On Monday, seven GOP senators sent a <a href="https://www.cornyn.senate.gov/sites/default/files/Letter%20to%20UN%20SecGen.pdf">blistering letter</a> to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres opposing the appointment of the Minister of the Chinese Mission in Geneva to the U.N. Human Rights Council Consultative Group.
Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz from Texas, Macro Rubio from Florida, James Inhofe from Oklahoma, Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee, Kevin Cramer from North Dakota, and Martha McSally from Arizona fired off a missive stating, “The Chinese government&#8217;s decision to deceive the international community about the grave dangers of the initial 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in Wuhan, China, violates any credibility on human rights and should disqualify them from a position on the Human Rights Council Consultative Group.”
They continued, “Through intimidation of its medical first responders, censorship of online forums, and threats of severe punishment for anyone who dared to speak out with the truth, the Chinese Communist Party engaged in its most egregious human rights abuse: the unchecked spread of a new and dangerous virus on an unwitting global population.” They concluded, “all member states to condemn in strongest terms the human rights violations committed by Chinese Communist Party.”
The issue was brought to the fore by Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch, which monitors the U.N. Human Rights Council and has championed the rights of victims in China, who <a href="https://unwatch.org/china-joins-u-n-human-rights-panel-will-help-pick-experts-on-free-speech-health-arbitrary-detention/">stated</a>, “Allowing China’s oppressive and inhumane regime to choose the world investigators on freedom of speech, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances is like making a pyromaniac into the town fire chief. It’s absurd and immoral for the UN to allow China’s oppressive government a key role in selecting officials who shape international human rights standards and report on violations worldwide.”
The full text of the senators’ letter is below:
<blockquote>We write to express our profound disappointment and opposition to the appointment of Jiang Duan, Minister of the Chinese Mission in Geneva, to the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council Consultative Group. As you know, in this position, Jiang will provide China with the opportunity to play a central role in picking at least 17 human rights investigators, including those who look at freedom of speech, enforced disappearance, and arbitrary detention, rights abuses which the Chinese regime routinely perpetrates.
The Chinese government&#8217;s decision to deceive the international community about the grave dangers of the initial 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in Wuhan, China, violates any credibility on human rights and should disqualify them from a position on the Human Rights Council Consultative Group. Through intimidation of its medical first responders, censorship of online forums, and threats of severe punishment for anyone who dared to speak out with the truth, the Chinese Communist Party engaged in its most egregious human rights abuse: the unchecked spread of a new and dangerous virus on an unwitting global population. Chinese government actions in the early days of the outbreak are not commensurate to influencing a council responsible for upholding human rights throughout the world. Even now, China withholds critical information about the spread and death toll of the virus and continues to silence and intimidate its critics.
In addition to its willful deceit and gross negligence regarding its handling of the COVID-19 outbreak, China is guilty of widespread and well-documented cases of human rights abuses targeting the Uyghur Muslim community in Xinjiang province. Over one million Chinese Uyghurs sit in so-called re-education camps against their will, in what can only be described as ethnic cleansing on an industrial scale and millions more are treated as second-class citizens in their own country at the hands of the regime in Beijing. It is tragic such terrible crimes against humanity can be committed by a power wanting to be seen as a responsible international actor, and even more egregious such behavior can be rewarded.
The UN was created following the most devastating conflict humanity had ever endured and to safeguard against repeating the most aw l crimes ever perpetrated. We must expect more om its leadership and from its member states. China should not occupy a position of prestige or influence on the UN Human Rights Council while it engages in human rights violations of the worst kind both at home and abroad. We implore you to intervene on behalf of our shared values of freedom and dignity by suspending Jiang&#8217;s appointment to the Human Rights Council Consultative Group, and to implore all member states to condemn in strongest terms the human rights violations committed by Chinese Communist Party.
 </blockquote>

President Trump Awards Medal Of Honor To U.S. Army Master Sgt Matthew Williams

Cruz, Rubio, 5 Other GOP Senators Blast U.N. Appointing China To Council Overseeing Human Rights Investigators

China

James Inhofe

John Cornyn

Kevin Cramer

Marco Rubio

Marsha Blackburn

Martha McSally

Ted Cruz

United Nations

On Sunday, Republican Senator Marco Rubio (FL) slammed the left-leaning media for its &#8220;grotesque&#8221; reports on America&#8217;s rising number of confirmed COVID-19 cases supposedly surpassing communist China&#8217;s — and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) joined in to point out what makes the media&#8217;s response &#8220;even worse.&#8221;
&#8220;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/world/coronavirus-news.html">U.S. Now Leads the World in Confirmed Cases</a>,&#8221; a New York Times headline declared Thursday. &#8220;Scientists warned that the United States someday would become the country hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic. That moment arrived on Thursday,&#8221; the Times reported. &#8220;In the United States, at least 81,321 people are known to have been infected with the coronavirus, including more than 1,000 deaths — more cases than China, Italy or any other country has seen, according to data gathered by The New York Times.&#8221;
Amid a series of similar reports declaring the U.S. the world&#8217;s &#8220;hardest hit&#8221; nation and a flood of responses to the claim from journalists on social media and on the networks, Sen. Rubio posted a blistering tweet on Sunday.
&#8220;Some in our media can’t contain their glee [and] delight in reporting that the U.S. has more [coronavirus] cases than [China],&#8221; Rubio wrote. &#8220;Beyond being grotesque, [it&#8217;s] bad journalism[.] We have NO IDEA how many cases China really has but without any doubt its significantly more than why they admit to.&#8221;
In response, Cruz argued that what makes it &#8220;even worse&#8221; is that members of the media &#8220;KNOW&#8221; China is lying.
&#8220;It’s even worse. We KNOW China is lying,&#8221; Cruz wrote. &#8220;On 3/1, China had 80,026 reported cases. On 3/28, it had 81,439. Does anyone believe this highly contagious virus just stopped in China on 3/1, right as it became a pandemic worldwide? And American media (for $$) willingly repeat the lies.&#8221;
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It’s even worse. We KNOW China is lying. On 3/1, China had 80,026 reported cases. On 3/28, it had 81,439. Does anyone believe this highly contagious virus just stopped in China on 3/1, right as it became a pandemic worldwide? And American media (for $$) willingly repeat the lies. <a href="https://t.co/GovCf3G825">https://t.co/GovCf3G825</a>
&mdash; Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) <a href="https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1244344617967013892?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 29, 2020</a></blockquote>
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As noted by <a href="https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2020/03/30/old-tweets-from-blue-check-journos-prove-marco-rubio-is-100-right-about-media-glee/">Twitchy</a>, past tweets by journalists have helped make the two senators&#8217; points for them. &#8220;We are quite literally doing a worse job of containing the virus than any other country on earth,&#8221; MSNBC&#8217;s Chris Hayes tweeted Friday.
&#8220;The United States now has more coronavirus cases reported than any other country in the world,&#8221; Trump-critic CNN&#8217;s Jim Acosta tweeted. &#8220;The US has just passed China, a country four times larger In population.&#8221;
&#8220;Who&#8217;s the shithole country now?&#8221; GQ&#8217;s Julia Ioffe wrote.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
We are quite literally doing a worse job of containing the virus than any other country on earth.
&mdash; Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) <a href="https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1243673639096123394?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 27, 2020</a></blockquote>
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The US has just passed China, a country four times larger In population. <a href="https://t.co/l8qauNUuDo">https://t.co/l8qauNUuDo</a>
&mdash; Jim Acosta (@Acosta) <a href="https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1243323926136094722?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 26, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Who&#39;s the shithole country now? <a href="https://t.co/7NL4aHbyHq">https://t.co/7NL4aHbyHq</a>
&mdash; Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) <a href="https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1243297913863835648?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 26, 2020</a></blockquote>
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In its initial report on the total number of confirmed cases in the U.S. supposedly surpassing China&#8217;s, the Times paints the Trump administration&#8217;s response as one characterized by &#8220;a series of missteps and lost opportunities&#8221; (formatting adjusted):
<blockquote>
With 330 million residents, the United States is the world’s third most populous nation, meaning it provides a vast pool of people who can potentially get Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. And it is a sprawling, cacophonous democracy, where states set their own policies and President Trump has sent mixed messages about the scale of the danger and how to fight it, ensuring there was no coherent, unified response to a grave public health threat.
A series of missteps and lost opportunities dogged the nation’s response. Among them: a failure to take the pandemic seriously even as it engulfed China, a deeply flawed effort to provide broad testing for the virus that left the country blind to the extent of the crisis, and a dire shortage of masks and protective gear to protect doctors and nurses on the front lines, as well as ventilators to keep the critically ill alive.
</blockquote>
Despite the mainstream media&#8217;s intensely critical coverage of the Trump administration&#8217;s handling of the crisis, recent polls have found that a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gallup-trump-approval-spikes-majority-of-americans-approve-of-his-handling-of-crisis">strong majority</a> of the American people approve of the president&#8217;s response, while Gallup found that a majority of Americans <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gallup-finds-biggest-loser-in-covid-19-crisis-is-the-media">disapprove of the media&#8217;s coverage of the crisis</a>.

