A political blog commenting on Sunday's "Meet The Press" on NBC and the state of the country in a broader sense.
Please Note: This blog is in no way affiliated with "Meet The Press" or NBC. It is purely an opinion piece about the television program that this blog considers the "TV Show of Record."
Write about a mass shooting, take a week off, and write about another mass shooting...
19 Children - Second. Third. Fourth. Graders.
2 Teachers
17 Others injured...
Hopelessness immediately comes to mind because we know that America will do nothing on guns to abate the exceptional carnage we've wrought upon ourselves. It's the hopelessness that our leaders will run out the clock while pontificating on the need for more mental health treatment, the absence of God, violent video games, the hardening of schools, and arming more citizens; while other leaders pack healthcare spending and untenable economic proposals into a background check bill so that it will never pass.
Why would a person want to become a teacher? To learn the use of firearms? Why would that person just become a policeman?
How about this heinous hypothetical. A surgeon and a medical team are in an operating room then a deranged person comes into the operating room and shoots them with a gun. If only the surgeon and the medical team had been armed, right? We need to 'harden' operating rooms in all hospitals around the country by posting armed security outside the doors.
We'll do this after we accomplish this in all the schools in the country. Seriously?
It's nauseating to watch conservative politicians and commentators say everything, anything, with the exception of 'regulation' and 'firearm' in the same sentence, except to say no to it. For some, the 2nd Amendment has become a twisted 11th commandment for lost souls - dogma beyond reproach. However, always conveniently never are those two words in the Amendment that we constantly fixate on - well-regulated. That we are definitely not.
In the meantime, how many of these tragedies do Americans have to endure?
We've put the right to own a firearm over the collective safety of the society. It's who we are, it's what we do, it's what we refuse to change, it's what we have to live with. Hard stop.
On this Memorial Day, we apologize to you because we're thinking about the extremely well-trained, brave men and women to fight for our democracy and we give them the best weapons of war to shorten the fight. The same kind of war of weapons we give our citizens to destroy that democracy.
Have a good meal and hug your family today.
Panel: Ashley Parker, The Washington Post; Ali Vitali, NBC News; Cornell Belcher, Democratic Strategist; Pat McCrory, fmr. Governor North Carolina (R)
It's too frustrating and painful to regurgitate the same things we've written for years with regard to mass shootings, guns and right-wing extremism in this country. Chuck Todd said each time one of these mass shootings occurs, we get the same wash, rinse, repeat sort of rhetoric in Washington and nothing happens. We would contend that we're not even getting the empty rhetoric anymore. It's the silence on the right that Republican strategist Al Cardenas referring to that now exists.
And why? Because the Republican base is rapidly growing in extremism? Not necessarily, but it's loudest voices have been breathing the words of intolerance and grievance steadily for years. Reverend Al Sharpton made an interesting point in as much as the 18 year-old shooter in Buffalo, NY yesterday was an impressionable 15 year-old at the time of Charlottesville, with the president at the time saying there are good people on both sides. It's a bit speculative but certainly logically.
However, there were two comments by Rev. Sharpton and The Washington Post's Matt Bai respectively that were incomplete in their reasoning. Rev. Sharpton said that President Biden should call a summit of minority leaders in our country to confront this kind of extremism and Mr. Bai explained that our political leaders have to stand up and look in the mirror. However, in an aforementioned summit, white politicians primarily from the Republican side of aisle need to be forced to listen to these cultural leaders as well. And for Mr. Bai, how about the press looking in the mirror - he should point that at himself.
This individual had a manifesto teeming with hate speech, white nationalism, anti-semitism and screeds about white replacement theory. The panel, of journalists, said this was a heinous theory, but it is pushed into the mainstream by the biggest name in their profession, Tucker Carlson and hence by his benefactor Rupert Murdoch who is only concerned with the profit margin.
