalation an “amazing deal” and a “momentous step” and repeatedly bragged about a manufacturing resurgence that never happened.

Voters may also have appreciated Trump’s effort to help them, even if it didn’t work.

You could regard that possibility in two ways. One, at least Trump made an earnest effort to help. Or, Trump made a deliberate and cynical show of trying to help, knowing it wouldn’t matter. Sometimes, telling voters what they want to hear might be enough.


Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @rickjnewman.

DESANTISLAND

Opinion
Mark Lane: Confederate statues bill gets rough reception

Mark Lane

Daytona Beach News-Journal
Sat, February 10, 2024 

As the 60-day Legislative session reached its midpoint and things were speeding up, the Senate Committee on Community Affairs met for a long six-hour meeting. Did the proceedings drag into the night because senators were hard at work on vital issues like education funding, building more prison space, or addressing home insurance costs?

Heavens, no. Senators were debating how to protect monuments to the Confederacy (SB 1122).

Earlier that same day, the Governmental Oversight and Accountability Committee patiently heard testimony about a bill to ban rainbow flags from schools and other government buildings (SB 1120).

The governor had expressed support for the measure, but the committee adjourned without voting and isn’t slated to meet again. Inaction that likely stalled out the bill this year. See you in 2025!

An 1899 Confederate memorial in downtown Monticello by the Jefferson County Courthouse. "Our fallen heroes" are the words in block capital letters on the other side of the base.

At the start of the session, some had predicted that perhaps the culture wars had finally run their course in Tallahassee. That after the wheels had come off Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign maybe, just maybe, legislators’ time and attention might shift to, oh I don’t know, basic governance and issues that affect the real-life problems of Floridians.

But no. At the session’s mid-point, there’s still a lot of time devoted to the War on Woke and a lot of cultural grievance bills out there. And with the governor showing every sign of shifting his sights to running for president in 2028, culture warfare shows every sign of preoccupying the Republican legislative majority for the next several years.

This time around, the monuments bill hearing proved contentious, with members of the public supporting the bill talking about concerns such as “the cultural war being waged against White society.” Democrats walked out of the meeting in disgust before the vote.

More: Bill would punish anyone removing Florida's Confederate memorials. How many have been removed?

More: Mark Lane: Looking ahead to 2024 and a year of meaner politics

White nationalist praise for the bill upset some committee Republicans, too. Not enough to vote “no,” certainly. After all, the bill had already been approved by another Senate committee, had a House companion and the governor’s blessing. Despite this discomfort, the bill easily moved along on a 5-0 vote without committee Democrats.

The legislation they approved would preempt cities and counties from removing any memorial of any kind that had been around more than 25 years old. Meaning anything built at the behest of the Daughters of the Confederacy in a public place during the Jim Crow Era would be protected by the state in perpetuity. Along with any other plaque or statue, a community might develop understandable second thoughts about.

The bill also would authorize lawsuits against officials who vote to remove monuments. Remember back in the days when Republicans used to call for less litigation?

And the bill also would be retroactive, meaning local officials could be punished for actions going back to 2018. In its earlier form, the bill would have given the governor the power to remove any local elected official who dared to move a monument. A power that Gov. DeSantis certainly would have enjoyed exercising since they would primarily be Democratic officials. Officials like Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan, who last December had a 1915 monument, “Florida’s Tribute to the Women of the Confederacy,” removed from that city’s Springfield Park, formerly named Confederate Park.

Still, standing along with White nationalists in support of the bill proved discomforting enough for some senators that the next day, Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, noted “problems with the bill” and concerns about “perceptions.”

Coming from the Senate president, that likely means we won’t be hearing anything more about it in the upper chamber. This year, anyway.

One might hope this also would dissuade the House members from giving their version further attention, but you can never be sure. Republicans don’t want to be caught sleeping in the War on Woke, even when it means stirring Civil War emotions.

Mark Lane is a News-Journal columnist. His email is mlanewrites@gmail.com.

Mark Lane

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Mark Lane: Confederate statues bill gets rough reception

Florida Republican lawmaker pivots from banning Pride flags — to protecting Confederate monuments

Jacob Ogles

THE ADVOCATE
Fri, February 9, 2024 

Florida building LGBTQ pride Rainbow american flag robert e lee confederate monument

Legislation that would have banned the Pride flag and similar signage from government properties in Florida appears dead this year.

