Miranda Devine: As Threat of Nuclear War Looms, How Democrats Spin a Crisis
As the world teeters on the edge of nuclear catastrophe, the Democrats are doing what they do best: projecting.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, opined Adam Schiff in Rolling Stone on Friday, “hammers home how despicable an act it was to treat Ukraine as a political plaything.”
Well, yes, but treating Ukraine as a political plaything has been a reckless Democratic obsession for a long time, not least when Schiff, as chair of the House Intelligence Committee, led the impeachment of Donald Trump over a phone call to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The hypocrisy makes me faint!
Other Democrats were quoted peddling the same narrative.
“I sense the first impeachment sounded kinda obscure to some people,” said Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii. “But withholding lethal aid was both an actual crime and a moral crime.”
Except that Trump did send lethal aid to Ukraine, unlike the Obama-Biden administration, which sent blankets and goggles.
And do Democrats really think Americans have forgotten Joe Biden’s boast that he withheld $1 billion in aid from the Ukrainians unless they fired the prosecutor who was investigating his son Hunter’s oligarch boss at the corrupt energy company Burisma?
This was the scandal that Trump, in his clumsy fashion, was trying to get to the bottom of. He was impeached for pressing Zelensky to look into Biden’s quid pro quo. But Biden’s bullying of Ukraine was far more sinister and consequential. Trump got nothing. The Biden family got millions of dollars from Ukraine.
Biden was President Barack Obama’s point man in Ukraine, and often flew into Kyiv to deliver lectures about corruption, at the time his son was earning $83,333 on the Burisma board.
George Kent, a US Embassy official in Kyiv, went to the VP’s office in February 2015 to raise “my concern that Hunter Biden’s status as a [Burisma] board member could create the perception of a conflict of interest,” he testified to a Senate inquiry into Burisma.
Then-US special envoy on energy policy Amos Hochstein also tried twice directly to warn Biden in the West Wing in October 2015, and again on Air Force Two in December 2015.
But their pleas were ignored.
As he is wont to do, Biden made lots of empty promises to Ukraine, giving it the impression that joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would be good for the country, not a fatal provocation to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
John Mearsheimer, the Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, one of America’s foremost international relations theorists, warned at the time: “The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked … What we’re doing is in fact encouraging that outcome.”
Seven years later, his tragic prophecy is realized.
Oxford historian Robert Service, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, points to another provocation by Biden last year.
“It was the last straw” for Putin when the US and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership on Nov. 10 last year, declaring America’s support for Ukraine’s right to pursue NATO membership, Service told the Wall Street Journal last week. After that, Russia began massing troops on the Ukrainian border.
Biden spoke with Zelensky on Saturday night. The next day, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that NATO members have the “green light” to send fighter jets to Ukraine.
This would be a major escalation, with Russia’s Defense Ministry warning on Sunday that any countries hosting warplanes that attacked Russian forces “could be considered as those countries’ engagement in the military conflict.”
In comments widely interpreted as threatening a nuclear strike if NATO imposed a no-fly zone over Ukraine, Putin warned of “colossal and catastrophic consequences not only for Europe but also the whole world.”
Frightening times.
Yet the priority for the Democratic brain trust all weekend was to spin the war to their own political benefit. The same people who pushed the Russia collusion hoax are back blaming Trump for the catastrophe in Ukraine and claiming that the situation is a triumph for Biden, who has “united NATO.” Putin probably had more to do with that.
“We got the best damn generals in the world,” Biden told Gen. Mark “White Rage” Milley as he shook his hand after the State of the Union. “I’m counting on you, man. Now don’t tell nobody, but I listen to everything you say.”
But while Putin was preparing to recreate the Soviet empire, what was our military doing? Forcing officers to undergo mandatory training on gender pronouns and how to offer soldiers sex change surgery, according to documents provided by a whistleblower to the Washington Free Beacon.
No wonder Putin regards the West as so decadent and weak that he could stroll into Ukraine with impunity. The fact he met such fierce resistance is due to the courage of the Ukrainians, not fear of the West.
Murphy’s lawman
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy made a big mistake appointing his unqualified personal clean-up merchant to be acting state attorney general.
From the coverup of campaign volunteer Katie Brennan’s sexual assault allegations to the Cuomo-esque forcing of COVID-positive patients into nursing homes, Matt Platkin’s confirmation process will air dirty laundry Murphy will regret.
Republican state Senate leader Steven Oroho already has expressed “extremely serious concerns about Matt’s handling of Katie Brennan’s allegations,” and it is believed that the Essex County Democratic senators who need to sign off on Platkin are not all on board.
Brennan, a volunteer in Murphy’s 2017 campaign, testified before a bipartisan state legislative committee that she was sexually assaulted by top Murphy official Albert Alvarez, and that Platkin, Murphy’s then-campaign policy director, covered up for his friend. The committee concluded that Platkin and other top Murphy loyalists failed Brennan “every step of the way.”
Platkin had gone on to become the governor’s chief counsel, and Alvarez was given a cushy six-figure job in the administration, only resigning when Brennan went to the media the following year.
Former colleagues are aghast at Platkin’s latest promotion. One ex-campaign staffer describes a toxic “boys club” atmosphere under the 35-year-old Montclair resident, in which chair-throwing in meetings was tolerated and women who complained were iced out.
As the governor’s chief counsel, Platkin was responsible for the decision to force nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients. As a result, New Jersey suffered one of the nation’s highest pandemic death tolls and the Murphy administration last year had to quietly pay out $53 million to families of seniors who died at state-run veterans’ homes.
How Platkin’s woeful record recommends him to be New Jersey’s chief law officer is a mystery known only to Murphy.
Thanks a ‘latte’ to Gotham’s pandemic-braving baristas
Bravo to New York’s best baristas, who gathered at the Javits Center over the weekend to compete in the Latte Art World Championships, mask-free at last. The caffeine cowboys who braved the pandemic to deliver the city its daily fix now have their chance to shine.
Midtown’s Frisson Espresso’s Tulian Sanchez was one of the talented froth artists who won Sunday’s sudden-death rounds, earning a spot in Monday’s contest against PlantShed Cafe’s Ujae Lee. The winner will compete in the final rounds Tuesday for the coveted latte artist trophy.
It’s a complex business for the judges to decide whose little hand-poured tulips and swans look the best atop a latte.
But seriously, New York’s baristas all deserve a medal for preserving a sense of normalcy for the past two years.
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