Now, we're not saying that they can't have their biased opinions, but what they're pushing on air to millions of people is beyond irresponsible. What we are saying now is that legitimizing of a heinous theory like that got 10 people killed yesterday, 9 of whom were African-American.
Governor Kathy Hochal of New York, who is from Buffalo, explained that New York has very strick gun laws, but because laws vary state to state, you can never fully enforce your state's laws. She called for national gun legislation, and therein lies the rub.
If we're being honest with ourselves, and Americans writ large are not, Democrats vote for gun legislation and overreach and Republicans have no interest in gun legislation whatsoever so there is no compromise to arrive at a place where 60 senators will vote in favor.
As "Meet The Press" is alway wont to do, it's all discussed through the prism of elections and most assuredly 'guns' will not be on the proverbial ballot. However, given how the Supreme Court is trending, now that we all know, womens' reproductive health most certainly will be.
Even if the Democrats manage to maintain control of the House of Representatives, it won't move the needle enough in the Senate unless the filibuster is amended. Republicans will put in that and the Republican majorities in individual state houses are going anywhere.
We're not sure what kind of wake-up call it will take for this country to change it's tone and become less polarized, but may be a day that none of us want to experience. Until then, the loss of rights and lives will continue unabated.
Panel: Ashley Parker, The Washington Post; Susan Page, USA Today; Matt Bai, The Washington Post, Reverend Al Sharpton
As we have said so many times in this column, if the big luxury cruiseliner that is the United States turns too hard and too fast to the left or too hard and too fast to the right, the boat will tip over and you'll sink us all.
The fate of Roe v. Wade, if the leaked draft opinion with by Justice Samuel Alito holds course, the landmark decision will be overturned. Will this one Supreme Court decision tip us all over? No, but it has certainly assisted in sharpening the degree in the hard right turn Republicans steer us toward.
There are so many points to be considered in discussing this decision it's difficult to know where even to begin, so we'll try this starting point. Since Politico's Josh Edelstein broke this earthquake, Democrats have focused on the substance and Republicans have focused on the leak of the draft. This is a bit of a big sweep but by and large that is how the dividing line has fallen. Both do tremendous damage but do not carry equal weight. When you take away a right that over have the population has had for the past 50 years, knowing now or later isn't changing that fact.
There is no doubt that the leak of the draft has done tremendous damage to the integrity of the court and their ability to deliberate forthrightly about Constitutional issues. For as much as people may not look favorably upon the Supreme Court, we have to have the belief in it to maintain the rule of law. However, the court is partisan because of disgracefully partisan manipulation in the form of a cynical power grab on the part of Senator Mitch McConnell, a skilled politician but the worst national leader for Americans in its modern history. So what did we expect?
This exercise of raw ideological power is going to take us all to a dark place if it continues, and once again the Supreme Court is opening the door to the curtailing of other rights. Justice Alito did make it clear in the draft that abortion is a unique case, as did the Governor of Mississsippi Tate Reeves, and that striking down the right to privacy only should apply in the case of abortion. You're being naive if you believe that some interest group or Republican controlled state houses won't try to push it as far as they can, and you're being stupid if you think a Republican politician is going to own that at this point.
Going back to the leak for a moment, what's interesting to us is that Republicans have expressed outrage about it, which is justified, but they're coming at it as if the leak came from the left. We don't know who leaked the draft yet so we don't really know that person's motivations for doing so. Mr. Todd brought up the fact that it seemed The Wall Street Journal had some inside knowledge of the deliberations and some justices were on the fence. As conservative law professor Jennifer Mascott said, this leak won't change the court's decision, they 'won't be bullied,' a refrain that we're hearing repeatedly. But maybe the leak served to solidify, or codify, some of the justices on the fence. Point being, we just don't know.
And as much as we would like to believe that the state of Mississippi is going to improve its prenatal care services, its foster care and adoption system, and its job training system as Governor Reeves said because they are all in need of it, in his state one in three children live in poverty and it has the highest infant mortality rate in the country. None of what he said about what needs fixing in his state will get fixed.