Dubbed by critics as the “don’t display gay” bill, the legislation had advanced through a committee in the House. But the Senate sponsor unexpectedly asked for the bill to be delayed until further notice after supporters made openly homophobic and transphobic remarks to the committee considering the legislation.

Florida Sen. Jonathan Martin, a Republican, amid public testimony decrying the legislation as hateful and anti-LGBTQ, asked for public testimony to be abruptly stopped. He said a scheduling conflict required him to present another bill. The postponement of a first committee vote, halfway through Florida’s legislative session, was widely seen as killing the bill until next year.

“The failure of a Florida Senate bill aimed at banning the rainbow flag—a powerful symbol of LGBTQ resilience against government-sanctioned discrimination—is a significant victory,” reads a statement released by Equality Florida.

“Equality Florida stands proudly alongside all who journeyed to Tallahassee to voice their opposition to this flag ban and the harmful motives underlying the legislation.”

Ironically, Martin abandoned this bill purportedly so he could instead present a different bill widely seen as an effort to preserve Confederate monuments. That bill cleared its Senate committee, but Republican Senate President Kathleen Passidomo appeared to sideline that legislation the next morning after it attracted open support from white supremacy groups. “I’m not going to bring a bill to the floor that is so abhorrent to everybody,” Passidomo told reporters the next day.

Martin championed both bills in the Senate, and maintained the flag bill was not specifically about quashing LGBTQ support but limiting flags promoting any political viewpoint from being flown on government properties. The legislation would also stop the flying of Trump flags, Black Live Matter flags or those of other nations including Israel.

“I’m not concerned about First Amendment issues because I think the viewpoint display of any flag on government property is something that the courts for years, whether it has dealt with in the past specifically religious flags, they have said there’s no place for that on government property,” Martin said.

He also said his bill didn’t impact matters like painting the Pride flag of Black Lives Matter in road intersections.

“This bill covers cloth, not paint,” Martin said.

But the bill was widely seen by LGBTQ+ Floridians and by homophobic groups as an attack specifically on the Pride flag.

Former Florida Rep. Joe Saunders, one of Florida’s first out legislators and a Democratic candidate for Florida House this year, said it would send a terrible message if gay lawmakers could not fly Pride flags outside their offices.

“At the time I was elected, there had never been LGBTQ people serving in this building in the seats that you sit in,” Saunders said. “There are many now that sit alongside you, both in the House and in the Senate.

“Us hanging a flag that represents our community in one of our offices, one of your offices, would be a violation of the law were this bill to pass, and I can’t square that. LGBTQ people exist in this state.”

Perhaps more influential than pleas from LGBTQ leaders, the committee hearing was also disrupted as antigay speakers voiced support for the bill.

“The idea the rainbow flag is inclusive, it is not inclusive,” said John Labriola of the Christian Family Coalition. “There is no color there for heterosexuals. How is that inclusive? It is a highly offensive flag.”

At one point, Sen. Tina Polsky, a Democrat, argued with Labriola when he said there was no such thing as transgenderism. He then went on to call the Pride flag a form of sexual “grooming” that, when appearing in classrooms, urged students to become gay or bisexual instead of straight.

“You should stop talking,” Polsky said to applause. “I’m not sure what any of this has to do with flags, but no. I’m done with this person.”

Martin shortly after asked for his bill to be set aside

Racism came home to roost at Florida Capitol. GOP shocked it’s their bill’s fault | Opinion

the Miami Herald Editorial Board
Fri, February 9, 2024 


Florida lawmakers got a taste of the bigotry their legislation has helped to legitimize in the past two years of warring against so-called “woke” culture.

The latest effort, a bill to prohibit local governments from removing historic monuments, appears to have floundered after a heated Senate committee hearing on Tuesday. The bill would prevent local elected officials from ordering Confederate statues taken down, threatening those officials with fines of up to $1,000 and potential civil lawsuits.

It took one comment from a supporter of the bill to crack the facade that Senate Bill 1122 is merely about preserving history. While some lawmakers might believe that’s what they are doing, they cannot ignore the message they are sending to racists and white supremacists.

