This week in whoppers: Former aide's ‘anti-war' Obama fantasy, Nina Turner's ignorance on Iran's abuse of women and more
This claim:
'I worked for an anti-war president.' — Former Obama aide Johanna Maska, Monday
We say: Talk about revisionist history: Angry about President Trump's bombing of Iran's nuclear sites, Maska wants Americans to believe that President Obama was a dove.
Huh? He may have talked like an anti-war leader, but he didn't act like one.
Is Maska forgetting that her boss was responsible for the overthrow of Moammar Khadafy in Libya and the chaos that followed?
Or that after calling ISIS 'the JV team,' Obama declared all-out war on the terrorist group, authorizing airstrikes on the jihadists in Iraq and Syria?
Speaking of strikes, in 2016, the final year of drone-happy Obama's second term, the US dropped an estimated 72 bombs per day — or an average of three per hour.
Sorry, Maska: 'Anti-war' your president was not.
This statement:
'We don't have moral high ground [on Iran's treatment of women].' — Former Ohio Democratic state Sen. Nina Turner, Sunday
We say: Turner's ignorance is beyond foul: Iranian women live under a regime where marital rape is legal, security forces beat women and girls who fail to comply with mandatory hijab laws, authorities turn a blind eye to 'honor' killings and female activists are often sentenced to death.
Turner should ask real Iranian women, like brave dissident Masih Alinejad, who is still being targeted by the mullahs for fighting for women's rights, where they'd prefer to live.
This column:
'Killings in Arizona and Minnesota shine light on the crisis of Christian extremist violence.' — MSNBC's Ja'han Jones, Wednesday
We say: Jones has cherry-picked two ghastly incidents — the shootings of two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota by an anti-abortion wacko and the grisly April murder of a pastor in Arizona by a (certainly not Christian) lunatic who says that Jesus is the 'son of Satan' — to paint right–adjacent extremism as a major threat.
He charges that 'these killings have occurred in an environment that is awfully permissive of Christian nationalist violence.'
Nonsense: The real 'crisis' is mental illness — and irresponsible rhetoric that encourages deadly violence.
And the bulk of that comes from the left: Just look at the assassination of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson, the killing of two Israeli Embassy workers in DC, the attack on an event for Israel hostages in Colorado and the firebombing of Gov. Josh Shapiro's home in Pennsylvania — all carried out by left-wing nutjobs in the last year.
This assertion:
'Democrats are very orderly. They're almost too orderly for fascism.' — Joy Reid, Tuesday
We say: Orderly? This claim by Reid, on Charlamagne tha God's podcast 'The Breakfast Club,' proves she hasn't gotten any saner since leaving MSNBC.
Just since the November election, anti-Trump protesters have sparked riots in Los Angeles, lefties have firebombed Tesla dealerships and vandalized Cybertrucks and multiple Democratic politicians have been arrested at ICE facilities.
If this is 'orderly,' we'd hate to see Reid's idea of chaos.
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
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New York Post
3 minutes ago
- New York Post
Miranda Devine: Bumbling Obama aides actually admit Russiagate was a smear campaign against Trump
'That's our story, and we're sticking to it.' It's hard to believe that the Russiagate plotters are so stupid, but the declassified documents tumbling out of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's files show that, while they had a lot of power and managed to hide their nefarious activities for almost a decade, President Barack Obama's henchmen were none too bright. The latest tranche of declassified emails has Obama's DNI, James Clapper, telling then-Director of the National Security Agency Mike Rogers essentially to shut up and put his name to the intelligence community assessment (ICA) that Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan were cooking up, at Obama's direction, to concoct a narrative that Russia had tilted the 2016 election to help Trump win. 'Understand your concern,' Clapper wrote to Rogers on Dec. 22, 2016, in the waning days of the Obama administration. 'It is essential that we (CIA/NSA/FBI/ODNI) be on the same page and are all supportive of the report — in the highest tradition of 'that's OUR story, and we're sticking' to it.' ' Compromised Rogers had kicked off the conversation by laying out his concerns that normal tradecraft was being compromised and that his team had not had 'sufficient access to the underlying intelligence and sufficient time to review that intelligence.' 'I'm concerned that, given the expedited nature of this activity, my folks aren't fully comfortable saying that they have had enough time to review all of the intelligence to be absolutely confident in their assessments,' Rogers wrote. 'I know that you agree that this is something we need to be 100% comfortable with before we present it to the President — we have one chance to get this right, and it is critical that we do so. 