All this ideology and talking about standing up for 'children' who can't speak for themselves; no one is thinking of the real world consequences and what this will do to womens' health in America. The only person who has the right to speak and stand up for a fetus is the mother, not the freaking governor of Mississippi, who is basically imposing his religious beliefs onto state law.
And one last thing, codification, as term getting thrown around a ton. Democrats in the House and Senate are talking about trying to 'codify' a woman's right to choose into law. Codify: to refine and standardize. Let's us tell you something about codification, making it happen for a woman's right to choose isn't going to happen in this Congress or any other Congress any time soon and in fact there is more of a chance that it could codify and calcify the other way.
What has been codified is our inability for consensus; what has been codified is the view that anyone who doesn't share your point of view is the enemy; what has been codified is that Republicans need to 'own the libs' even for the most nonsensical reason; what has been codified is Democrats thinking all conversatives are extreme right wingers.
The fact that 1 million Americans have now died becasue of Covid-19 has been codified into the back of our brains.
Laws and Judicial precedence? Not so much.
Panel: Kimberly Atkins Stohr, Boston Globe; Ali Vatali, NBC News; Josh Edelstein, Politico; ZSara Fagen, Republican Strategist
How much should the U.S. aid Ukraine in its fight for sovereignty against Russia? Fifty billion dollars, the new total sum of the U.S.'s committment to Ukraine won't be enough, but Putin has to lose this war. Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) is correct when he said that the international world order is at stake in this fight. When President Zelenskyy states that his country is fighting for democracy so that the West doesn't have to has tons of truth packed into it.
And the war is expanding to the western part of Ukraine as Russia tries to build a land bridge from the east all the way to Moldova, having already started the bombing of the historic city of Odesa. So if it takes $100 billion, the United States needs to go there. Also, Senator Menendez was correct in providing nuance to Mr. Todd's question as to whether this is a proxy war, in saying that it isn't necessarily because this effort is to support a country in a fight for its freedom, but on the more macro level, the international world order is at risk.
Spend the money on this righteous cause. And how do we know it is one because Republicans are in support of the United States' aid to Ukraine. The support mostly comes from their collective silence. It's not an issue in which the opposing side (Putin's) is politically tenable. As with immigration, we agree for the most part with the New Jersey Senator in as much as Republicans are looking for the issue and not the solution.
As for Putin saying he will officially declare war on Ukraine on May 9, the rhetoric is meaningless as the two countries are already at fully scale war against one another. Only that Putin has convinced himself that by declaring war, you can deploy more extreme measures of destruction on the civilian population.
Speaking of empty rhetoric, there is way too much on both sides of the aisle, however it is true that no matter what happens are the southern border Republicans will make it an issue. Case in point, during the Obama years, illegal immigration was around historic lows and the president deported a lot more people than was publicized. However, as it is now, the border was a 'mess' then.
Say what you will about the job that Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas is doing, but if you actually listen to what he is saying, Title 42 which rejects asylum seekers based on covid health concerns, allows for immigrants to repeatedly come back to try to cross, and he is following the laws as they are set. And Congress refuses to act in reforming immigration because any compromise on the part of the Republicans is a deal breaker with their fringe.
Former Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) accurately described the Republicans' singular drive for power over actually creating solutions for the American people. Exhibit A is minority Kevin McCarthey who blatantly lied about his disgust with the former president after the 2020 election. His colleagues are more upset that McCarthy is a bad liar than that he lied in the first place.
To say that the American people are cynical is an understatement.
The country's days are numbered as a democracy if Republicans can't alter their course because the voters will put them in control of Congress in November. The solutions are secondary to the issues, the means to a poltical power the primary goal.
Panel: Helene Cooper, The New York Times; Claire McCaskill, fmr. senator (D-MO); Stephen Hayes, The Dispatch; Garrett Haake, NBC News
Thank you for bearing with us and our intermittance these past weeks, life getting in the way as we're all too familiar with...
