WASHINGTON — The White House affirmed on Wednesday that it was standing by Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who according to a new book may have circumvented the military chain of command by reassuring a Chinese general he would warn Beijing if then-President Donald Trump ordered a nuclear attack on the rival superpower.
“The president has complete confidence in his leadership, his patriotism and his fidelity to our Constitution,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during a press briefing.
I truly mourn the America we’ve lost. If we allow our president to use the violent power of the federal government to force needles into the arms of hundreds of millions of Americans, then we are definitely no longer in the America that previous generations enjoyed.
He said he had directed the US Department of Labor to require all private businesses with 100 or more staff to mandate the jab or request proof of a negative coronavirus test from employees at least once a week.
Nearly 17 million healthcare workers at facilities receiving federal benefits will also face the same requirements, he said.
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The time for sweet-talking, for cajoling Americans to take the Covid-19 vaccine is over. The time for government mandates has arrived.
That was the blunt message Joe Biden delivered to the nation on Thursday afternoon. While many Americans have received at least one jab, the president laid the blame for the continued US health crises squarely at the feet of the 25% of the public who are unvaccinated and the politicians who he said were “actively working to undermine the fight”.
Mr Biden said his new vaccine orders were not about freedom or personal choice, but that’s exactly how some Americans will view them – as a forced choice between vaccination and continued employment. And while the mandates will increase the number of vaccinated Americans, it will also enflame a debate already rife with political tension.
But in capitals across Europe, from London to Berlin, Afghanistan has soured the sweetness of Joe Biden’s honeymoon. It’s not the fact of the withdrawal itself that has rankled but the US’s lack of coordination with allies, particularly since the Nato mission at the time of the drawdown comprised troops from 36 countries, three-quarters of whom were non-American, leading to an international scramble to evacuate.
The German deployment in Afghanistan was its first major combat mission since World War II, so the frustration at how it ended runs deep. Armin Laschet, Germany’s conservative candidate for chancellor ahead of elections later this month, called the US withdrawal “the greatest debacle that Nato has experienced since its foundation”.
Czech President Milos Zeman labelled it “cowardice”, adding that “the Americans have lost the prestige of a global leader”.
“Expectations were very high when Joe Biden came in – probably too high, they were unrealistic,” Carl Bildt, Sweden’s former Prime Minister, told the BBC. “His ‘America is back’ suggested a golden age in our relations. But it didn’t happen and there’s been a shift in a fairly short period of time. The complete lack of consultations over the withdrawal has left a scar.”
It is unconscionable how we left behind so many people and so much equipment. Joe Biden turned a planned withdrawal into a defeat and armed a terrorist regime in the process. It’s a disgrace.
The Army released an image Monday of the last U.S. soldier to leave Afghanistan as the Pentagon announced the last American forces left Kabul airport 24 hours ahead of schedule.
The XVIII Airborne Corps, whose forces go by the Sky Dragons, were among the last to step off Afghan soil as the total withdrawal of U.S. forces concluded Monday ahead of the August 31 deadline.
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And some 100 to 200 Americans and thousands of Afghan allies left behind must fend for themselves now that the airport no longer offers an escape route.
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Footage emerged on social media of Taliban fighters apparently making their way through Kabul airport, examining Chinook helicopters left behind by U.S. troops.
‘The last five aircraft have left, it’s over,’ Hemad Sherzad, a Taliban fighter stationed at Kabul’s international airport, told the Associated Press.
‘I cannot express my happiness in words. … Our 20 years of sacrifice worked.’
Ten US servicemembers were killed in a series of suicide bomb attacks on Kabul airport on Thursday, the first American lives to be lost since Biden’s disastrous evacuation effort began on August 14.
The President has not commented publicly on the deaths and he is not scheduled to make any kind of statement or speech on Thursday.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby released a statement saying a ‘number’ had died, but he wouldn’t give any additional details. Other troops are feared to have been injured.
Biden’s meetings were canceled on Thursday immediately after the attack while he spoke with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.
Neither the President or anyone in the administration has offered a plan for getting out the remaining troops and civilians before August 31, the Taliban’s deadline.
Norway, Poland, Holland and Canada have all stopped evacuating citizens. In a statement on Thursday afternoon, Norway’s Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide said the doors at the airport are ‘closed’.
The State Department is telling Americans stuck in Afghanistan to stay in their homes, while Britain has told its stranded citizens to make a run for the Pakistan border, along with thousands of Afghan refugees.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden offered an absolute guarantee Wednesday that people who get their COVID-19 vaccines are completely protected from infection, sickness and death from the coronavirus. The reality is not that cut and dried.
The vaccines are extremely effective but “breakthrough” infections do occur and the delta variant driving cases among the unvaccinated in the U.S. is not fully understood.
Also Biden inflated the impact of his policies on U.S. jobs created in his first half-year in office, misleadingly stating his administration had done more than any other president. He neglects to mention he had population growth on his side in his comparison.
In a statement earlier Monday, Biden said, “We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime.”