'In addition, if NSA is intended to be a co-author of this product, I personally expect to see even the most sensitive evidence related to the conclusion.' But Clapper was unyielding. 'More time is not negotiable,' he replied, copying Brennan and then-FBI Director James Comey on the email. 'We may have to compromise on our 'normal' modalities, since we must do this on such a compressed schedule.' Every week, Post columnist Miranda Devine sits down for exclusive and candid conversations with the most influential disruptors in Washington. Subscribe here! 'This is one project that has to be a team sport.' Team sport. What an unprofessional, idiotic thing to say, let alone write down for posterity. As Gabbard said when she released the emails Wednesday: 'Clapper's own words confirm that complying with the order to manufacture intelligence was a 'team sport.' ' There was no reason for the ICA to be completed under such a compressed schedule — less than a month from the Oval Office meeting on Dec. 9, 2016, when Obama ordered Clapper, Brennan, Comey and others to prepare a new intelligence assessment to replace all the inconvenient others before the election that had found that Russia wanted to sow discord but was not partial to one candidate over the other. In fact, previous declassified material released by Gabbard shows that Russian spies possessed damaging material on Hillary Clinton's 'psycho-emotional' and physical ailments that they were withholding until after the election because they were so certain she would win. But Obama wanted the cooked ICA to be released before Trump's transition on Jan. 20, 2017. He wanted to do maximum damage to Trump, whose election was a repudiation of Obama's presidency, and of course to cover up Hillary's scandals — including her BleachBitted private server, missing emails and alleged pay-for-play at the Clinton Foundation. Pre-inaugural smear And thus, the ICA was released on Jan. 6, 2017, using the discredited and fictional Steele dossier to underpin its findings, with Brennan running roughshod over the objections of the CIA's top Russia experts by insisting it be included, not just in an appendix but in the main body. The ICA 'findings' were leaked to the media before the intelligence analysts had even started work. On the very day Obama ordered the ICA, Dec. 9, 2016, The Washington Post ran an anonymously sourced story that claimed 'the CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency.' How prescient of them. The framing of Trump as a Russian asset sabotaged his first presidency, in what Gabbard has called a 'years-long coup.' It undermined his authority and allowed his detractors to paint him as an illegitimate president installed by his 'handler' Vladimir Putin. There is no knowing exactly how the lies affected the relationship between the US and Russia, and how they factored into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but they linger in the historic backdrop of Trump's meeting with Putin in Alaska Friday, to try to end that awful war. Anti-lawfare lawyer Mike Davis, founder and president of the Article III Project, says Russiagate is 'the biggest scandal in American history — and there will be indictments . . . 'Obama, Biden, Hillary, Brennan, Clapper, and so many others, they made up the Russian collusion hoax to protect Hillary Clinton and to hurt then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. When they failed and Trump won, they used it to try to destroy President Trump's presidency. And when he declassified Crossfire Hurricane [the FBI counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign's nonexistent collusion with Russia], they tried to destroy him. They tried to bankrupt him, throw him in prison for life, take him off the ballot, and get him killed.' Davis says recently declassified evidence that suggests that the classified material leaked to harm Trump could lead to espionage charges for the leakers that, unlike most other federal crimes, has a 10-year statute of limitations under the Espionage Act. 'Criminal conspiracy' Other potential charges for the coup plotters could include being engaged in a criminal conspiracy and covering it up, which is essentially a continuation of the conspiracy, meaning there is no statute-of-limitations obstacle for prosecutors. Coup plotters might also face charges of 'conspiracy against rights,' says Davis, which is 'when you politicize and weaponize intelligence agencies and law enforcement to go after your political enemies for non-crimes, like Obama and Biden and Hillary and so many others did to Trump. That is the classic definition of a conspiracy against rights.' Obama, whom President Trump calls 'the ringleader' of Russiagate, may face legal jeopardy, says Davis, despite being protected by presidential immunity for official acts. 'You definitely do not have presidential immunity for your acts after you leave the White House as the former president of the United States, and when you continue to cover up your conspiracy, you are engaged in criminal conduct for which you do not enjoy presidential immunity.' Davis advises anyone involved in Russiagate to 'lawyer up. Justice is definitely coming, and nobody's above the law.' It is just amazing that such bumbling blockheads got away with it for so long.