And on a programming note, Kristen Welker was filling in for a birthday-celebrating Chuck Todd - Happy Birthday to the moderator - but it should be mentioned that Ms. Welker's questions today punctuated the trend of journalist asking questions to raise conflict instead of obtaining a guest's opinion and perceived solution to the important issues that face us. The salvation caveat is that is not the case with American journalists interviewing foreign leaders (for the most part). We'll provide illustrations below.
The one thing that Americans can agree on is that stepping up aid to Ukraine is in our national interest and providing them the weapons to push back the Russian army and the chaos that Putin has unreleashed upon the world, and if you've been paying attention that's not hyperbole with eighty percent of the world's wheat comes from Ukraine and the adjacent land in Russia. Food shortages have already exascerbated conflicts in Africa - Senegal and Ethiopia being among them. And obviously, energy costs around the world have been affected dramatically. The geopolitical ramifications of Putin's invasion will be felt for decades. Wrap your head around all that and then ask, why aren't they discussing that?
Though it's prudent to ask the Deputy Head of Office to the President of Ukraine, Igor Zhovkva, about the status of Mariupol given Putin has said that the Russians control it, which Mr. Zhovkva said was false. However, to have him speculate on Moldova is searching for the minorly sensational. Even with the Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer, you should first ask broadly about intelligence of intention and then go there. That would be our critique, but not our instruction...
In Mr. Zhovkva's description of the armaments Ukraine needs, there was one that stuck out the most, which was the air-craft defense systems. Supplying jets isn't easy, and neither are tanks for that matter. Yes, the U.S. has lots of tanks, but think of the logistics of moving several. They are tanks after all, and their not Soviet tanks so there's the training aspect. But air-defense should have been bolstered a month ago. With air defense and the Horwitzers that are current on the way can provide the cover for battles that they can win.
And it's heartening to hear Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) to broadly share the administration's line of thinking in terms of support. We also agree with him that you should show an opponent your hand in terms of your red lines and no one saw Western Europe and NATO showing any spine, which it has.
Which brings us to the spineless... The Secretary General of the United Nations is travelling to Moscow for meeting with the Russian president, and Putin is going to stick it in his face. Russia's on the security counsel and can veto any peacekeeping troops or huminatarian aid or corridors. Is the Secretary General going to talk about a world order that Putin flatly rejects? Let's see how that goes and though we're not wont to speculate, we can imagine it won't end well.
To the feckless... House minority leader Kevin McCarthy is a squid, and The New York Times Peter Baker aptly described his actions and Republican politician writ large in that he's more concerned about the backlash of the former president than the backlash from a bald-faced lie. If it isn't obviously, Mr. McCarthy simple contorts himself and patronizes to whatever audience he's is in front of, whether 1 person on the phone or 100 people in a room. Squid.
Who's not a squid and but not entirely as right as she thinks is Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), with whom we agree that Democrats need to keep pushing on legislation, but not all that she is proposing, namely an across the board student debt cancellation of $50,000. Understanding that student loans hit minorities and the disadvantaged harder and that's why it should be an application process. Why? Because personal responsibility for your choices. Many here have incurred college debt and paid it off. Makes us inclined to ask for it back. Also, it's prudent to air on the side of caution if there is the prospect that it will only add to the deficit and inflation overall.
Here's also another example of asking the wrong question in terms of pertinance. Ms. Welker asked Senator Warren about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not initially endorsing a ban on stock trading by members of Congress, but she came around after some poilitical pressure. To the question of whether Senator Warren had faith in the Speaker, she said yes with a shrug, but what about the more important matter of the would-be leader Mr. McCarthy, ne did Ms. Welker ask her about that, which she should have, because it's necssary to hold our political leaders to their words, no?
Lastly, the war on words, or more broadly the culture wars in America are always won by Republicans. Period. Hard Stop.
