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    Cruz Drops Bombshell Bill to Stop Scheme That Uses Taxpayer Funds to Push Companies into Woke Socialism

    By
    Donny Ferguson
    -
    1
    Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America,

    The federal government could no longer use taxpayer-funded retirement accounts to push companies to adopt leftist political policies, under a new bill from U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

    The move counters a recent strategy by leftist radicals to gain control over the voting shares of publicly-held corporations, then vote in radical leftist policies that push “woke” social goals and divert billions in cash to activist groups.

    One of the biggest shareholders in many corporations are retirement funds held by and managed for federal employees by BlackRock, a far-left, multinational hedge fund.

    Cruz has introduced the Stop TSP ESG Act, which “will prevent companies that manage investment funds held in federal employee retirement accounts from using those holdings to vote in corporate shareholder meetings to force leftist Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies onto private sector businesses.”

    Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) is co-sponsoring the bill in the Senate. 

    Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) previously introduced companion legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.

    “BlackRock is able to leverage its position as the fund manager to vote in shareholder meetings and to force publicly traded companies to adopt ESG and DEI policies, even if doing so adversely affects investor value. As such, BlackRock prioritizes its political agenda over the interests of employees and retirees who are seeking to maximize their return on investment,” a statement from Cruz’s office reads.

     “I am proud to join Congressman Buck and sponsor this legislation in the Senate to hold investment fund managers accountable and ensure they do not misuse their position as a fiduciary to advance an agenda contrary to the interests of their investors,” said Cruz.

    “As the managing entity of TSP, BlackRock is leveraging the financial weight of the federal retirement system to push their woke ESG and DEI ideology through other peoples’ investments. BlackRock’s manipulation and brazen politicization of federal retirement accounts is wrong and should not be tolerated,” said Cruz.

    “For years, BlackRock has been leveraging taxpayer money to force unwilling businesses to accept ESG and DEI policies. Through its position as the manager of the federal Thrift Savings Plan, BlackRock has abused public capital to push a radical agenda and censor conservative media,” said Buck.

     “Woke Wall Street has been using the federal Thrift Savings Plan to force a radical left-wing agenda on the country. That’s a violation of their fiduciary duty and the basic precepts of democracy. Policy should be made in Congress, not BlackRock’s C-Suite,” said Will Hild, Executive Director at Consumers’ Research.

    “The Stop TSP ESG Act is an important step in stopping the radical ESG agenda by protecting TSP account holders. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink admits to ‘forcing behaviors.’ Shareholders may be unknowingly supporting companies that disparage their values as proxy voting decisions are made by these radicals. Thank you, Rep. Buck, for introducing this legislation,” said Penny Nance, CEO and President of Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    The other Soros: Senator Reveals How this Liberal Swiss Billionaire Has Been Funneling Cash into US Elections

    By
    Donny Ferguson
    -
    2
    Image via Pixabay free images

    A left-wing Swiss billionaire has been bankrolling the voting systems used in American elections, with an alleged bias toward liberals, a U.S. senator reveals.

    United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Rules Committee, pressed Benjamin Hovland, Vice Chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), on foreign influence in U.S. elections through what he called “a new form of Zuckerbucks: partisan, foreign-backed funding for local election administrators through the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence.”

    Hagerty calls it a “highly problematic scheme in which left-wing organizations provide substantial, foreign-funded resources for conducting American elections at the local level.”

    Much of the funding comes from Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire and multi-million dollar donor to left-wing causes through his “Hub Project.”

    “This is an $80 million initiative, funded by a web of left-wing entities, to ‘help’ local election administrators conduct elections,” Hagerty explained. “It’s a new form of ‘Zuckerbucks,’ is what it is. This network of entities has received tens—if not hundreds—of millions of dollars from a foreign left-wing billionaire named Hansjörg Wyss. He’s not a U.S. Citizen, so he can’t contribute directly to our elections, but he’s found a way to be involved in our elections.”

    “After being repeatedly pressed by Hagerty to acknowledge whether foreign donations used to conduct American elections are acceptable, Vice Chair Hovland conceded that this interference is inappropriate,” a statement from Hagerty’s office reveals.

    “Absolutely not. Of course not,” Vice Chair Hovland answered. 

    “I want to be clear with that because what this is is Zuckerbucks 2.0 coming from a foreign billionaire involving themselves in our elections. What I want to make certain is that this Commission—that no Election Assistance Commission dollars are commingled in any way with these foreign funds,” said Hagerty.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Many in Gen Z ‘Love Big Brother,’ Want State Surveillance in Homes

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    3
    Image via Pixabay free images.