Rubio Slams Media For ‘Grotesque’ Reports On U.S. Coronavirus Cases; Cruz Explains Why ‘It’s Even Worse’

Coronavirus

There&#8217;s no question small businesses across the nation are getting creamed in the midst of the China-originated novel coronavirus scare. With statewide shutdowns and directed limitations on operational hours, unemployment claims have spiked and employers are struggling to keep their heads above water, at no fault of their own.
Working alongside Sens. Susan Collins (R-MI) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), chairman of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, has outlined $300 billion in relief for such businesses via a federal relief package expected to be signed by President Donald Trump as early as Monday.
Rubio&#8217;s provisions would allow small businesses with fewer than 500 employees access to cash-flow through 100% federally guaranteed loans. If employers maintain their payroll until June 30, 2020, the loans would be forgiven, effectively making them grants.
If small businesses have already experienced worker losses due to the crisis – states like New York and California have already shuttered businesses by mandate – employers can still be eligible for the loan assistance by rehiring employees they lost as of March 1: &#8220;This proposal would be retroactive to March 1, 2020, to help bring workers who may have already been laid off back onto payrolls,&#8221; <a href="https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/b033189a-3152-4892-92cf-ec2aa6d35e22/18E9E50D6A36BE3ACFAE4AE7A793B738.final---one-pager---keeping-workers-paid-and-employed-act.pdf">guidance</a> from the senator&#8217;s office outlines.
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Here are some of the <a href="https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/b033189a-3152-4892-92cf-ec2aa6d35e22/18E9E50D6A36BE3ACFAE4AE7A793B738.final---one-pager---keeping-workers-paid-and-employed-act.pdf">key provisions</a> small business owners need to know:
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<blockquote>-Loans would be immediately available through existing Small Business Administration-certified lenders, including banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions, and SBA would be required to streamline the process to bring additional lenders into the program.
-The Secretary of Treasury would be authorized to expedite the addition of new lenders and make further enhancements to expedite delivery of capital to small employers.
-The size of the loans would be tied to an applicant’s average monthly payroll; mortgage, rent, and utility payments; and other debt obligations over the previous year. The maximum loan amount would be $10 million.
-Conditional upon business retaining their employees and payroll levels during the covered period (March 1, 2020, through June 30, 2020), the portion of the loan used to cover payroll and payments on pre-existing debt would be forgiven. Further, employers with tipped employees would receive forgiveness for additional wages paid to such employees during the covered time.</blockquote>
As noted by the <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article241367601.html">Miami Herald</a>, Rubio&#8217;s small business relief plan has essentially evaded criticism and is not expected to be changed before landing on President Trump&#8217;s desk.
“The economic uncertainty and potential global impact we are facing due to the coronavirus pandemic are unprecedented,” the Republican said in a statement, according to the Miami Herald.
“America’s more than 30 million small businesses — and the 59.9 million individuals they employ — today face the prospect of going bankrupt,&#8221; Rubio continued. &#8220;They face this threat due to no fault of their own, but because of a global pandemic that takes human lives and grinds productivity to a halt. Congress must set aside our normal procedural and partisan games to act without delay.&#8221;
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Small businesses &#8220;don’t have a few weeks before they run out of operating cash,&#8221; the senator emphasized via Twitter on Friday. &#8220;They are (often tearfully) laying off workers all over the country, by the minute because they have no choice.&#8221;
&#8220;Small/mid-size business owners are also employees themselves,&#8221; he noted. &#8220;The trauma this is inflicting on them, their employees and our country is severe. We don’t have the luxury of days to kick around ideas or try to one-up each other. We need to reach agreement and act now.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Small/mid size business owners are also employees themselves. The trauma this is inflicting on them,their employees &amp; our country is severe. 
We don’t have the luxury of days to kick around ideas or try to one-up each other. We need to reach agreement &amp; act now. 5/5
&mdash; Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) <a href="https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1240955209372835842?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 20, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Sen. Marco Rubio

Rubio Drafts $300B Small Business Relief Plan So You Can Keep Employees. Here’s What You Need To Know.