Republicans represent a narrower constiuency of groups so their special interests are much more targeted, and much more cynical, and much more effective because of the continued vagueness of the bills they pass. Contrast that with Democrats who seek to represent a much broader coalition of groups, in which the loudest voices are never satisfied with the result because a particular group is under represented in the response.
Here's the winner in the controversial Florida legislation on parental rights, known popularly as the 'don't say gay' bill. It prohibits the instruction of sex, gender and sexual orientation in grades kindergarten through three. On it's face, that's reasonable and ration, but it doesn't account for the third grader who draws or shows a picture of his or her two moms or dads. What happens then when a student has a question of why that is. Have you ever met a third grader that didn't ask you why a thousand times? It's incumbant upon the teacher to explain it clearly without making it a big deal, but just that simply act can cost a teacher his or her job.
That's the broader societal implication, to our detriment we might ad. Same-sex marriage, like toothpaste, genies and farts, it's out and it is not going back in. Knowing this, Republicans like the governor of Florida use every opportunity to make life suck for the people with those rights, or anything else they don't agree with. Just ask Disney.
Panel: Errin Haines, The 19th; Carol Lee, NBC News; Sara Fagen, fmr. Bush Administration offical; Peter Baker, The New York Times
The Boston Globe's Editorial Board member, Kimberly Atkins Stohr summed it up best explaining that Democrats search for issues to govern on while Republican search for issues to campaign on. It brakes down this way on practically everything in our collective civil life these days. The byproduct is that it leaves everyone dissatified.
Said in another and accurate way is that Democrats know how to govern and Republicans know how to campaign which plays out both in domestic policy and foreign policy.
That brings us to the war in Ukraine and what Chuck Todd aptly described as 'calculated cruelty.' One could say that if George W. Bush were in office, the world would have to worry about the fate of NATO and the response, outside of minor strategic differences, would be the same - pour as much support, military and otherwise, into the defense of Ukraine. But that's not the Republican party that we have anymore.
Had the last Republican president still been in office, the administration's presumed response would have been tepid at best, NATO would be completely ineffectual, Europe nations would focus on their self interests and their reliance on Russian energy and Putin would have won the Battle of Kyiv. But Putin didn't win this battle, the Ukraine did.
Unlike Afghanistan, the Biden Administration has done as well as any U.S. Administration can to support Ukraine and push back on Russian aggression, which the West has finally woken up to. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that he and Joint Chief of Staff General Mark Milley are personally coordinating with Ukraine's Ministry of Defense. As we mentioned in a previous column, European and the U.S. governments all have an ax to grind when when it comes to Putin or some nefarious Russian entity violating countries' sovereignty.
Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba explained that in 2008 the United States had pushed for Ukraine to join NATO, which was during the Bush Administration, with France and Germany rejecting the idea. So here we are with Russian forces indescriminating bombing civilians - women and children fleeing the war.
Russian forces are regrouping in the eastern part of the country so it's a race to get arms into the hands of the Ukrainians, some of which Mr. Sullivan explained are being delivery at the moment of this writing.
Mr. Kuleba explained the deal that Ukraine wants, give us what we need to fight and win this war against Putin's Russia so that NATO and the west won't have to. The seems a bit hyperbolic in the cynical sense, but the Foreign Minister is not wrong. If Ukraine doesn't succeed, that larger confrontation will be inevitable.
Republicans, realizing that the Biden Administration's response politically and materially is better than anything the former administration could muster in terms of competency have turned their attention to domestic issues - practical and cultural.
On the practical issues, inflation is a slamdunk for Republicans to slap the Democrats with, and Republicans always profit historically from when Democrats take control, they over reach and their base becomes discouraged.
As fmr. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers explained, the inflation in gas prices is due to the increased demand, the bottleneck in the supply chain caused by covid, and the unforeseen war in Ukraine. In this were the only daily commodity which was seeing a price increase, Americans would be more optimistic about the economy because they see one of the major causes on their television screens everyday.