    ANALYSIS – Be afraid, Be very afraid. 1984 is almost here. A recent poll by the Libertarian CATO Institute showed that a big chunk of our latest and brightest Generation Z (Gen Z or Zoomers) actually favors having the government watch them 24/7.

    Including surveillance in their homes and bedrooms.

    Zoomers are officially those under the age of 26. And come right after Millennials.

    After the horrors of World War Two showcased the brutal dangers of modern totalitarian dictatorships such as Nazi Germany and Communist Soviet Union, George Orwell penned his classic dystopian tale titled ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (1984).

    In the novel, written in 1949, the pervasive government of the fictional nation Oceania was known as ‘Big Brother,’ and it watched its citizens incessantly via two-way video devices called ‘telescreens.’ 

    This was of course before the advent of television or modern surveillance.

    Government agents known as the ‘Thought Police’ were able to monitor everyone at home, at work, on public streets, in shops, even in bathrooms. It was a terrifying existence.

    The book and term ‘Big Brother’ have since been widely referenced when warning about government overreach and expanding state control. 

    Sadly, it seems that almost 30 percent of Gen Z (and some Millennials) haven’t read the book or understand the danger.

    CATO’s Blog notes that: 

    In a newly released Cato Institute 2023 Central Bank Digital Currency National Survey of 2,000 Americans, we asked respondents whether they “favor or oppose the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.”

    Fortunately, the poll shows that 75 percent of Americans oppose or are strongly opposed to this insane idea.

    However, CATO also notes that the younger you get, the less concerned Americans are about state surveillance and control:

    …Americans under the age of 30 stand out when it comes to 1984‐style in‐home government surveillance cameras. 3 in 10 (29 percent) Americans under 30 favor “the government installing surveillance cameras in every household” in order to “reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.” Support declines with age, dropping to 20 percent among 30–44-year-olds and dropping considerably to 6 percent among those over the age of 45.

    Support for 24/7 surveillance was especially high among those younger than 30. Almost a third of those born after 1993 said they would welcome round-the-clock monitoring by the government. 

    Those respondents in their 40s, 50s, and 60s were almost totally opposed. That is a terribly disturbing trend that bodes ill for liberty in America in the next decades.

    In his Boston Globe Email Newsletter, Jeff Jacoby provides his explanation for this sad state among Zoomers:

    …perhaps, [it] is that Generation Z has been indoctrinated to regard safety, not freedom, as the highest good — so much so that many would rather be under the nonstop watch of the state than face the possibility of being abused or endangered.”

    If so, they are in for a fearful awakening. What little protection they might gain from being under the authorities’ constant watch is nothing compared with the peril they would face. Benjamin Franklin’s famous admonition is as relevant as ever: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Inviting Big Brother into your home will not keep Gen Z-ers safe. And by the time they realize what they have given up, it will be too late to get it back.

    Jacoby adds that the protagonist of Orwell’s novel, Winston Smith, is a weak man who resents the regime — and is ultimately broken for it. And the must-read book’s final words are haunting: “He loved Big Brother.”

    Yet, after all we have seen and know about tyranny, almost a third of Generation Z is still prepared to love Big Brother too. Yes, we must be afraid. Very afraid.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    CNN Blasted for Hiring ‘Spy Who Lied’ About Hunter Laptop

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    0
    Jay Godwin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    ANALYSIS – One of the most egregious efforts at election interference in 2020 was when the Joe Biden campaign successfully quashed the bombshell New York Post story of Hunter Biden’s laptop. 

    The laptop has proven to hold a treasure trove of incriminating evidence against the Bidens.

    But it was effectively kept from the American people in the final weeks of the campaign through a concerted conspiracy between the Biden campaign, Big Tech social media companies, the major news networks, and a group of former spies.

    And one of those who helped hide it from the public is now an on-air CNN analyst.

    It has since been documented that Antony Blinken, then with the Biden campaign, now Biden Secretary of State, retained former senior U.S. intelligence officials to smear the laptop story as Russian disinformation.

    As I have written about, 51 former spooks eventually signed a letter calling the laptop story likely Russian disinformation. This was then used as justification by the media to censor and ban the story.

    One of the most senior of those partisan intelligence hacks was ex-Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper. 