The message is that the Legislature will protect the wishes of people who want to celebrate a Confederacy that fought to preserve slavery at the expense of Black Floridians who it see it a symbol of hatred.

During public comments, a bill supporter said the movement to remove Confederate monuments “is part of the cultural war being waged against white society.” The comment, from a member of the audience, made not only Democrats uncomfortable — they walked out of the committee room in protest before a vote — but also Republicans. Another speaker said that if Native Americans found out they had “standing” to take down Spanish statues in places like St. Augustine, there wouldn’t be any left in the state.

“The comments that I heard today... they were bigoted, they were racist,” Republican Sen. Jennifer Bradley said. “And you are the reason I’m vacillating on whether or not to even vote yes. Because it looks like I endorse your hatred, and I do not.”

Nevertheless, Bradley still voted “yes” on the bill, as did every other Republican on the Senate Committee on Community Affairs, including Chair Alexis Calatayud, of Miami, who was taken aback by the “white culture” comment, telling the audience member that other bill supporters don’t agree with his position.

After the committee hearing, however, Republican Senate President Kathleen Passidomo put the bill’s fate into question.

“There are problems with the bill,” Passidomo said. “More than that, there are problems with the perceptions among our caucus, on all sides... I’m not going to bring a bill to the floor that is so abhorrent to everybody.”

We give Passidomo credit for reading the room, but her actions are more important than her words. Sure, there are problems — a lot of them — with the bill, beginning with its conception. This is not the type of legislation that can be fixed with an amendment. It should be allowed to languish and die.

People have different feelings about taking down Confederate monuments, and certainly some who want to preserve them aren’t white nationalists. There’s a valid debate on how far communities should go in taking down monuments of historic figures who held slaves or abhorrent racist views.

The problem with this bill is that it takes away local governments’ authority to make those decisions based on the wishes of their communities. In December, the mayor of Jacksonville, a city that’s 30% Black, ordered the removal of a Confederate statue from a park. Just months before that, the city was the site of a mass shooting where three Black people were killed because of their race.

Despite tragedies like this (or the 2015 Charleston Black church shooting by a white supremacist who posed for photos with the Confederate flag), Florida lawmakers insist on pushing legislation like SB 1122 or the “Stop WOKE Act,” which limited classroom instruction on racism. Meanwhile, Gov. Ron DeSantis has refused to properly denounce neo-Nazi marches that happened in Central Florida over the past two years.

That might not be their intention but the Florida Legislature and DeSantis have emboldened racists. This is what critics have been warning against all along. Now that racism reared its ugly head publicly — and in their faces — perhaps Republicans will understand what they have unleashed.

Supreme Court erases part of Constitution to protect insurrectionist Donald Trump | Opinion

Erwin Chemerinsky
Thu, February 8, 2024 


Two and a half hours of oral arguments in the Supreme Court left no doubt as to the result: Donald Trump can run for president of the United States.

Sometimes it is hard to predict the outcome in a case based on the oral argument, but none of the conservative justices left any doubt that they would reverse the Colorado Supreme Court and hold that Trump was eligible to be president. Even some of the liberal justices, like Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, asked questions that suggested they might rule for Trump.

In December, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled, 4-3, that Trump was disqualified from running for president by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides: “No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress, or elector of president and vice president, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States or under any state who, having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress or as an officer of the United States . . . to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”


Opinion

At the oral argument, the justices raised many possible grounds that they might use to rule in favor of Trump. Chief Justice John Roberts indicated that he sees the Fourteenth Amendment as limiting the power of state governments, not empowering them to keep a candidate off the ballot. Justice Brett Kavanaugh clearly believes that Section 3 cannot be enforced until there is a statute adopted by Congress.

Several justices, including Brown Jackson, questioned whether Section 3 applies to the president because that position is not specifically mentioned in the provision. Meanwhile, Justice Neil Gorsuch expressed that Trump had not been convicted of insurrection, and Kagan asked whether one state should be able to decide this for the country.

In light of this, the ultimate result seems a foregone conclusion: Trump will be the Republican candidate for president. Some will applaud this outcome, and some will lament it. From a constitutional perspective, it is very troubling.

The court’s decision effectively erases Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment from the Constitution. The text of the provision is clear: A person is disqualified from being an officer of the United States if, having taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, they participate in an insurrection.