On Thursday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) criticized senators who, after being briefed about the strike against Qassem Soleimani, were not “convinced [that] action against” the leader of the Iranian Quds Force “was justified.”
This appeared to some to be a potentially veiled swipe at Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who stated that the Iran briefing was “inadequate” and “insulting.”
Following the briefing on Iran, Sen. Lee spoke to reporters. The senator made sure to first note that he respects the way in which President Trump has conducted himself with respect to foreign military engagement:
<blockquote>I want to state at the outset I support President Trump; I support and respect the manner in which he has approached his commander in chief powers. I believe that more than any other president in my lifetime, President Trump has shown a lot of restraint; he&#8217;s been reluctant to get us involved in wars all over the globe; he&#8217;s been very mindful and respectful of the fact that when the American people are asked to give up blood and treasure, they&#8217;re sending off their sons and their daughters, their moms and their dads, into battlefield, and he&#8217;s therefore very careful about it. I respect that enormously. My comments at the moment are not directed toward the attack that occurred on Friday. We’ll leave that to another day.</blockquote>
After making sure his initial point was clear, Lee went on to discuss his primary issues with the briefing:
<blockquote>I will say that we were brought into this briefing today to talk to us about that attack on Friday. I had hoped and expected to receive more information outlining the legal, factual, and moral justification for the attack, but was left somewhat unsatisfied on that front.
The briefing lasted only 75 minutes whereupon our briefers left. This, however, is not the biggest problem I have with the briefing, which I would add was probably the worst briefing I&#8217;ve seen – at least on a military issue – in the nine years I&#8217;ve served in the United States Senate. What I found so distressing about that briefing was that one of the messages we received from the briefers was, “Do not debate; do not discuss the issue of the appropriateness of further military intervention against Iran, and that if you do, you&#8217;ll be emboldening Iran.” The implication being that we would somehow be making America less safe by having a debate or a discussion about the appropriateness of further military involvement against the government of Iran.
Now, I find this insulting and demeaning, not personally, but to the office that each of the 100 senators in this building happens to hold. I find it insulting and I find it demeaning to the Constitution of the United States, to which we&#8217;ve all sworn an oath. It is, after all, the prerogative of the legislative branch to declare war. Article 1 section 8 makes that very clear.</blockquote>
Lee stated that he entered the briefing on the fence about “whether to support the resolution under the War Powers Act introduced” by a Democratic senator, but came out in support of it (pending amendments that would make it satisfactory).
Lee concluded:
<blockquote>It is not acceptable for officials within the executive branch of government – I don&#8217;t care whether they&#8217;re with the CIA, with the Department of Defense, or otherwise – to come in and tell us that we can&#8217;t debate and discuss the appropriateness of military intervention against Iran. It’s un-American; it&#8217;s unconstitutional; and it&#8217;s wrong. And I hope and expect that they will show greater deference to their own limited power in the future and to the power that belongs to Congress.</blockquote>
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Speaking later with Fox News’ Martha MacCallum, Lee <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/tv/mike-lee-on-fox-news-doubles-down-on-fiery-iran-presser-officials-wouldnt-answer-questions-on-imminent-threat/">clarified and expanded</a> on his remarks:
<blockquote>First of all, as to the substance of the strike itself on Friday with General Soleimani – he was a bad guy. I have yet to take a position on that. I was hoping to be able to reach a conclusion as to the logical, legal, constitutional, and moral justification today. I didn&#8217;t feel like I got my questions answered. I&#8217;m willing to assume for purposes of this discussion with you right now, Martha, that that may have been legally justifiable.
What I’m concerned about is the flippant attitude that they [those who briefed the senators] reflected, both with regard to the underlying facts on Friday’s attack and especially as they relate moving forward to any subsequent attack that we might undertake on Iran. There was a dismissive attitude, one that was displayed in such a way that resulted in them saying “We can’t identify what circumstances in which we would need to come back to Congress to get approval or authorization.” That’s antithetical to the Constitution.</blockquote>
Lee continued:
<blockquote>We repeatedly asked them, “Under what circumstances would you need to come back to us to get authority from Congress before taking an action against Iran? For example, what if you decided that you wanted to take out the supreme leader. Would you in that circumstance need to come back to Congress for a declaration of war or an authorization for the use of military force?” Astoundingly, they refused to answer that question. I find that simply unacceptable.</blockquote>
When MacCallum asked Lee about the briefers’ explanation as it pertained to “the justification for the imminence of the attacks,” Lee replied:
<blockquote>They kept telling us that there would have been an imminent attack had they not taken this strike on Friday, which, again, for purposes of this conversation, I’m willing to assume may well have been lawful. But then when we would ask them, “What was the nature of that attack? When and where would it have occurred? By whom would it have been carried it out?,” they refused to answer the question, and they deferred in the same way they would if we weren’t in a classified environment, saying, “Well, we can’t talk about that.” Well, we were in an underground bunker designed for that very purpose. And they should have told us.</blockquote>
Senator Marco Rubio didn’t share the same perspective, tweeting on Wednesday and Thursday:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Natl Security officials gave a compelling briefing to Senators just now. They answered every important question.
Anyone who walks out &amp; says they aren’t convinced action against <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Soleimani?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Soleimani</a> was justified is either never going to be convinced or just oppose everything Trump does.
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) <a href="https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1215016844081422338?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 8, 2020</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>Natl Security officials gave a compelling briefing to Senators just now. They answered every important question. Anyone who walks out &amp; says they aren’t convinced action against <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Soleimani?src=hash">#Soleimani</a> was justified is either never going to be convinced or just oppose everything Trump does.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Any Senator who left the briefing on <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Iran?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Iran</a> &amp; claims <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Soleimani?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Soleimani</a> wasn’t planning a near term attack on Americans is calling the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Milley a liar.
Because Gen. Milley stated clearly &amp; firmlythat Soleimani was about to kill Americans.
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) <a href="https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1215242295857090561?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 9, 2020</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>Any Senator who left the briefing on <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Iran?src=hash">#Iran</a> &amp; claims <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Soleimani?src=hash">#Soleimani</a> wasn’t planning a near term attack on Americans is calling the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Milley a liar. Because Gen. Milley stated clearly &amp; firmly that Soleimani was about to kill Americans.</blockquote>
Rubio later attempted to clarify, issuing another tweet: “Some reporting about GOP Senator upset after Iran briefing leaves false impression it’s because information provided didn’t justify #Soleimani strike. It was because administration didn’t offer hypothetical scenario requiring congressional authorization for military action.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Some reporting about GOP Senator upset after Iran briefing leaves false impression it’s because information provided didn’t justify <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Soleimani?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Soleimani</a> strike
It was because administration didn’t offer hypothetical scenario requiring congressional authorization for military action
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) <a href="https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1215258695329775616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 9, 2020</a></blockquote>
Appearing on Fox News, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a close friend of Lee, seemingly tried to bridge the gap, telling host Shannon Bream:
<blockquote>I think Mike was frustrated because the administration, particularly when asked some forward-looking questions about what level of congressional authorization and congressional consultation was necessary, I think the administration was a little too quick to dismiss the role of Congress. Listen, I&#8217;m a believer in the Constitution. Under the Constitution, it is Congress that has the power to declare war, and I think any time you&#8217;re looking at long-term sustained military engagement, you need congressional authorization. That&#8217;s what Mike was reacting to, is the administration was pretty dismissive of that.</blockquote>
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Sen. Mike Lee.

Rubio Calls Iran Briefing ‘Compelling’; Lee Calls It ‘Insulting’; Cruz Tries To Thread Needle For Lee

Donald Trump

Iran

Mike Lee

Qasem Soleimani

As Democrats continue to hold impeachment hearings in the House, knowing full well Republicans in the Senate won’t go along with their gambit, Politico reporters <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/05/trump-censure-impeachment-republicans-075572">attempted</a> to get the Senate GOP to consider censuring President Donald Trump instead.
This way, Democrats could save face and get some sort of “win” for their months-long impeachment investigation by getting the president of the united states censured without actually removing him from office. Of course, it was not Republicans who came up with this idea, but two Politico reporters, who asked Republicans in the House and Senate if they would support such a measure. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) revealed the ruse in his response, saying he was “not in favor of” censure and that the senate would “wait and see what comes over here, but I haven’t heard anybody discuss it. I haven’t even thought about it until you raised it.”
Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-SD), told the reporters “I doubt it,” when asked if the GOP was considering censure as an alternative to impeachment.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) told Politico he didn’t think the impeachment alternative would get “many, if any, Republican votes” and said such a move “would be an admission that they did something terribly wrong. I just don’t see it.”
Rep. Steve Chabot, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee and was present during Wednesday’s impeachment hearing (where three Democrat-called scholars said Trump should be impeached while a Republican-called scholar said he should not be), told Politico he didn’t “think the Democrats are going to offer” censure as an option, nor did he “think there would be Republican support.”
Politico framed Republican’s refusal to support censure as an issue of political bias:
Even some Republicans who have expressed concerns about Trump’s actions said they’ve given little thought to a rebuke that falls short of impeachment. That antipathy for even a symbolic reprimand of Trump underscores how the president has transformed the Republican Party, in which any break with him can be seen as a personal slight.
An alternative read on the refusal would be that Republicans see the impeachment hearing as a charade and don’t think Trump committed an impeachable offense or even something that out of the norm for a president. Recall that while he was Vice President, Joe Biden helped get a Ukraine prosecutor fired who was investigating a company that employed his son, Hunter. Also recall the Obama administration approved warrants to spy on Trump campaign officials based flimsy rumors about what they may or may not have said in private meetings with individuals who had been assets for government institutions. For Republicans to accept censuring Trump, they would be giving in to the Democrat narrative that Trump has committed an impeachable offense while President Barack Obama did nothing wrong while he was president. Republicans easily could have held impeachment hearings against Obama. The media would have called them a “charade.”
Politico referenced President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, ignoring the difference that Clinton committed an obvious crime – perjury, when he lied about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Democrats have had to change the name of the crime they claim Trump committed – from quid pro quo to bribery, even though they have not presented evidence that Trump offered Ukraine money in exchange for something – in order to continue selling impeachment to a wary nation.