    As a reward for his disservice, Clapper has now been hired by CNN as an analyst where he will be able to spew disinformation on all manner of national security and political topics.

    And Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy made a big deal about this on a recent CNN appearance. 

    In a tense back-and-forth exchange with the reporter McCarthy ignored the question about Trump’s classified documents case and instead emphasized that Clapper had been one of dozens of former intelligence officials who signed the letter dismissing the Post’s October 2020 expose on Hunter’s laptop as a Russian disinformation.

    He also threw in CNN’s hiring of discredited former deputy FBI chief Andrew McCabe who was fired for leaking classified information.

    Fox News reported:

    “Are you prepared to defend your network, CNN?” McCarthy said as they spoke over each other. “Even though your network hired Andrew McCabe, who was fired from the FBI for leaking classified documents, did you remove him from your network? No, you continue to put him on to give judgment against President Trump. You also hired Clapper …”

    McCarthy later continued, according to Fox:

    “So, your network hires Clapper, who literally lied to the American public – one of 51 other individuals that had briefings and used it politically to tell the American public that a laptop was Russia collusion, even though it had all this information about the Biden administration,” the speaker said.

    “Are you prepared to get rid of those people from your network? Because my concern as a policymaker is that when [you] weaponize government, and now you’re weaponizing networks, that is wrong,” McCarthy continued. “I have a real problem that your network actually pays people who did classified information and then lied to the American public to try to influence a presidential election, and then you put them on your network to give an opinion.”

    This line of attack against CNN and other major news outlets who hire ex-officials involved in partisan election interference is valid and should be continued. 

    This goes well beyond just being partisan.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Feds Gave $400 BILLION in ‘COVID Relief’ to Criminals and Scammers

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    4
    Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine answering questions from the press. As states across the country begin to reopen and nearly half are seeing COVID-19 cases rise, Governor Tom Wolf announced Friday that Pennsylvania is not one of them. ...Today at a daily COVID briefing with Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine, he noted another milestone: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention proprietary data for states indicates that we are one of just three states that has had a downward trajectory of COVID- 19 cases for more than 42 days. The other two states are Montana and Hawaii. JUNE 17, 2020 - HARRISBURG, PA.

    ANALYSIS– This should be one of the biggest stories in America. The bloated, overreaching, over-powerful, over-taxing federal government gave nearly half a TRILLION of our tax dollars for so-called ‘COVID-19 relief’ to grifters, scammers and fraudsters. 

    If that doesn’t cause national outrage, nothing will.

    They used to say sarcastically, ‘a billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.’

    Well, this is $400 billion worth of real money, and the monstrosity we call the federal government literally gave it away to criminals.

    Often the fraud involved identity theft and crooks overseas. Sadly, some of those criminals might also be your next-door neighbors, family, or friends. 

    Everyone, it seems, ‘wanted in’ on an easy payday.

    And the government gave it all to them in about three years. Fortune reported:

    An Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding; another $123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, the loss represents a jarring 10% of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has so far disbursed in COVID-relief aid.

    That number is certain to grow as investigators dig deeper into thousands of potential schemes.

    There are myriad reasons for the staggering loss. Investigators and outside experts say the government, in seeking to quickly spend trillions in relief aid, conducted too little oversight during the pandemic’s early stages and instituted too few restrictions on applicants. In short, they say, the grift was just way too easy.

    “Here was this sort of endless pot of money that anyone could access,” said Dan Fruchter, chief of the fraud and white-collar crime unit at the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Washington. “Folks kind of fooled themselves into thinking that it was a socially acceptable thing to do, even though it wasn’t legal.”

    It was theft. Some big; some small. But together it equaled a mass of scams so large it is unprecedented in U.S. history.

    And it all occurred when America was being devastated with overrun hospitals, school closures, closed businesses, and many others who really needed help.

    This is what happens when a giant faceless government bureaucracy is enabled by politicians from both parties (but generally more so from the Democrats) and detached from reality, taken from the people, and then decide who to give it to afterward.

    As Fortune notes: “Too much government money, Republicans argue, breeds fraud, waste, and inflation.” And it does.

    But it also shows the state of American society where almost everyone wants something for nothing and is willing to scam and steal to get it.

    And in this case, both sides are to blame for the massive spending and waste.

    At the height of the pandemic, President Donald Trump approved emergency aid measures totaling $3.2 trillion, according to figures from the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, and reported by Fortune.

