The Fetterman Weighs In On Joe Biden

The most interesting Senator in Washington

May 08, 2024

This is a must-see interview:

Joe Biden’s decision to deny U.S. weapons shipments — despite already being approved by Congress — intentionally as a way to undermine Israel.

In Washington’s first formal rebuke to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza, the Biden administration said late Tuesday that it has paused a shipment of weapons including 2,000-pound bombs destined for its top Middle East ally, as Israel mounted new operations in Rafah in southern Gaza…
The Biden administration has repeatedly said that it opposes Israel launching a ground operation in Rafah, unless there is a plan to protect the more than one million people who have sought safety there. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the Rafah operation would go forward “with or without a deal.”
Israel has “not fully addressed our concerns,” a senior administration official told reporters in a statement.
“As Israeli leaders seemed to approach a decision point on such an operation, we began to carefully review proposed transfers of particular weapons to Israel that might be used in Rafah,” the official said in the statement about the review, which began in April. “We have paused one shipment of weapons,” which consists of 1,800 bombs that weigh 2,000 pounds. The shipment also has 1,700 bombs that weigh 500 pounds.
“We are especially focused on the end-use of the 2,000-lb bombs and the impact they could have in dense urban settings as we have seen in other parts of Gaza. We have not made a final determination on how to proceed with this shipment,” the official said.
The official didn’t say who is leading the review, when it would conclude or how the administration is making its assessment.

More on how the Biden campaign is terrified of what they see on campuses.

“My biggest concern is that Republicans are going to run a message of law and order, the border, cities, law enforcement, and now the protests,” a pro-Israel Democratic lawmaker said, contending that that message would be appealing to independent, moderate and suburban voters concerned about safety and stability. “Especially given his age, showing resolve and strength is so important. Once you start equivocating, you look weak.”

Stormy Daniels Undermines Her Case

The overall take: this unnecessary testimony undermined the whole effort. More from Jonathan Turley.

Daniels’ testimony was a dumpster fire in the courtroom. The most maddening moment for the defense came at the lunch break when Merchan stated, “I agree that it would have been better if some of these things had been left unsaid.”
He then denied a motion for a mistrial based on the testimony and blamed the defense for not objecting more. That, of course, ignores the standing objection of the defense to Daniels even appearing, and specific objections to the broad scope allowed by the court. This is precisely what the defense said would happen when the prosecutors only agreed to avoid “genitalia.”
There was no reason for Daniels to appear at all in the trial.

Freddy Gray has more.

The only concession that the judge, Juan Merchan, made to Trump’s legal team in relation to Daniels’s puerile testimony was that he would not allow any question about Donald Trump’s genitals. That was big of him. Really, though, any tacit attempt to suggest that this is a legitimate criminal trial only serves to prove that it is not.

Mexican Bank Key to Democrat Bribes

Uncovering the way this corruption travels north.

U.S. federal prosecutors say a Mexican bank channeled $238,000 in bribes disguised as consulting fees to Rep. Henry Cuellar (D., Texas) to further the bank’s interests in Washington by influencing U.S. anti-money-laundering legislation, according to an indictment unsealed Friday in Houston. The lender in question was Salinas Pliego’s Banco Azteca, according to a U.S. official.
Salinas Pliego is among the oligarchs who emerged in the 1990s, when Mexico sold off state companies to private investors. He built a retail and broadcasting empire that includes Banco Azteca focusing on low-income households, and developed a reputation as a combative businessman who isn’t afraid to play rough with creditors, competitors and regulators.
Neither Salinas Pliego nor his bank were charged with any wrongdoing. Luciano Pascoe, a spokesman for Salinas Pliego’s Grupo Salinas, which owns Banco Azteca among other companies, said Sunday on X that the conglomerate, like many other companies, lobbies “to safeguard the causes in which we believe and will always defend.” Banco Azteca has the highest standards of compliance, he added.
Pascoe declined to comment further on the U.S. indictment.
Cuellar, who represents a district on the Texas-Mexico border, said he is innocent. He was released in Houston on Friday along with his wife, Imelda Cuellar, after each paid an unsecured $100,000 bond. The indictment also charges Cuellar with receiving $360,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijani state oil company for helping to advance the interests of the government of Azerbaijan.

Kristi Noem’s Bataan Media March

I write in The Spectator:

The biggest question in politics right now has to be: why is Kristi Noem doing this to herself?
Let’s do a quick recap. The South Dakota governor is your classic Tea Party-era politician, running for Congress in 2010 and beating an incumbent Democrat. When she arrived in Washington, she was a reliable Republican vote for the anti-Obama House majority — anti-tax, pro-Keystone, anti-abortion, pro-balanced budget, drill baby drill. Her congressional career was pretty unremarkable. She decided after winning reelection in 2016 to run for governor — and won handily despite doing it in a tougher year for Republicans across the board.
Winning the governorship elevated Noem’s national profile and the quick follow-on of the Covid pandemic raised her even higher. Noem emphasized the need to keep the state open, pushing back against calls for lockdown that were, at that point, bipartisan. She refused to implement distancing or mask mandates and bucked pressure on a number of issues. If you asked average conservatives in the middle of 2020 who the best governors in the country were on policy decisions, the answer would probably be Ron DeSantis, Brian Kemp and Noem.
After winning re-election, she embarked on what might be considered an odd but perhaps savvy ad campaign nationally, advertising South Dakota jobs on TV and YouTube in commercials where she stars as an ambassador for her state. On the national level, they read as an appeal for name ID aimed at Mar-a-Lago. On paper, Noem sets up as a top-tier vice presidential candidate for Donald Trump: a telegenic female Gen X governor with a solid record, who has navigated the abortion issue and spoken about it publicly and has that Western Yellowstone flair which is so in vogue right now. She might not be a favorite for the job, but worst-case scenario, she’s your next interior secretary or head of the NRA. And perhaps in 2028, she can run a more conservative version of the Nikki Haley playbook and gain traction.
Forget all of the above. She’s toast. Absolutely toast. And she did it to herself, and — bizarrely — continues to do it to herself. Since launching her book, Noem has received a deluge of attacks for her anecdote about shooting her fourteen-month-old dog Cricket, a story that no thinking politician would put to the page. If deciding to out yourself as the killer of a healthy pup is not enough, the book also contains obviously false anecdotes including a prominent one about meeting Kim Jong-un.
Noem is trying desperately to spin this as some kind of “her versus the media” conflict, but she purportedly wrote these things herself. Of course, she didn’t — she had a ghostwriter, who you have to feel is going to be collateral damage to this whole situation. But back to the original question: why is Noem still engaging in this Bataan death march of media hits? What can she possibly have to gain? Her spin on both these stories — that the dog story shows toughness, that the Kim Jong-un anecdote will be removed for “undisclosed reasons” — are not things people will actually find believable.
In the social media age, there’s an idea that all the attention you get is good attention. But that’s just not true in this case. Noem has taken a promising career with relatively few critics on the right, lit it on fire, dumped gasoline on it and then launched a mini-nuke directly into the air. Some politicians destroy themselves with gaffes that happen in the moment — the Dean scream, Rick Perry’s oops — but Noem decided to put these things in her book, recorded the audio version herself and only has herself to blame for what this does to her future.
American politics — we’re not sending our best.