Politico Tries To Get Republicans To Accept Censuring Trump

Media Bias

Politico

On Thursday, CNN hosted an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/at-cnn-lbgtq-event-elizabeth-warren-contemptuously-dismisses-men-of-faith">LGBTQ town hall</a> event for the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. During Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) segment, she was asked a question about traditional marriage between a man and a woman.
&#8220;Let’s say you’re on the campaign trail &#8230; and a supporter approaches you and says, ‘Senator, I’m old-fashioned, and my faith teaches me that marriage is between one man and one woman.’ What is your response?&#8221; asked Chair of the Human Rights Campaign’s Board of Directors Morgan Cox.
Warren replied:
<blockquote>Well, I’m going to assume it’s a guy who said that, and I’m gonna say, &#8220;Then just marry one woman.&#8221; I’m cool with that &#8230; assuming you can find one.</blockquote>
The audience cheered and applauded Warren’s &#8220;mic drop&#8221; moment.
After answering the question about traditional marriage, the senator spoke about faith as she perceived it when she was a young person, adding that the alleged &#8220;hatefulness&#8221; from the faithful &#8220;always really shocked&#8221; her:
<blockquote>The hatefulness, frankly, always really shocked me. Especially for people of faith because I think the foundation is the worth of every single human being. And I get people may make decisions for themselves that are different than the decisions other people make, but by golly, those are decisions about you; they are not decisions that tell other people what they can and cannot do.</blockquote>
On Saturday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) tweeted a response to Warren’s town hall comments:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Vividly captures the condescension of elites &amp; their incessant ridicule of Americans with traditional values. It elicits glee among celebrities &amp; blue check brigade. But for the millions sick of being disrespected it elicits support for fighting back, even in a crude or vulgar way. <a href="https://t.co/uJgfyxMpUQ">https://t.co/uJgfyxMpUQ</a>
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) <a href="https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1183069482522152960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 12, 2019</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>Vividly captures the condescension of elites &amp; their incessant ridicule of Americans with traditional values. It elicits glee among celebrities &amp; blue check brigade. But for the millions sick of being disrespected, it elicits support for fighting back, even in a crude or vulgar way.</blockquote>
Despite the tweet receiving more than 8,200 &#8220;likes&#8221; and being retweeted nearly 2,300 times as of publication, it was brutally ratioed (23,000 comments and counting). Rubio got dragged in the comments, with many users claiming &#8220;bigotry&#8221; and &#8220;hatred,&#8221; as well as bringing up President Trump’s indecent history and behavior.
Bobby Berk of Netflix’s &#8220;Queer Eye&#8221; even commented, comparing Rubio to the &#8220;Pharisees&#8221;:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none">
Ur such a hypocrite! Using the word “values” when it suits u. 
Jesus would drive you out of the temple just like he did the pharisees. Stop using his name 2 try 2 take rights away from people. That is NOT what Jesus would do &amp; u know it. U just need <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Trumpers?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Trumpers</a> to get re-elected <a href="https://t.co/8DHusn7O1T">pic.twitter.com/8DHusn7O1T</a>
— Bobby Berk (@bobbyberk) <a href="https://twitter.com/bobbyberk/status/1183432928077836293?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 13, 2019</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>Ur such a hypocrite! Using the word “values” when it suits u. Jesus would drive you out of the temple just like he did the pharisees. Stop using his name 2 try 2 take rights away from people. That is NOT what Jesus would do &amp; u know it. U just need <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/hashtag/Trumpers?src=hashtag_click">#Trumpers</a> to get re-elected.</blockquote>
Writer Kimberly Johnson tweeted, &#8220;Not surprising the fake Christian would consider tolerance ‘crude and vulgar.’”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none">
Not surprising the fake Christian would consider tolerance “crude and vulgar.”
— Kimberley Johnson (@AuthorKimberley) <a href="https://twitter.com/AuthorKimberley/status/1183221802044219393?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 13, 2019</a></blockquote>
Over the last two decades, the percentage of the population in favor of same-sex marriage has grown dramatically.
According to <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/">Pew Research</a>, the percentage of self-identified Republicans, as well as those who &#8220;lean&#8221; Republican, who support same-sex marriage has risen from 23% in 2001 to 44% in 2019.
Even among ostensibly religious people, the percentages have risen.
In 2001, approximately 13% of &#8220;white evangelical Protestants&#8221; supported same-sex marriage. By 2019, that support more than doubled to 29%. In that same period of time, support among &#8220;white mainline Protestants&#8221; went from 38% to 66%. Catholics mirror this rise, with 40% support in 2001 compared to 61% support in 2019.
Among the general American public, support has risen from 35% in 2001 to 61% in 2019, reports Pew.

Marco Rubio.