    And then came Joe Biden with his 2021 ‘American Rescue Plan’ spending another $1.9 trillion. 

    The committee’s most recent accounting shows that about a fifth of the $5.2 trillion (over $1 TRILLION) has yet to be fully paid out. 

    Perhaps they should put that on hold until they can figure out what fraudsters they will be giving it out to, and also recover the $400 billion already wasted.

    At least Republicans and Democrats have agreed on one way to fix it. 

    They are giving the government more time to catch fraudsters with legislation passed in August To increase the statute of limitations from five to 10 years on crimes involving the two major programs managed by the Small Business Administration.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    What About the Federal Investigations on Biden’s Corruption?

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    3
    The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    ANALYSIS – We are rightfully covering all aspects of the ongoing legal proceedings against former president Donald Trump, especially the most recent federal indictment. 

    But we also need to ask – what about the federal investigations into Joe and Hunter Biden? They are potentially far more serious.

    Bill Barr, Attorney General under Trump, said the protracted investigation into Hunter Biden, which is being led by U.S. Attorney David Weiss, is damaging the nation.

    “I think it’s time to fish or cut bait and find out what actually happened in that investigation,” Barr said, according to The Blaze.

    The Hunter investigation has the strong potential to also implicate Joe Biden criminally, including credible whistleblower allegations that the senior Biden took a $5 million bribe from the Chinese.

    That would be a far worse crime than anything Trump has been accused of.

    But Democrats are quick to dismiss these serious accusations, and in some cases even lie about them.

    Case in point, a confidential human source (CHS) allegations that Biden had been involved in a criminal bribery scheme.

    After meeting with the FBI, where they showed Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin and House Oversight Committee Chairman, Republican James Comer, a document detailing the allegations, Raskin dismissed the whole thing, and apparently lied about it.

    As The Blaze reported: “Raskin, the committee’s top Democrat, claimed the Justice Department had investigated the allegations in 2020 but decided not to move further because then-U.S. Attorney Scott Brady ‘found no evidence to corroborate’ them.

    He also claimed information against Biden was given to the FBI by Rudy Giuliani, a high-profile, if slightly discredited, Trump loyalist.

    In an interview on Fox News, Barr, who led the Department of Justice (DOJ) when the whistleblower allegations were made, disputed Raskin’s comments, saying the Democrat was “confused,” and essentially called him a liar.

    According to the Blaze:

    Barr said he assigned Brady the task of vetting the document to determine its credibility. He established this “intake process,” he explained, because there were a number of ongoing investigations related to the Biden family and he wanted to avoid “proliferating investigations around the country going in to the election year, all related to the Bidens.”

    “We also wanted to protect the integrity of the investigations that were going on,” Barr said. “So this was a screening, a clearinghouse function to check evidence out before sending it to the ongoing investigations.”

    Regarding Raskin’s claim that the document contained information provided by Rudy Giuliani. That is just flatly untrue, he said.

    Barr added, “It was stuff that was developed within the department and the FBI from [a] confidential human source. And that information was checked out and it was determined that it was not likely to have been disinformation.” 

    Meanwhile, Biden decided to joke about the serious allegations about Chinese bribery.

    When confronted by a reporter at the White House who asked about them, saying “Congresswoman Nancy Mace says there’s damning evidence in the FBI file that you sold out the country,” Biden replied: “Where’s the money?” adding, “I’m joking. It’s a bunch of malarkey.”

    The GOP Congresswoman quickly responded: “[W]e don’t find selling out your country funny. Prove us wrong by releasing your and your family’s unredacted bank records. The FBI can’t protect you forever.”

    She went on to list the names of businesses the Biden family allegedly used as “shell companies” to conceal funds received from foreign nationals.

    Comer earlier had explained: “Most of these companies were limited liability companies formed during Joe Biden’s vice presidency.” 

    “The bank records show the Biden family, their associates, and their companies received over $10 million from foreign nationals and their companies.”

    According to Fox News, an executive with Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian natural gas firm where Hunter Biden served as a board member, told the FBI’s source the payoff was to be divided: “$5 million for one Biden, $5 million for the other Biden.” 

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Anti-Trump Political Witch Hunt or Valid Criminal Indictments?

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    8
    Gage Skidmore Flickr

    ANALYSIS – Former President Donald Trump faces a slew of legal onslaughts, the latest being a federal indictment by Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) for violating the Espionage Act by mishandling classified information.