4 minutes ago
As Trump-Putin summit nears, family of American held in Russia hopes for another prisoner exchange
As President Donald Trump prepares to travel to Alaska on Friday to address the future of Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the family of the Texas man serving the longest prison sentence of any American currently being detained in Russia is hopeful that another prisoner exchange between the two nations will be on the agenda. "We hope for better relations between the U.S. and Russia that will hopefully lead to the release of my brother," Margaret Aaron, one of David Barnes' two sisters, told ABC News anchor Gio Benitez in an interview Wednesday. Barnes, who grew up in Alabama, has been detained in Moscow since January 2022 and is currently serving a 21.5-year sentence. "He's hanging in there," Aaron said. "He has been extremely strong through the last three and a half years. We're extremely proud of him and he has continued to be hopeful that something will happen." Unlike other Americans who have been held in Russia, Barnes is accused by Russian prosecutors of crimes in the United States, not Russia. Yet American law enforcement had no involvement in Barnes' prosecution in Moscow. Barnes was convicted by a Russian judge of abusing his two sons years earlier in Texas, but prosecutors in Montgomery County, Texas, told ABC News that law enforcement in the Lone Star State investigated the claims after they were reported by Barnes' Russian ex-wife and did not find evidence to support them. "I do know that everyone that heard and investigated the child sexual abuse allegations raised by Mrs. Barnes during the child custody proceedings did not find them to be credible," Montgomery County District Attorney's Office Trial Bureau Chief Kelly Blackburn previously told ABC News. "He's been suffering," Aaron said Wednesday. "He's innocent." Barnes' ex-wife, Svetlana Koptyaeva, has maintained that Barnes abused their sons while the children were growing up in the Texas suburbs years ago. Koptyaeva was charged with felony interference with child custody after allegedly taking the children from Texas to Russia in 2019 while a child custody dispute between her and Barnes was playing out. In 2020, a Texas family court designated Barnes as the primary guardian of his sons, but since since Koptyaeva had taken them out of the country, Barnes' family says he decided to travel to Russia after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted to try to fight for similar custody or visitation rights in Moscow's court system. Barnes was arrested weeks after arriving in Russia and has been behind bars ever since. In April, a judge in Moscow denied Barnes' appeal of his conviction. "We really, really need to have him designated as wrongfully detained," Aaron said. "Hopefully, to start that process, we need the help of Trump and Secretary [Marco] Rubio." The upcoming meeting between Trump and Putin on American soil comes four months after Russian officials released ballerina Ksenia Karelina to the U.S. through a prisoner exchange. Following Karelina's return to the U.S., she wrote a letter to Trump calling for the release of Barnes along with fellow Americans Robert Gilman and Andre Khachatoorian. Trump posted the letter on social media. "David Barnes, a Texas father of two sons, has been detained in Russia for far too long under charges already proven to be false, and it is past time for him to be released," U.S. Senator John Cornyn of Texas said in a statement at the time. "I urge President Trump and Secretary Rubio to prioritize efforts to bring David and all wrongfully-detained Americans throughout the world home." Other Americans who were previously held in Russia, like Paul Whelan, Trevor Reed and Brittney Griner, were transferred to penal colonies far from Moscow following their convictions -- but Barnes has been held in Russia's capital since he was taken into custody. "We have visited Mr. Barnes eight times since his arrest in January 2022," a U.S. State Department spokesperson told ABC News. "Our last visit to Mr. Barnes in detention was in May 2025." With all eyes on Anchorage ahead of this week's presidential summit, Barnes' family and friends in the U.S. will be paying close attention. "David's strength keeps us going," Aaron said.
Wall Street Journal
5 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
Midterm Strengths and Dangers
The midterm elections are 15 months away, and both Republicans and Democrats are showing strengths. Republicans are stockpiling cash, courtesy of President Trump. His political-action committee has nearly $200 million on hand, and the Republican National Committee has more than $80 million. The Democratic National Committee has a mere $15 million. GOP House members in battleground districts are outraising Democrats in swing seats by about 25%.