Trump took such an oath and played a key role in the insurrection of Jan. 6.

By ruling in favor of Trump, the court will be effectively saying that no court can ever enforce Section 3, and the provision will be rendered a nullity.

In fact, many of the questions at oral argument suggested that none of the constitutional limits on who can be president should be enforced by the courts. Kavanaugh, in questioning an attorney who was representing Colorado voters, said, “Your position has the effect of disenfranchising voters to a significant degree.” Roberts said that if Trump was removed from the ballot in Colorado, other states would do this too.

“It’ll come down to just a handful of states that are going to decide the presidential election,” the chief justice said. “That’s a pretty daunting consequence.”

But that would be true of enforcement of any of the restrictions in the Constitution as to who can be president — the requirement that the president be 35 years old, a natural born citizen, 14 years a resident of the country and not have already served two terms. Any enforcement of these provisions to disqualify a candidate would “disenfranchise” voters who want to elect that individual. Any challenge would have to be initially brought in a court in one state.

That is what is most troubling about the likely decision in Trump v. Anderson is that the Supreme Court is abdicating its judicial role of enforcing the Constitution of the United States. Every provision in the Constitution, including Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, exists to limit what the government and the political process can do.

The court should never fail to enforce the Constitution because of the political preferences of the justices or for the sake of political expediency. But that is exactly what is likely to happen in Trump v. Anderson.

Erwin Chemerinsky is dean and professor of law at the UC Berkeley School of Law.

ETHIOPIAN IMPERIALISM

US calls for investigation into alleged civilian killings in Ethiopia's Amhara region

The Associated Press
Fri, February 9, 2024 

The U.S. is calling for an investigation into an alleged massacre of civilians in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, where a local rights group says more than 80 people were killed last week following clashes between soldiers and armed groups.

The U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia, Ervin Massinga, said Friday that the “U.S. government is deeply concerned” by the reports from the town of Merawi and called for “unfettered access by independent human rights monitors as well as an impartial investigation to ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice.”

Massinga said in a statement that the reported killings of civilians in Merawi followed “disturbing reports of other violations” in Amhara and elsewhere in Ethiopia, which is gripped by several internal conflicts.

A rebellion broke out in Amhara last April when the government moved to dissolve regional forces and absorb them into the federal army. A militia group known as the Fano launched a surprise assault in August in which they captured towns across Amhara over several days before retreating to the countryside.

Rights monitors have documented a range of human rights abuses by government forces during the conflict, including alleged extra-judicial killings.

On Tuesday, the Ethiopia Human Rights Council said it had received information “showing that massive human rights violations were committed” during fighting in Merawi on Jan. 29. It said more than 80 civilians were killed, mostly men.

The rights group said the killings “were conducted by moving from house to house” during searches. However, it stopped short of laying blame for the shootings, saying it was unable to visit the site, and called for a further investigation.

Until recently, the Fano were allied with the federal military in the war against the Tigray People's Liberation Front in the neighboring region of Tigray, but the relationship was always uneasy. The two sides began fighting even before the Tigray conflict ended in November 2022 with a peace deal.

Last week, Ethiopia’s parliament voted to extend a state of emergency in the Amhara region in an attempt to quash the Fano rebellion.

'ALL PALESTINIANS ARE HAMAS'

Unimaginable devastation seen inside Khan Younis, the southern Gaza city once a safe haven for the displaced

RAFAH IS NEXT

CNN cannot verify  claims because Israel doesn’t allow journalists to travel to Gaza independently. 

Ivana Kottasová, CNN
Sat, February 10, 2024

Scattered around a huge crater are the remnants of a life that is gone. Random pieces of clothing and a red makeup bag lie in the mud. Nearby, an English language textbook, bits of broken furniture and a pillow with floral embroidery are jumbled together in one large pile.

The crater sits right in the middle of a residential neighborhood in central Khan Younis, the besieged city in southern Gaza that is the current epicenter of the war between Israel and Hamas.

The city is the hometown of Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, and, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), a major Hamas stronghold. It’s also an area to which the Israeli military urged large numbers of civilians to flee in the early days of the war, when northern Gaza was the focus of Israel’s operations.