    Like the FBI raid on his Florida home, this divisive and politically charged indictment is an unprecedented development that makes him the first former president in U.S. history to face criminal charges by the federal government.

    And the political fallout will be huge.

    Trump denies any wrongdoing and is calling the indictments a witch hunt. And yes, he has been unfairly targeted before – many times.

    But is this case really part of that same anti-Trump vendetta? And does it matter?

    The latest indictment is for the willful retention of highly classified national security documents at his Florida Mar-a-Lago estate, corruptly concealing documents, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and making false statements.

    Many will point to the later discovery of classified documents in Joe Biden’s homes and properties connected to him without him facing criminal charges (yet) as proof that this is an anti-Trump witch hunt.

    Last week, the DOJ also cleared former Vice President Mike Pence of any wrongdoing after a small number of classified documents were found at his Indiana home in January.

    Trump posted a slew of angry social media posts against federal investigators Tuesday highlighting different treatment.

    “The Marxists and Fascists in the DOJ & FBI are going after me at a level and speed never seen before in our Country, and I did nothing wrong,” Trump wrote in one of several posts.

    And yes, as I have repeatedly written about, the DOJ and the FBI have been heavily politicized, or even weaponized against conservatives.

    But, as with Richard Nixon and Watergate, the problem for Trump here is the cover-up. Had he simply returned the documents once they were discovered, it would have been far less likely he would have been indicted.

    Instead, Trump repeatedly refused to turn over the materials to federal officials once he left the White House, and then provided a series of bizarre justifications for his actions, before the FBI raided his home.

    A separate special counsel is investigating Biden’s handling of classified material after documents were found at his Wilmington, Del., home and a Washington, D.C., office from his time as vice president. 

    The difference here is Biden’s team alerted federal officials upon discovering the documents and promptly turned them over.

    Trump’s own former Attorney General Bill Barr pushed back on Trump’s claims that a special counsel’s ongoing documents probe is politically motivated. 

    As reported by The Hill:

    “Over time, people will see that this is not a case of the Department of Justice conducting a witch hunt,” Barr said in an interview on CBS on Tuesday. “In fact, they approached this very delicately and with deference to the president, and this would have gone nowhere had the president just returned the documents. But he jerked them around for a year and a half.”

    The indictment carries serious legal consequences, including the possibility of prison if he’s convicted. Trump will appear at a federal courthouse in Miami on June 13.

    In March, the notoriously liberal, Soros-backed Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, indicted Trump on state charges related to hush-money payments to a former porn film star in 2016. 

    That local indictment appears far more political and ‘Trumped-up’ (pun not intended) than this federal one. The trial for this case begins in March 2024.

    Jack Smith, the special counsel coordinating federal investigations into the Espionage Act indictments, oversees other inquiries related to Trump, including those regarding the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021.

    But none of this will prevent Trump from continuing his campaign for president. “Nothing stops Trump from running while indicted, or even convicted,” University of California, Los Angeles law professor Richard Hasen told CNN.

    The Constitution requires only three things of candidates. They must be a natural-born citizen (not a naturalized one), at least 35 years old, and residents of the U.S. for at least 14 years.

    So theoretically, Trump could be convicted and still be elected President.

    Not only won’t this keep Trump from running, but it will probably help him with his core base of supporters in the GOP primary.

    And Trump won’t even go to trial for any of this until well into the next presidential term.

    But the optics and politics of all this is the biggest issue.

    As the Daily Caller reported Pence as saying: “I think this is going to be terribly divisive for the country. I also think it sends a terrible message to the wider world that looks at America as a standard of not only democracy, but of justice.”

    The question is when does all of this come to a head? And what will happen when it does?

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Amanda Head: DeSantis Campaign Caught Using Fake Photos to Smear Trump

    By
    Amanda Head
    -
    7
    Ron DeSantis via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    This is a new low.

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has had enough of Trump’s insults and the gloves are coming off.

    watch Amanda explain the situation below:

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    On Twitter Show, Tucker Carlson Blames Ukraine for Attack on Dam

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    1
    Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America,

    ANALYSIS – In his Twitter Spaces debut Tuesday night, called “Tucker on Twitter,” former Fox News host Tucker Carlson immediately accused Ukraine of being responsible for the catastrophic attack on the Nova Kakhovka dam in Southern Ukraine.

    And he may be right.

    Ukraine and Russia have routinely accused each other of shelling the dam, the hydroelectric station and the nearby Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.