Rubio Gets Dragged After Calling Out Elizabeth Warren’s LGBTQ Town Hall Remark

Elizabeth Warren

Gay Rights

LGBT

Same-Sex Marriage

While the &#8220;NBA cowering to China&#8221; controversy continues to rage, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/boycottblizzard?lang=en">#BoycottBlizzard</a> is trending on Twitter and employees are staging walkouts after the gaming giant — which is partly owned by Chinese tech company Tencent and makes <a href="https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news-release-details/activision-blizzard-announces-second-quarter-2019-financial">over 10%</a> of its profits from the Asia-Pacific region — banned a Hong Kong-based professional player for expressing support for the pro-democracy Hong Kong protests.
For saying &#8220;Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times&#8221; during a live-streamed interview focused on his tournament success, Hearthstone player Chung Ng Wai (&#8220;Blitzchung&#8221;) was told by Activision Blizzard that he must forfeit $10,000 of his prize money and was banned from playing professionally for a year.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Breaking: Effective immediately, Blizzard has removed Hong Kong Hearthstone player blitzchung from Hearthstone Grand Masters, rescinded all his prize money, and have suspended him from pro play for one year for his recent interview.
Statement below <a href="https://t.co/ByI8vrZk1a">https://t.co/ByI8vrZk1a</a> <a href="https://t.co/3h6jKYezMQ">pic.twitter.com/3h6jKYezMQ</a>
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) <a href="https://twitter.com/Slasher/status/1181442535962632193?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 8, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The backlash against Blizzard&#8217;s anti-free speech actions is rapidly escalating, both outside and inside the company.
As reported by <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/blizzard-employees-staged-a-walkout-to-protest-banned-pro-hong-kong-gamer">The Daily Beast</a> Wednesday, a small group of Blizzard employees from multiple departments staged walk-outs Tuesday in solidarity with &#8220;Blitzchung&#8221; and to express their disgust with the company&#8217;s &#8220;appalling&#8221; actions. The protesting employees reportedly gathered around a statue of an Orc at the center of the company&#8217;s Irvine, California campus for several hours, starting at around 10 a.m.
&#8220;The action Blizzard took against the player was pretty appalling but not surprising,&#8221; one of the employees told The Daily Beast. &#8220;Blizzard makes a lot of money in China, but now the company is in this awkward position where we can’t abide by our values.&#8221;
&#8220;We want people all over the world to play our games, but no action like this can be made with political neutrality,&#8221; another self-described &#8220;disappointed&#8221; employee told the outlet.
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&#8220;The protesters also solicited signatures for a petition expressing displeasure with Blizzard leadership’s handling of the matter that they planned to submit to executives, the two employees said,&#8221; The Daily Beast reports. The employees told the outlet that so far no executives have taken action against them for protesting the ban.
Games Industry tweeted out a photo of the protest:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
&#8220;I will not be a smiling face on camera that tacitly endorses this decision,&#8221; Brian Kibler said. <a href="https://t.co/EQIpIOU7RA">https://t.co/EQIpIOU7RA</a>
— GamesIndustry (@GIBiz) <a href="https://twitter.com/GIBiz/status/1182225151670280192?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 10, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Protests aren&#8217;t only been staged under Orc statues, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/boycottblizzard?lang=en">#BoycottBlizzard</a> is all over Twitter with criticism directed at the company far less politely phrased — &#8220;F*** Blizzard&#8221; pops up a lot.
One of those taking to Twitter to protest is game producer Mark Kern, who posted a lengthy thread explaining his reasons for joining the boycott that has gotten some attention online. &#8220;I have watched China slowly take over as the dominant investing force in gaming and movies over the years,&#8221; Kern <a href="https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/1181736075775004672">wrote</a>. &#8220;It’s a shame US companies never believed as strongly as China and Asia in investing in games, but this allowed China to have unprecedented influence over our media. Chinese game companies have grown huge not just because of market size, but because the government subsidizes them. They get free land, free offices, and huge infusions of cash. This cash was and is used to do expand and buy up stakes in US gaming companies.&#8221;
&#8220;I’ve seen firsthand the corruption of Chinese gaming companies, and I was removed from a company I founded (after Blizzard) for refusing to take a 2 million dollar kickback bribe to take an investment from China. This is the first time I’ve ever spoken [publicly] about it,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;I’ve also seen how American company reps in China have been offered similar bribes to get licenses for large AAA titles. Not everyone refused like I did. Chinese companies tried to ruin my career with planted press stories. Money is often paid for favorable press in China and some of that money flows here to the US as well. Unfortunately, money talks. China has succeeded in infiltrating all levels of tech, gaming and more. &#8230; [N]ow we are in a situation where unlimited Communist money dictates our American values. We censor our games for China, we censor our movies for China. Now, game companies are silencing voices for freedom and democracy.&#8221;
Political figures have also begun to weigh in on the issue. As reported by <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/464990-lawmakers-criticize-blizzard-for-suspending-gamer-who-supported-hong">The Hill</a>, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have rebuked the company, including Republican Sen. Marco Rubio (FL).
&#8220;Recognize what’s happening here,&#8221; Rubio wrote Tuesday. &#8220;People who don’t live in [China] must either self censor or face dismissal &amp; suspensions. China using access to market as leverage to crush free speech globally. Implications of this will be felt long after everyone in U.S. politics today is gone.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Recognize what’s happening here. People who don’t live in <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/China?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#China</a> must either self censor or face dismissal &amp; suspensions. China using access to market as leverage to crush free speech globally. Implications of this will be felt long after everyone in U.S. politics today is gone. <a href="https://t.co/Cx3tkWc7r6">https://t.co/Cx3tkWc7r6</a>
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) <a href="https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1181556058659135488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 8, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden (OR) also blasted Blizzard. &#8220;Blizzard shows it is willing to humiliate itself to please the Chinese Communist Party,&#8221; he tweeted Tuesday. &#8220;No American company should censor calls for freedom to make a quick buck.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Blizzard shows it is willing to humiliate itself to please the Chinese Communist Party. No American company should censor calls for freedom to make a quick buck. <a href="https://t.co/rJBeXUiwYS">https://t.co/rJBeXUiwYS</a>
— Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) <a href="https://twitter.com/RonWyden/status/1181637167749193729?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 8, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-shames-nba-coaches-for-pandering-to-china">WATCH: Trump Shames NBA Coaches For ‘Pandering To China’</a>
</div>

World of Warcraft

Backlash Builds Against Blizzard For Banning Player For Anti-China Comment

On Sunday, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) appeared on ABC’s &#8220;This Week.&#8221; At the outset of the segment, the representative was asked by host George Stephanopoulos about the appropriateness of President Trump asking China to investigate former vice president and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
<blockquote>STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you think it&#8217;s appropriate for President Trump to ask China and Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden?
JORDAN: I think he&#8217;s getting – as I think Senator Rubio said a couple days ago – I think he’s getting the press all spun up about this. Remember, this is the president who’s been tougher on China than any other president. He wants to make sure China quits stealing America’s intellectual property. He wants to make sure they start abiding by international trade norms&#8230;
STEPHANOPOULOS: He said directly –
JORDAN: He’s put tariffs on China. And you really think he says &#8230; the same guy who’s been tougher on China now thinks, oh, China’s going to investigate &#8230; he was just making a statement to just underscore how wrong it is what took place here with Hunter Biden getting these deals that he got. That’s all he’s doing.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So the president asked China to investigate. We’re not supposed to take the president at his word?
JORDAN: Again, I think Senator Rubio said it best &#8230; you guys would think after three and a half years, you would – with the campaign and everything else – you’d figure out some other way –
STEPHANOPOULOS: But he said in public the exact same thing he said in private to the Ukrainian president.
JORDAN: I wish there would be the same outrage for this, for what the president said about China, the same outrage that there was when &#8230; the Clinton campaign and the Democrat National Committee hired a foreigner who worked with Russians to dig up dirt on the president, put it in a document that was given to the Department of Justice, and then the FBI used that document to go to a secret court to spy on the Trump campaign. And you guys outraged about that.</blockquote>
Following some overlap, Stephanopoulos said: &#8220;So, should I conclude from that that you don’t think it would be appropriate for the president to ask China to investigate the Bidens?&#8221;
Jordan replied:
<blockquote>I think he’s just making this – I’m just telling you what the statement is. You asked me about the statement. I’m saying I don’t think he’s – I don’t think anyone in America really believes – except people maybe in the press and some Democrats in Congress – really believe that the President of the United States thinks China is going to investigate.</blockquote>
As the segment rolled on, Stephanopoulos and Jordan sparred over the question, while Jordan repeatedly brought up Hunter Biden’s alleged business dealings in China, as well as the president’s toughness on trade.
<blockquote>STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, because you haven&#8217;t answered it.
JORDAN: I don&#8217;t think he really meant go investigate, because do you think China is going to investigate him?
STEPHANOPOULOS: I don&#8217;t know if China is going to investigate him, but I know the president asked China to investigate him.
JORDAN: We know they&#8217;re not, George. Come on.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Why can&#8217;t you answer yes or no, do you think it&#8217;s appropriate.
JORDAN: Because I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s what he did. I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s what he did.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So – but it was right there on camera.
JORDAN: I think Senator Rubio had it exactly right. &#8230; You would think after, like I said, a few years of following this president, you would understand sort of how this guy communicates. I think that is what he&#8217;s doing.</blockquote>
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On Thursday, President Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/rubio-on-trump-saying-china-should-investigate-biden-i-dont-think-its-a-real-request">told the press</a>: &#8220;China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine.&#8221;
The next day, a reporter asked Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) if it was appropriate for the president &#8220;to ask China to launch an investigation of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden?&#8221;
Rubio <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/rubio-on-trump-saying-china-should-investigate-biden-i-dont-think-its-a-real-request">replied</a>: &#8220;I don’t know if that’s a real request or him just needling the press knowing that you guys were gonna get outraged by it. He’s pretty good at getting everybody fired up, and he’s been doing it for a while now, and the media responded right on task.&#8221;
After some intense backlash, the senator <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/rubio-on-trump-saying-china-should-investigate-biden-i-dont-think-its-a-real-request">tweeted</a> in part: &#8220;You can keep getting played, but I won’t.&#8221;

Jim Jordan.