However, inflation is running through the price of everything and anyone who checks their bank account more than twice a week has altered one's spending [read: middle and lower-middle class]. That along with big bright lights every other mile on American roads flashing red steep gas prices and Republicans have something to point to.
Mr. Summers also explained that by creating so much demand combined with so many Americans having pent up cash, from the pandemic, he foresaw the inflation that we're seeing now, admittedly, not at this level but he did see it coming. He also explained that nothing is certain in economics but that historically after a period of high inflation, a recession usually follows one to two years later. Translate that into - Do what you can this year to pay off as many debts as much as possible because the next few years could be tight.
Mr. Summers explained what is happening with economy very clearly and fixes to alter the course so for that reason, we've included his entire interview below.
Former Florida Congressman Carlos Curbelo said that Republicans are definitely winning the culture wars, and he's not wrong. Republicans, and yes lead by Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis, are pushing Democrats buttons with divisive policies and they have the state legislations and the death-proof majority in the Supreme court to push their agenda as far as they can imagine.
As Mr. Todd reminded us, and we're paraphrasing more poetically, overreach is the inevitability of too much power. This brings us to the Supreme Court.
Congratulations to newly-confirmed Associate Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson who after 232 years and 115 appointments, we finally have a black woman on the highest court of the United States. This should be celebrated uniquovocally despite the despictable, cynical, gutter level attacks that Republican Senators throw at her. F**k them, she shined.
However, as we know all too well, it doesn't change the balance of the court and that Mississippi abortion ruling is coming down the pike. If the Court rules in favor of Mississippi, which most legal prognosticators believe to be the case, a wave of abortion bills will be voted into the law.
Given the Republicans ruthless efficiency in enacting such overreaching policies, it could work to Democrats' advantage. Such sweeping policy that effects over half the U.S. population is a pretty motivating factor - for and against, but in this case mostly against.
Panel: Kimberly Atkins Stohr, The Boston Globe; Anna Palmer, Punchbowl News; Josh Lederman, NBC; Carlos Curbelo, fmr. Florida Congressman (R)
"For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power."
USA Today's Susan Page explained that President Biden said what everyone in Washington is thinking and discussing which is Vladimir Putin needs to be out of power. However, the president saying the quiet part out loud is no doubt a mistake because unless some drastic, unlikely shift happens in the Kremlin, The West, NATO, and the United States are going to have to talk to the Russian dictator.
Two more points there - Putin is a dictator, no other description is applicable, and this dictator is going to need to talk to the west unless he also wants the task of trying to build an economy from scratch in the 21st century, which is where he is heading.
As The Dispatch's Stephen Hayes explained, it's not so much the adhoc statements themselves but that the administration keeps walking things back that have an effect on how Americans perceive his handling of the conflict.
However, a matter of perspective is needed here. Was it a mistake to say that Putin needs to go, many would say 'yes' because it doesn't show message discipline and it's not the official policy of the United States. Does an off-script statement like this become dangerous as Ms. Page asked? We'll have to wait and see, but it isn't like it's an opinion that is not agreed upon. The perspective is warranted because what is not in question is Mr. Biden's devotion to democratic values and standing up for them, and lest we not forget 14 months ago we had a president that was not interested in defending democracy.
Frankly, we'd take Biden's gaffes, however cringeworthy, over Mr. Trump's anti-democratic, Putin-praising idiocy everytime.
And Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky has a point, too much talk and not enough action. As Ukraine's Ambassador to the United State, Oksana Markarova explained, Putin cannot be trusted and if Ukraine doesn't win, it will be a threat to all democracies and the world order that has been in place since WWII. If Putin wins, she said that the will show that dictator and military force are the only things that matter. To back up President Zelensky's point, she said that the Ukrainians had the best boots on the ground but that they needed the weapons.
The best part of the interview with the Ambassador was when Mr. Todd asked her about the independent territories in Ukraine like the Donbas and whether her government would negotiate on those points. Her answer: There are no independent territories with the borders of Ukraine.