“The Cuban people are bravely asserting fundamental and universal rights. Those rights, including the right of peaceful protest and the right to freely determine their own future, must be respected. The United States calls on the Cuban regime to hear their people and serve their needs at this vital moment rather than enriching themselves,” he said.
He promised ‘zero tolerance’ for dealers who break the rules but also mocked Americans who believe they need firearms to protect their rights from the government.
‘If you want to think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons,’ he said.
First, the 2nd Amendment was written specifically to preserve our ability to “throw off such government.”
Second, this glib comment has been touted for years by silly liberals. No, you don’t need nukes to take on the government. Countries like Afghanistan, Vietnam, and even the United States have proven that a determined population can throw off a government even when that government has superior armament.
Also, think a little deeper about what Biden is saying. He is saying that if the citizens resist an oppressive government, he thinks that the appropriate response is for that government to use fighter jets and nuclear weapons against their own citizens. That’s scary as hell. It is precisely because of this totalitarian mindset that we NEED the 2nd Amendment.
Ouch. When senior administration officials are walking back the President’s statements within minutes, it’s bad.
The White House clarified Sunday that President Joe Biden isn’t doing any ‘swaps’ of cyber criminals with Moscow – after Biden appeared to take at face value a proposal floated by Vladimir Putin to extradite any U.S. ransom hackers to Russia in exchange for sending any Russian hackers to the U.S.
Biden entertained an idea Putin floated in a TV interview that aired Sunday about extraditing ‘criminals’ who engaged in ransom hacking against either the U.S. or Russia when he was asked about it at a press conference.
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Biden said he had been briefed on the idea in flight, and called it a potential sign of ‘progress’ – only to have his security advisor later note the U.S. already holds hackers to account.
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The quick walk back was an illustration of the type of situation the White House may be trying to avoid by keeping Biden out of a joint press conference with Putin where the Russian former KGB officer might try to steer the event to his advantage.
Biden at the presser explained why he did not want to hold a side-by-side presser with the Russian strongman.
‘This is not a contest about who can do better in front of a press conference or try to embarrass each other,’ Biden said at the end of the G7 summit.
‘It’s about making myself very clear what the conditions are to get a better relationship with Russia. We are not looking for conflict. We are looking to resolve those actions which we think are inconsistent with international norms,’ he said.
The hiring was revealed in 2019, but DailyMail.com can now reveal the extensive propaganda and persuasion campaign planned by Hunter for the Romanian criminal, all while Hunter’s father was Vice President.
Emails on Hunter’s abandoned laptop reveal how Joe Biden’s son and his colleagues leveraged their US government connections and plotted a propaganda campaign for the grafting Romanian tycoon.
The arrangement raises more questions about Hunter’s dodgy business deals that threatened to compromised his father – the vice president.
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Emails show Hunter’s colleagues, partners in law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, Christopher Boies and Michael Gottlieb, seeking to set up meetings with the US Ambassador to Romania, after discussing among themselves whether he would intervene in Popoviciu’s case.
Hunter brought in political heavyweight and family friend Louis Freeh, the former director of the FBI, to use his US law enforcement contacts for Popoviciu’s advantage, and was offered a referral fee as a result.
Hunter and his colleagues also discussed a media campaign, including to major U.S. publication the Wall Street Journal, to support their client who was later found guilty of bribery.
I’m shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you. Any thinking person already knew this happened. Question is, what did they discuss? What was the deal? And if you think this was an isolated incident, you are a fool. Biden, Inc. has been operating for years.
Joe Biden met with his son’s Russian, Ukrainian and Kazakhstani business associates while vice president, emails show.
Hunter Biden wrote to a friend before the 2015 Washington DC dinner that it was ‘ostensibly to discuss food security’, but was in fact an opportunity to introduce his potential clients and partners to his powerful father.
The shocking communications appear to fly in the face of the president’s claim that he had no knowledge of his son’s business activities.
Yet the White House has remained silent over the revelations – and has failed to respond to every request for comment about illegal activity and scandalous behavior evidenced on Hunter’s abandoned laptop, obtained and exclusively verified by DailyMail.com.
A guest list Hunter prepared for the dinner at the private ‘Garden Room’ at Georgetown’s Café Milano included corrupt, late former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkovhis wife Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina, and a Mexican ambassador.
The US Treasury flagged in suspicious activity reports $3.5million in wires sent by Baturina to Hunter’s firm Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC in February 2014.
The investment firm was co-founded by the president’s son and Devon Archer, former adviser to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, who helped organize and attended the Café Milano dinner.
One attendee, an executive at now-infamous Ukrainian energy firm Burisma where Hunter was a board member, wrote an email the day after thanking Hunter for the ‘opportunity to meet your father’.
‘Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure’, Vadym Pozharskyi wrote on April 17, 2015.
by Owen | 2206, 23 May 2121 | Politics | 4 Comments
Good. We should not be using taxpayer money to just waive away debt. They borrowed it. They need to pay it back. I’m with President Biden on this one.
Joe Biden will not include student loan forgiveness in his upcoming Budget, after pledging to cancel $10,000 from loans on the campaign trail.