Rep Jordan: ‘I Don’t Think’ Americans Believe Trump ‘Thinks China Is Going To Investigate’

Jim Jordan

Ukraine

On Friday, a reporter asked Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) about President Trump’s comment that China should investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.
&#8220;Do you think it&#8217;s okay for President Trump to ask China to launch an investigation of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden?&#8221; the reporter asked.
Rubio replied:
<blockquote>I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s a real request or him just needling the press knowing that you guys were gonna get outraged by it. He&#8217;s pretty good at getting everybody fired up, and he&#8217;s been doing it for a while now, and the media responded right on task.</blockquote>
The same reporter then asked: &#8220;But you’re one of the loudest critics of China and its human rights abuses. I mean, is it okay for him to ask, to say that?&#8221;
&#8220;I don’t think it’s a real – again, I think he did it to get you guys,&#8221; Rubio responded. &#8220;I think he did it to provoke you to ask me and others, and to get outraged by it. Like I said, he plays it like a violin and everyone falls right into it. I don’t think it’s a real request.&#8221;
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Following Rubio’s comments, many on social media dragged the senator.
Author and CNN host S.E. Cupp tweeted: &#8220;It’s no small thing that a US Senator and member of Trump’s own party admits he doesn’t take the what the President of the United States says seriously, and suggests the American press does so foolishly. Just chew on that.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
It’s no small thing that a US Senator and member of Trump’s own party admits he doesn’t take the what the President of the United States says seriously, and suggests the American press does so foolishly. Just chew on that. <a href="https://t.co/fNG5jmrE9R">https://t.co/fNG5jmrE9R</a>
— S.E. Cupp (@secupp) <a href="https://twitter.com/secupp/status/1180190704435417088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 4, 2019</a></blockquote>
Talk radio host and senior columnist for Mediaite John Ziegler tweeted: &#8220;You are a DISGRACE, a coward, and a fraud. I am ashamed I ever supported you for President, or even Senator.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none">
You are a DISGRACE, a coward, and a fraud. I am ashamed I ever supported you for President, or even Senator.
— John Ziegler (@Zigmanfreud) <a href="https://twitter.com/Zigmanfreud/status/1180241305277886464?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 4, 2019</a></blockquote>
Some defended Rubio.
One America News Network’s (OANN) Liz Wheeler tweeted: &#8220;Senator <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/marcorubio">@MarcoRubio</a> right on the mark&#8230; <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump">@realDonaldTrump</a> was needling the liberal press who fall for it every time. LOL.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Senator <a href="https://twitter.com/marcorubio?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MarcoRubio</a> right on the mark&#8230; <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a> was needling the liberal press who fall for it every time. LOL.<a href="https://t.co/F7TAINF10f">pic.twitter.com/F7TAINF10f</a>
— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) <a href="https://twitter.com/Liz_Wheeler/status/1180209473870168064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 4, 2019</a></blockquote>
Rubio responded to the backlash on Twitter, writing that he wasn’t going to be played:
<blockquote>You can keep getting played, but I wont. I’ll focus on dignified work, collapsing families &amp; communities, China’s plan to overtake us etc; the issues facing the millions of people who don’t spend all day hyperventilating about what’s on twitter or the news.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
You can keep getting played, but I wont
I’ll focus on dignified work,collapsing families &amp; communities,China’s plan to overtake us etc;the issues facing the millions of people who don’t spend all day hyperventilating about what’s on twitter or the news. 
<a href="https://t.co/2xvL3j5CnW">https://t.co/2xvL3j5CnW</a>
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) <a href="https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1180238702926274561?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 4, 2019</a></blockquote>
On Thursday, standing before a gaggle of press outside the White House, the president <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-publicly-urges-china-ukraine-investigate-bidens-amid-impeachment-inquiry-n1061956">said</a>: &#8220;China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine.&#8221;
When asked if he’d spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-publicly-urges-china-ukraine-investigate-bidens-amid-impeachment-inquiry-n1061956">added</a>:
<blockquote>I haven&#8217;t, but it’s certainly something we can start thinking about because I&#8217;m sure that President Xi does not like being on that kind of scrutiny where billions of dollars is taken out of his country by a guy that just got kicked out of the Navy. He got kicked out of the Navy – all of a sudden, he&#8217;s getting billions of dollars. You know what they call that? They call that a payoff.</blockquote>
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This comment from the president has added fuel to the ongoing impeachment efforts that are backed by numerous Democratic lawmakers.

Rubio with press.

Rubio On Trump Saying ‘China’ Should Investigate Biden: ‘I Don’t Think It’s A Real Request’

Impeachment

Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, who resigned from the company on Thursday amid his alleged ties to a government operation, made bombshell accusations on CNN late on Thursday night, claiming that top FBI officials reached out to him in 2015-2016 to conduct law enforcement activities that turned out to be political espionage.
Byrne appeared to indicate that the request came from FBI agents after it was passed down from a top FBI official, who he later says he learned was anti-Trump agent Peter Strzok. Byrne said that the political espionage operation targeted four candidates: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz.
Byrne appeared on Fox News with Martha MacCallum before he went on CNN, where he &#8220;said that all of the purported information he gleaned from his experiences ultimately landed in the hands of Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, who has been conducting an investigation into the origins of the Russia probe at the behest of Attorney General William Barr,&#8221; <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/patrick-byrne-overstock-claims-interview-politics">Fox News</a> reported.
MacCallum then asked former Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker to respond to the wild allegations that Byrne was making.
&#8220;He&#8217;s describing it like he was being used as a source and being inserted into a situation by the feds, and there are protocols for handling sources,&#8221; Whitaker said. &#8220;All of this can be corroborated. That&#8217;s the key. This whole situation has to be corroborated and the nice thing about John Durham is that he has the full picture of everything that was feeding into this investigation.&#8221;
Last month, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/reluctant-witnesses-in-fisa-abuse-probe-agree-to-talk-to-doj-inspector-general">Fox News</a> reported that &#8220;key witnesses sought for questioning by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz early in his investigation into alleged government surveillance abuse have come forward at the 11th hour&#8221; in what was described as a &#8220;breakthrough.&#8221;
There is no indication from Fox News&#8217; report that Byrne was one of the people who came forward or that the story involves him.
WATCH:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne says the FBI in 2015/2016 reached out to him and got him to help with law enforcement activities that turned out to be political espionage against Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz
Byrne says the request came from Peter Strzok <a href="https://t.co/ArfL8bpzdx">pic.twitter.com/ArfL8bpzdx</a>
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1164713067717914624?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 23, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Byrne claimed: &#8220;[FBI agents], they said, &#8216;we want to be clear, this never happens in the United States, we are the good guys, we don&#8217;t work like the bad guys, but we need to ask you to rekindle a romantic relationship with Maria Butina.'&#8221;
Maria Butina is a Russian national and a convicted spy who is currently serving an 18-month prison sentence &#8220;after she admitted to gathering intelligence on the National Rifle Association and other groups at the direction of a former Russian lawmaker,&#8221; <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/maria-butina-video-convicted-russian-agent-maria-butina-releases-video-from-jail/">CBS News</a> reported.
Byrne claims that the FBI agents told him that the orders were being &#8220;personally supervised&#8221; by three people, two of which he did not name, and the third person he claimed was former FBI Director James Comey.
WATCH:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en">BREAKING: Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne claims former FBI Director James Comey was involved in this entire operation <a href="https://t.co/4zfuwBftaM">pic.twitter.com/4zfuwBftaM</a>
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1164716230277599232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 23, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Byrne claimed that he liked former President Barack Obama, did not vote for Trump, and that he could not believe what was going on that he claims happened.
Byrne claims that the FBI basically allowed the entire Russia scandal to develop so they could &#8220;shake it up and &#8230; spread it all over the Republican Party.&#8221;
Byrne claims that after the investigation was done that &#8220;it became clearer it was more about blackmail than it was law enforcement.&#8221;
WATCH:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en">Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne claims the FBI let the Russia scandal develop so they could &#8220;shake it up and &#8230; spread it all over the [GOP]&#8221;
Byrne claims &#8220;when the corruption investigation was done &#8230; it became clearer it was more about blackmail than it was law enforcement&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/ZKCrzdbvrR">pic.twitter.com/ZKCrzdbvrR</a>
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1164741111207694337?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 23, 2019</a></blockquote>
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This is a breaking news story, refresh the page for updates.