The ambassador also said that Putin has no red lines, so it was interesting to hear Senator Rob Portman say that the use of chemical or biological weapons is a red line that the United States should enforce and retailiate, not in kind, but militarily.
Despite the gaffes, President Biden's defense of democracy and his handlining of the situation have been overall quite good. We think about this because we know that it could have been a lot worse with western democracies in full cowering stance instead of standing up as a united force.
On other matters, like the Supreme Court, with each passing day confidence in the court wains. Mr. Todd pointed out that the only thing that changes in confirmation hearings is that the hearing for Supreme Court nominees are televised, which encourages Senators to grandstand. There's your answer right there on how to get these proceedings reigned in so that we don't have a senator like Josh Hawley bring conspiracy theories to the hearing questions. Even conservative writer, Stephen Hayes said that the Republican party has a problem with conspiracy theories. Wow, you think? Susan Page explained that 1 in 4 Republicans believe some aspect of Q Anon... sad.
All this does is serve to put further doubt in people's minds about the legitimacy of the Court. And then there's Justice Clarence Thomas and his 'best friend' his wife Ginni, who apparently is wrapped up in January 6th conspiracies and was a de facto advisor to the White House Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows on how to unlawfully overturn the election.
Senator Portman explained that given this revelation, if a case on January 6th comes before the Court, then perhaps Justic Thomas should recuse himself from the case. But the fact is that a case on January 6th already has come before the court in the form of releasing documents from the National Archive and Justic Thomas was the lone dissenter in releasing them. Coincidence? Not bloody likely.
Panel: Susan Page, USA Today; Yamiche Alcindor, PBS Newshour; Stephen Hayes, The Dispatch; Jeh Johnson, fmr. Secretary of Homeland Security
An animal is always at its most dangerous and ruthless when it's wounded, and the Russian Bear has certainly had a few claws pulled at the root of paw. In other words, the humiliations the Russian army has suffered are prompting Putin to use crude and more brutal weapons such as a hypersonic missile, but also as devastating, especially on civilian populations are non-smart bombs that are launched indiscriminately hitting hospitals, apartments buidlings and theaters filled with children.
The moderator, Chuck Todd's central question for all the guests was at what point does Putin's brutality in Ukraine warrant a more direct military response or intervention on the part of the U.S., NATO and other allies?
Understandably, the answers depend on where you currently sit. Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) is more hawkish in the Cheney-family tradition, but she's in a position where she can say that chemicalweapons, for instance, are indeed a red line that would precipitate a direct military response. However if you're the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg you have to address the question more carefully and NOT commit to a position that locks in a thirty-nation alliance into a potentially untenable position. However, the Secretary did plainly state that the use of chemical weaspons is a clear violation of international law.
One point that Secretary Stoltenberg made requires distinction which was he thank the U.S. president for his leadership and admitted that U.S. and the Biden Administration were briefing NATO for months and worked all the diplomatic channels to make NATO as unified in its actions as it is today. It was a big statement.
As PBS's Amna Nawaz explained, there is a throughline between how Putin's forces acted in Syria and what is happening the Ukraine. The Russians demolished Aleppo with cluster bombs and facilitated Assad's use of chemical weapons. The only inclination to think that Putin will not deploy chemical weapons is that there would be no coming back from pariah status by the European Union with its economic might alone cutting off Russia will have harsh consequences for as long as Putin is in power.
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said that we shouldn't be placing redlines on specifics, but that Putin should know that the United States will escalate its response to the scale of Putin's actions. Senator Murphy being a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and closer to President Biden is going to be more measured, but reaffirmed his unwavering support for President Zelenskyy and the Urkainian people, as did Representative Cheney.
When you hear leaders from both parties agreeing on the fundamental issue of freedom and democracy it's allows one to better understand where the differences are on a particular issue and see that both sides bring good points to their arguments and the gray areas in between. No better than the Iran Nuclear deal where Senator Murphy said that we should do everything we can to get back into it, whereas Representative Cheney explained that we shouldn't be rewarding Iran with sanctions relief at this time when the status of their nuclear ambitions wouldn't be changed. Senator Murphy's position that since pulling out the Iranians' progress toward a nuclear weapon has moved at a rapid pace, and presumably reinstituting the deal would halt that progress.