Biden is due to announce his latest budget at the end of next week, and claims he has grown suspicious of wiping out the loans.
The shift in policy is a major blow for the more than 42 million Americans who have student loans.
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‘The idea that you go to Penn and you’re paying a total of 70,000 bucks a year and the public should pay for that? I don’t agree,’ Biden told the Times.
Joe Biden mistakenly branded Korean President Moon Jae-in ‘prime minister’ a day after he called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ‘president.’
When President Biden, 78, presented 94-year-old Korean War veteran Ralph Puckett with the Medal of Honor on Friday, he said, ‘The people in the Republic of Korea haven’t forgotten, as evidenced by the fact that the prime minister of Korea is here for this ceremony,’ The New York Post reported.
Less than 24 hours earlier, Biden referred to Netanyahu as ‘President Netanyahu’ during his speech celebrating an Israel-Hamas cease-fire, according to The Post.
Follow the science, indeed. The abysmal jobs report is a direct result of bad policies and rational responses to those bad policies.
US President Joe Biden has rejected criticism that expanded unemployment benefits are keeping Americans from taking new jobs.
Mr Biden said any unemployed American offered a “suitable” job must take it, or risk losing unemployment benefits.
Republicans have blamed bad economic data last week on the Democratic president’s decision to extend expanded unemployment benefits.
The US added 266,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate edged up to 6.1%.
Economists had predicted from 900,000 to 2 million jobs.
On Monday, Mr Biden said he was directing the US Department of Labor to work with states to reinstate requirements that those receiving unemployment benefits must show they are actively seeking work.
Biden was in the process of thanking Georgia voters at the outset of his remarks when protesters could be heard shouting “End detention now” and “Abolish ICE.” One protester called out “Our families are dying,” and noted that they voted for Biden in the 2020 election.
“I agree with you,” Biden called back. “I’m working on it, man. Give me another five days.”
I don’t remember anyone blaming Trump’s approval rating on “intense partisanship.” But with fawning media coverage, this is the best he can do?
Intense partisanship is holding Joe Biden to a tepid job approval rating — the third-lowest for any president at 100 days in office since Harry Truman — along with continued economic dislocation, pandemic impacts and questions about Biden’s view of the size and role of government.
All told, 52% of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll approve of Biden’s work in office, lower than any president at 100 days in office since 1945, save Gerald Ford in 1974 (48%, after his unpopular pardon of Richard Nixon) and Donald Trump at 42% in 2017. For the 14 presidents from Truman to Biden, the 100-day average is 66%.
Later on Thursday, Mr Biden will say that he has given the Justice Department 30 days to propose a rule that will help reduce the number of “ghost guns”. These guns are self-assembled, which means they do not contain a serial number and cannot be traced.
I’ve been around guns and gun people all my life. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the phrase “ghost gun.” This appears to be a bit of showmanship. On the issue itself, there are only three reasons that guns don’t have a serial number from a manufacturer. First, they were filed off. Second, someone built the gun from parts. There are a lot of hobbyists out there who like to build their own guns instead of just buying them. Third, the gun is old from a period when serial numbers were not required. Whatever the case, if a person sells it, whether or not a gun has a serial number doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not the seller is required to run a background check. That is regulated by whether or not the seller is a licensed dealer or not. But the background check is on the person buying the gun – not the gun.
Here is what I think this is intended to do. The background check form has a spot to enter the serial number of the firearm if it has one. But the government doesn’t need that information to process the check. I think this is designed to give the government an excuse to deny background checks based on the form being incomplete. This is designed to just make it more of a hassle by throwing up bureaucratic roadblocks.
Mr Biden will also give the Justice Department 60 days to come up with a rule on stabilising braces for pistols. Under the rule, the braces, which can be used to turn a pistol into a short-barrelled rifle, would be subject to regulation under the National Firearms Act.
So killers will use a short rifle. This is an overreaction that doesn’t actually do anything other than annoy people, but it does allow politicians to say that they are “doing something” when they are not.
The Justice Department will also be asked to draft a “red flag law” which states can then use to create their own legislation. These laws authorise the courts and law enforcement to remove guns from people thought to be a risk to the community.
This is still a state issue, so it really depends on your state. The Justice Department can wrote all the samples they want. All it does is waste taxpayer money.
‘President Biden will hold a formal press conference on the afternoon of Thursday, March 25th,’ White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.
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That date is Biden’s 64th day in office, a record for a modern president in waiting to hold a press conference. The previous record was set by President George W. Bush, who waited 33 days before hosting one.
Most presidents – including Donald Trump and Barack Obama – hold a press conference in the first month of their administration. Trump held one on day 27 while Obama held one on day 20.
A CNN analysis of the past 100 years found Biden is behind his 15 most recent predecessors, who all held a solo press conference within 33 days of taking office.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden on Tuesday ordered U.S. states to prioritize COVID-19 vaccinations for teachers to ensure children could return to school quickly and safely, and called for every educator to receive at least one shot by the end of March.