Looking around, it’s clear that the IDF went into Khan Younis with full force.

According to the IDF, the crater is all that is left of a building similar to the others in the area. The military said it was flattened because it sat on top of an entrance to a vast underground tunnel complex.

Destroyed buildings and roads seen after the Israel Defense Forces withdrew from the areas in Khan Younis on February 02, 2024. - Abdulqader Sabbah/Anadolu/Getty Images

The IDF says the complex has been used by Sinwar and other Hamas officials to hide since the war began and some of the hostages kidnapped from Israel by Hamas on October 7 were held there. It’s not clear for how long.

CNN was among a small group of reporters granted a military escort by the Israeli army to see the tunnels. As a condition of entering Gaza under IDF escort, news outlets must submit photos and raw video footage to the Israeli military for review prior to publication. The IDF did not review this written report.

Being accompanied by the IDF meant the journalists were only able to see what it allowed them to see.

Even so, the devastation witnessed by CNN in Gaza was beyond imagination.

Driving from the border fence to the heart of Khan Younis in a military vehicle offered a limited vantage point, but there didn’t seem to be a single building that was untouched by the war.

Many buildings have been completely destroyed and the rubble bulldozed away. The ones that are left standing appear damaged beyond any chance of repair. Some look like the ruins of medieval castles – lone walls with holes where windows used to be.

The scale of the bulldozing is apparent when driving through. In some areas, the roads are lined with banks of rubble that are so high that the military vehicle is completely boxed in, driving below the “street level.”
Heavy price

Early in the war, the Israeli military designated Khan Younis as a safer zone and told residents from northern Gaza to seek shelter there. But as the IDF pushed to the south, the city became its next focus. The IDF says Khan Younis is a Hamas stronghold, adding that the tunnel network underneath civilian buildings in the city was likely where Hamas planned the October 7 attacks from.

Hamas has denied hiding in hospitals and other civilian structures and CNN cannot independently verify either claim.

Local journalists have told CNN there were as many as 100,000 displaced people in United Nations-run shelters and other facilities in the area before the IDF issued evacuation orders last month.

Many had nowhere else to go and remained sheltering in medical centers and UN facilities in Khan Younis, including the Nasser Medical Complex, Al Amal Hospital and the Palestine Red Crescent Society headquarters. The UN said thousands are still there, and those facilities have also come under attack, according to Hamas-run Palestinian health officials.

A building in Khan Younis that stands next to an entrance into a tunnel compound. - Ivana Kottasová/CNN

The IDF has repeatedly asserted that it seeks to minimize harm to civilians but has come under pressure from the United States and others to do more.

Brig. Gen. Dan Goldfuss is the commanding officer of the IDF’s 98th division, the unit that is leading the offensive in Khan Younis. He accompanied the small group of reporters, including CNN, on a tour of two Hamas tunnel compounds in the area.

Standing inside the massive crater in Khan Younis on Sunday, Goldfuss admitted the destruction was significant. But he blamed it on Hamas.

Goldfuss said the tunnel network was used by the Hamas leadership to plan the attacks in which Hamas and Islamic Jihad killed more than 1,200 people and abducted more than 250 others to Gaza. Some of the hostages are still likely being held inside the tunnels, he said.

“I’ve (been) asked many questions about the price that Gaza, Khan Younis pays, the houses… yes, definitely, there is a price that has been paid,” Goldfuss said.

“But look around. We are in an ordinary neighborhood and there is a shaft in every place you can find. There’s a shaft in the kindergarten, there’s a shaft in the school, there’s a shaft in the mosques, there’s a shaft in the supermarket, everywhere you go,” he said.

CNN cannot verify Goldfuss’ claims because Israel doesn’t allow journalists to travel to Gaza independently. 

However, the tunnel complex visited by CNN on Sunday was under a residential area.

ECOCIDE

Even this limited glimpse of Gaza makes it clear that four months of Israeli military operations have completely transformed the enclave.

Seen from above, Gaza used to be green and gray: large swaths of fields alternating with densely populated cities. Now, satellite images show a land that’s mostly brown – bombed out and bulldozed over.

Israeli soldiers patrol the area around an entrance into the tunnel network found underneath Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Sunday, February 4. - Ivana Kottasová/CNN