There's nothing wrong with seeing valid points from both sides of the aisle when the baseline of American values are shared and shared honestly.
And speaking of honesty, take Represntative Liz Cheney at her word when she says that nothing that she has learned being part of the January 6th Select Committee has lessened her concern with regard to the gravity of that day and the actions of the previous president and administration.
Lastly, it was mentioned a few times that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (admittedly a cool name for a morally questionable individual) has emerged as the interlocutor that could possibly negotiate with Putin to stop the violence; Mr. Erdogan's Turkey is conveniently a member of NATO while the president personally has a sufficient authoritarian inclination acommpanied by action to that end to make Mr. Putin feel more at ease. Or so one would think... However, if you try to force a wounded animal out of the corner, it's coming with everything to try and kill you.
Panel: Andrea Mitchell;, NBC News; Amna Nawz, PBS Newshour; David Ignatius, The Washington Post; Shane Harris, The Washington Post
One more thing...
For the record and your viewing, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's speech to the U.S. Congress.
To be clear, if Mr. Trump were still president, the NATO alliance would be irreparably broken, the White House's position would be that Ukraine is not the U.S.'s problem, and it would embolden other authoritarian regimes to take similar actions because the United States would be in retreat. The New York Times' Pentagon correspondent Helene Cooper mapped it quite succinctly and accurately.
And to this day, as Peter Baker explained, Mr. Trump has never uttered one negative word or made one negative statement directly about Putin... Ever.
Pardon us if we take a moment to sound off a bit. Throughout the week, and each week of this war does indeed become more consequential, there have been things that need to be called out.
Starting with Bill Barr and his cynical attempt to repair his image for the history books. We have read his book, admittedly nor will we, but I think it's safe for us to say that the only thing we'd consider indisputable is the title - one damn thing after another. Between Attorney General Bill Barr and White House Counsel Pat Cippolone, the scope of crimes and violations they turned a blind eye to while Mr. Trump was in office will still be uncovered years from now.
Also, in the grand scope of geo-politics and the real politik, there's lots of grey, charcoal in some places, but Israel's fecklessness when it comes to silence in condemning Russia's war of choice against Ukraine is appalling. Inexcusable. We know there is too much business that depends on this silence, but isn't the morality that you show in this life and not the money? Doesn't the United States have 12 billion reasons why Israel should be helping us out. As Mr. Todd mentioned, Israel is one country that could provide an 'off ramp' for Putin. Really, how's that going? Some have gone as far as to blame the positions of the United States that drove Putin to this... Yeah, soft apologists we have no time for.
And as for Representative Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) calling President Zelenskyy a 'thug' is beyond the pale. He can only be an American by birth because in principles there is nothing American in the slightest. Our advise, read a history book.
We also have to call out the Biden Administration because politics is perception. Americans imprisoned in Venezuela are released and we need their oil. This was a step way too far if the end is a result of these means. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan tried to separate the two, but of all the despots in all the gin joints around the world, do we have to sit at the bar with Maduro?
Lastly, people should understand what a no-fly zone really means. As Ambassador Michael McFaul explained, if NATO or the United States imposed a no-fly zone over Ukraine, it may as well be a declaration of war. And in this instance, the Biden Administration has correctly pushed back on that notion because they have made it clear that the U.S. would not take provocative [read: direct offensive action against Russia] action.
As history is unfolding on a daily basis, we had the need to clarify who's on the right side of it.
Experts: fmr. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch; fmr. Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, James Stavridis; fmr. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul
Panel: Helene Cooper, The New York Times; Rich Lowry, The National Review; Kimberly Atkins Stohr, The Boston Globe; Peter Baker, The New York Times