Patrick Byrne

Overstock CEO Bombshell Claim: FBI’s Strzok Behind Secret Espionage Operation, Comey Involved

Hillary Clinton

Peter Strzok

Media outlets rushed to defend Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and condemn Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) after the latter tweeted an “edited” or “doctored” or “misleading” video that included Omar suggesting Americans “should be more fearful of white men.”
On Thursday, Rubio quote-tweeted The Daily Wire’s Molly Prince, who shared the video, and added: “I am sure the media will now hound every Democrat to denounce this statement as racist. Right?”
Rubio’s sarcasm regarding media bias was immediately confirmed, with outlets accusing him of providing an edited clip that misrepresented what Omar said in a February 2018 interview with Al Jazeera. The clip cuts a brief portion of Omar’s comments out, which various media outlets claimed removed vital context. Here’s the quote from the video shared by Rubio:
<blockquote>I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country. We should be profiling, monitoring and creating policies to fight the radicalization of white men.</blockquote>
And here’s her full statement:
<blockquote>I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country, and so if fear was the driving force of policies to keep America safe, Americans safe inside of this country, we should be profiling, monitoring and creating policies to fight the radicalization of white men.</blockquote>
The Hill published <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/454757-rubio-shares-edited-interview-clip-calls-omar-racist">an article</a> titled “Rubio shares edited interview clip, calls Omar ‘racist.’” ThinkProgress went with “<a href="https://thinkprogress.org/ilhan-omar-is-being-smeared-by-a-doctored-video-9e8b646ff0c1/">Rubio shares doctored video of Ilhan Omar</a>.” Vox’s headline read, “<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/25/8930424/ilhan-omar-white-men-marco-rubio">How Marco Rubio ended up broadcasting a lie about Ilhan Omar</a>,” calling it “a rare instance of actual fake news.” The article was written by the same person who once wrote of a bridge connecting Gaza and the West Bank on which Israel restricted traffic.
The Washington Post went the furthest by actually publishing a “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/07/25/rubio-cries-racist-after-being-duped-by-misleading-tweet-video/">fact check</a>” on Rubio’s tweets and giving him the worst possible rating of four Pinocchios.
The Post attempted to claim that Prince’s tweet suggesting “Ilhan Omar contends that Americans ‘should be more fearful of white men’” is also misleading, even though Omar literally says “I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country…”
The Post labeled Rubio’s quote-tweet as an example of “Deceptive Editing &#8211; Omission” because a portion of once sentence was removed. The full interview, according to Omar spokesman Jeremy Slevin, was in reference to the Anti-Defamation League’s bogus report that right-wing extremists killed more people than Islamist extremists. To get to that conclusion, one has to stretch the definition of “right-wing extremist” and tighten the definition of “Islamist extremist.” Another similar report — from the Government Accountability Office — looked at extremist attacks between September 12, 2001 and December 31, 2016.
The Post noted that the report only found more deaths caused by Islamist extremists “because 41 percent of the deaths stemmed from the Orlando shooting rampage. Almost three times as many attacks were carried out by far-right extremists in that period.”
The Post only dinged Omar “for using sloppy language” because she doesn’t limit her answer to “white supremacists or white nationalism.”
Rubio responded to the Post and other media outlet’s criticism of him by saying they proved his point about media bias:
<blockquote>These questions prove my point. If a Republican grouped all men, of any background or ethnicity, together in any negative context — especially terrorism — many in the media would immediately demand that other Republicans disavow their statement. But when Rep. Omar suggested white men — ‪not white supremacists or white nationalists, white men — pose a greater danger than jihadists, many in the ‪media rushed to her defense and attacked me for pointing out this double standard.</blockquote>

Media Accuse Rubio Of ‘Selective Editing’ For Tweeting Video Of Ilhan Omar Interview

Ilhan Omar

On Sunday, CNN contributor and alleged Republican strategist Ana Navarro suggested we send First Lady Melania Trump, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) back to their native countries.
“And if we’re gonna start sending people back, I don’t know — ya know, listen, Ted Cruz was born in Canada, Marco Rubio’s parents were born in Cuba, Melania Trump was born where? Slovenia. How about her parents how are here through family immigration,” said Navarro, in a clip first highlighted by Grabien News founder Tom Elliott.
“I am sick of this guy’s hypocrisy and his ways of dividing this country, pitting people against each other,” Navarro lamented, before accusing President Donald Trump of racism: “And I think it is no coincidence, it is no coincidence, that the congresspeople he’s picking on are all women of color, they’re all women of color.”
“As a woman of color yourself, do you believe Donald Trump wants you in this country?” CNN’s Ana Cabrera asked Navarro.
“I really couldn’t care less what Donald Trump wants,” Navarro answered. “I don’t care if he wants me in this country or not because this is my country. He doesn’t get to decide that. I am a naturalized citizen.”
The staple anti-Trump contributor was reacting to Trump&#8217;s Sunday tweeting about “‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen.”
“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run,” the president wrote in a series of tweets.
“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough,” he continued.
Trump added that he was sure House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) “would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly&#8230;&#8230;
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1150381394234941448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 14, 2019</a></blockquote>
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<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">&#8230;.it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1150381396994723841?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 14, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Trump’s tweets sparked a response from Pelosi, who has been publicly feuding with freshmen congresswomen now dubbed “The Squad” — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA). In an attack last week, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez accused Pelosi of targeting her for being a “woman of color.”
“When [Donald Trump] tells four American Congresswomen to go back to their countries, he reaffirms his plan to ‘Make America Great Again’ has always been about making America white again,” Pelosi responded to President Trump, adding the obligatory platitude: “Our diversity is our strength and our unity is our power.”
“I reject [Donald Trump’s] xenophobic comments meant to divide our nation. Rather than attack Members of Congress, he should work with us for humane immigration policy that reflects American values,” she wrote in a follow-up tweet. “Stop the raids &#8211; <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FamiliesBelongTogether?src=hash">#FamiliesBelongTogether</a>!&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">I reject <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a>’s xenophobic comments meant to divide our nation. Rather than attack Members of Congress, he should work with us for humane immigration policy that reflects American values. Stop the raids &#8211; <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FamiliesBelongTogether?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FamiliesBelongTogether</a>!
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) <a href="https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1150408693021908992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 14, 2019</a></blockquote>
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As noted by conservative writer Stephen Miller of Navarro, “Trump&#8217;s worst CNN critics ultimately end up exactly like him.”
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">Trump&#8217;s worst CNN critics ultimately end up exactly like him. <a href="https://t.co/iSbpOuIOqN">https://t.co/iSbpOuIOqN</a>
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) <a href="https://twitter.com/redsteeze/status/1150740194653609991?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2019</a></blockquote>
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WATCH:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">CNN personality suggests sending Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Melania Trump back to their home countries. <a href="https://t.co/vHkZX1RAQI">pic.twitter.com/vHkZX1RAQI</a>
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) <a href="https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1150725007003324422?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>

WATCH: CNN Contributor Suggests We Send Melania Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio Back To Native Countries