    Both sides have blamed the other for the attack, in what appears to be a war crime. Kyiv blamed Moscow for the “terrorist attack,” but the Kremlin claimed that Ukraine had struck the dam to impact Russian-controlled Crimea’s water supplies.

    As Newsweek reported, that is part of Tucker’s claim, too.

    And, despite his spotty track record on speculation, in this case, he may be right. Or at least, the assumption that Russia is always the culprit is no longer valid.

    Based on recent reporting, which I wrote about here, Ukraine may, in fact, have been responsible for the serious sabotage of the Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines in September 2022, which was long blamed on Russia.

    This makes the always-blame Russia crowd look less credible. But that doesn’t mean Tucker’s always-blame-everyone-except-Russia approach is any better.

    While on Fox, Tucker repeatedly blamed the United States and Joe Biden for being behind the Nord Stream attack.

    On Feb. 24 he said: “So the Biden administration committed the single largest most profound act of industrial terrorism of sabotaging history. They blew up the Nord Stream pipeline …”

    And that has always been a stretch. Instead, The Post reporting today reinforces my earlier conclusion that it is “likely, the U.S. was aware but turned a blind eye.”

    Thus, as far as we can tell, Biden knew about it beforehand but was unwilling or unable to do anything about it.

    Tucker’s claims aren’t helped when he spouts pro-Russian talking points in his video, such as:

    The Kakhovka dam was effectively Russian. It was built by the Russian government. It currently sits in Russian- controlled territory. The dam’s reservoir supplies water to Crimea, which has been for the last 240 years home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

    Firstly, the ‘Soviets’ built the dam during the USSR, not the ‘Russians,’ and the USSR no longer exists. Secondly, it doesn’t matter how long Russia’s Black Sea Fleet was based in Crimea; it belongs to Ukraine because that’s what happened when the USSR dissolved in 1991 and Ukraine became independent.

    Tucker’s Trumpian personal insults, like describing Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a “sweaty and rat-like comedian-turned-oligarch,” probably don’t help his credibility much either.

    Tucker is on firmer ground when he argues that: “Blowing up the dam may be bad for Ukraine, but it hurts Russia more, and for precisely that reason, the Ukrainian government has considered destroying it.”

    Especially when he cites a December report from The Washington Post in which a Ukrainian general spoke of using U.S.-made HIMARS launchers to “test strike” on the Kakhovka dam.

    So, what are the facts?

    The dam spanning the Dnipro River was breached on Tuesday, flooding swaths of territory and threatening crucial water supplies to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

    At least 42,000 people and 1,500 square miles of land are at risk from the flooding caused by the destruction of the dam, likely slowing any potential Ukrainian military advance in the Dnipro River delta.

    Much of the Dnipro River delta will become inaccessible for land operations, raising suspicions that Russia deliberately sabotaged the dam to prevent an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive.

    However, the flooding has disproportionately affected the Russian-occupied side of the river.

    The Kakhovka reservoir does supply Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast and the Crimea peninsula with fresh water.

    Zelensky has said that the only way to destroy the dam is through mining and explosives and emphasized that Russian forces have now occupied the dam for over a year.

    In a statement, Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command said, “Russian occupation troops blew up the dam” at Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region.

    Blaming “Russian terrorists” for the attack, Zelensky said on Twitter that “the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam only confirms for the whole world that they must be expelled from every corner of Ukrainian land.”

    In the end, Tucker may be right. Ukraine could have been behind the attack. 

    But he is far more credible when he is less bombastic and emphatic with his theories. Such as when he states:

    So really, once the facts start coming in, it becomes much less of a mystery what might have happened to the dam, and a fair person would conclude that the Ukrainians probably blew it up, just as you would assume they blew up Nord Stream, the Russian natural gas pipeline last fall.

    Tucker ended his new Twitter show by promising to be back with “much more, very soon.” I’m looking forward to it.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Amanda Head: Another Trump Indictment

    By
    Amanda Head
    -
    5
    Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    The walls are closing in on Donald Trump.

    Will the former President have another indictment in the coming weeks over his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021? It’s not looking good.

    Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he has not been told that he’s being indicted as a special counsel investigation into his handling of classified documents shows signs of wrapping up.

    “No one has told me I’m being indicted, and I shouldn’t be because I’ve done NOTHING wrong,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that he has “assumed for years that I am a Target of the WEAPONIZED DOJ & FBI.”

    Watch Amanda explain the situation below:

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

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