Ana Navarro

Melania Trump

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), arguably the single most authentically pro-Israel elected politician in America, has long been hard-nosed and hawkish on the uniquely evil threat posed by the radical terror mullocracy governing the Islamic Republic of Iran. As I <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43151/hammer-ted-cruzs-non-interventionist-hawk-foreign-josh-hammer">noted</a> back in February, here is how Cruz recently put it in an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jR2DTXJKVo">important foreign policy address</a> delivered to the American Enterprise Institute:
<blockquote>
If we ever discover the Ayatollah is on the verge of getting nuclear weapons, and I believe his ambitions will continue to be doing just that, we should be prepared to use crushing military force to make sure that doesn&#8217;t happen. Military force to destroy their nuclear capacity &#8212; that should be our objective. Why? Because that is what our national interest is. To prevent an Ayatollah who chants &#8220;death to America&#8221; and &#8220;death to Israel&#8221; from ever having weapons capable of murdering in a flash of light millions of American souls.
</blockquote>
Cruz&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43151/hammer-ted-cruzs-non-interventionist-hawk-foreign-josh-hammer">&#8220;non-interventionist hawk&#8221;</a> foreign policy profile prioritizes the blistering aggression of counter-jihadism when need be &#8212; while also prudently resisting American resources getting sucked into sharia tribal warfare in third-world backwaters, so that our military and social capital may be conserved for truly necessary military exercises.
The threat posed by Iran, which is the world&#8217;s number one state sponsor of cultivated and exported jihadism, meets any definition of a serious geopolitical threat posed to American interests. And as The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45883/senate-hawks-push-white-house-stop-extending-josh-hammer">reported</a> in April, Cruz recently found himself allied with fellow Iran hawks Tom Cotton (R-AR), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and a small handful of other Republican senators, as well as National Security Advisor John Bolton, on the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-11/fresh-u-s-divide-on-iran-emerges-over-expiring-nuclear-waivers">issue of fully ending waivers</a> for Iran&#8217;s allegedly &#8220;civil&#8221; nuclear research program. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, at the time, was opposed to the Cruz-led push to once and for all end waivers for Iran&#8217;s civil-nuclear research program.
At the time, Cruz helped craft a letter, a copy of which The Daily Wire obtained from a Republican staffer, that urged the Trump administration to take four concrete steps: (1) once and for all end all U.S. implementation of the Iran deal by refusing to reissue waivers permitting civil nuclear work, (2) urge the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to reopen its file on the possible military dimensions of Iran&#8217;s nuclear program, (3) properly designate all Iranian entities named in the Israeli government&#8217;s previously seized nuclear archive from Tehran, and (4) explicitly reference the <a href="http://urges the Trump Administration to take four concrete steps: (1) once and for all end all U.S. implementation of the Iran deal by refusing to reissue waivers permitting civil nuclear work, (2) urge the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to reopen its file on the possible military dimensions of Iran's nuclear program, (3) properly designate all Iranian entities named in the Israeli government's previously seized nuclear archive from Tehran, and (4) explicitly reference the aforementioned nuclear archive in the Trump Administration's upcoming report to Congress on &quot;Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments.&quot;">aforementioned nuclear archive</a> in the Trump administration&#8217;s upcoming report to Congress on &#8220;Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments.&#8221;
Now, Cruz has a new proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would codify this termination of Iran&#8217;s civil-nuclear waivers into law. The proposed amendment, a copy of which The Daily Wire has also obtained, would formally amend the Iran Freedom and Counter-Proliferation Act of 2012 to end waivers and finally impose sanctions on Iran&#8217;s &#8220;civil&#8221; nuclear sector.
This is common sense policy, pure and simple. Iran, which has one of the world&#8217;s largest oil reserves, has no need whatsoever for a &#8220;civil&#8221; nuclear program. Instead, it is far more likely that the &#8220;civil&#8221; program is being used to hoodwink and bamboozle easily duped Westerners into inadvertently supporting the terrorist regime&#8217;s nuclear weapon ambitions.
&#8220;Sen. Cruz believes that it&#8217;s long past time to fully tear up the catastrophic Obama Iran nuclear deal, including by making Iran&#8217;s nuclear program off-limits to the international community through the sector-based designation described in his amendment,&#8221; a Cruz spokesman told The Daily Wire. &#8220;He has also called upon the Trump administration to take steps that would reinforce this measure, including ending civil-nuclear waivers that allow Iran to build up its program and invoking the snapback provision in United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 to restore international sanctions.&#8221;
While the amendment&#8217;s chances of being adopted into the NDAA may be slim, this is nonetheless a move that ought to be unambiguously applauded. Conservative Iran hawks ought to be thankful, yet again, for Cruz&#8217;s leadership on the issue of preventing a nuclear Iran.

Ted Cruz Proposes Important Amendment To Finally End Iran’s Civil-Nuclear Waivers

Foreign Policy

John Bolton

Middle East

Mike Pompeo

Nuclear Weapons

Tom Cotton

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) <a href="https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/777071ee-bcb4-4fb3-83fe-4f6eb7c1f998/64532190D017A896F20125A1E834F650.19.05.13-senator-rubio-correspondence-to-ag-barr---john-kerry-and-the-logan-act.pdf">sent a letter</a> Monday to Attorney General William Barr asking the Department of Justice to investigate whether former Secretary of State John Kerry violated the Logan Act or the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in his dealings with Iran since leaving office.
Rubio had previously sent a similar letter in September to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and is now merely making the same request of Barr. In his original letter, Rubio described multiple instances of Kerry attempting to work with Iran to keep the Obama administration&#8217;s Iran Deal in place, even though President Donald Trump backed out of the deal in May 2018.
&#8220;[F]ormer Secretary Kerry publicly admitted that he has met with Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif &#8216;probably three or four times,&#8217; including in the United States, since leaving office,&#8221; Rubio wrote to Sessions. &#8220;This admission confirms The Boston Globe&#8217;s news report of May 4, 2018, that Kerry had &#8216;sat down at the United Nations [in New York] with Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to discuss ways of preserving&#8217; the [Iran Deal], and that &#8216;[i]t was the second time in about two months that the two met to strategize over salvaging a deal they spent years negotiating during the Obama administration.&#8217;&#8221;
Kerry, Rubio also pointed out, also attempted to persuade Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to preserve the Iran Deal, known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). He also met with several European leaders to discuss various foreign policy matters.
The Logan Act and FARA are two obscure laws that have recently come to the general public&#8217;s attention due to the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s investigation into former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn. During the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations, Flynn met with then-Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak about voting against or delaying a vote at the U.N. condemning Israel. Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner also spoke to foreign government officials in an attempt to stop or delay the vote, which the Obama administration <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45330/obama-admin-pushed-back-un-vote-israeli-ashe-schow">purposefully worked to delay</a> until after the 2016 election.
It was suggested that Flynn be charged under these obscure laws while Mueller investigated the Trump campaign.
Trump had suggested last week that Kerry be charged for violating the Logan Act due to his dealings involving the Iran Deal. The thinking among many on the Right goes: If Flynn violated these laws, how is Kerry not violating them as well?
The problem here is that Flynn ended up not being charged under the Logan Act. He was indicted on FARA violations, but plead guilty to one count of lying to the FBI. Prior to Mueller&#8217;s investigation, exactly zero people had been charged under FARA since 1966. So, Rubio is looking at an uphill battle even with an attorney general who seems intent on unravelling the Russia-collusion hoax.
&#8220;The American people deserve to know that U.S. laws are enforced regardless of any individual&#8217;s past position. The Department of Justice should therefore make a determination on whether or not former Secretary of State John F. Kerry&#8217;s recent actions related to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran potentially violate the Logan Act or the Foreign Agents Registration Act,&#8221; Rubio concluded in his letter to Barr.

Marco Rubio Wants Attorney General To Investigate John Kerry Over Possible Logan Act, FARA Violations

William Barr

Speaking with Trish Regan on Fox Business Network on Thursday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) blistered Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) for blaming the United States for the horrific state of affairs in Venezuela.
On Wednesday, PBS anchor Amy Goodman <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46657/watch-ilhan-omar-blames-us-venezuela-crisis-claims-ryan-saavedra">asked Omar</a> &#8220;if you can comment on what&#8217;s taking place right now in Venezuela, the U.S. supported coup attempt against President Maduro.&#8221; Omar answered, &#8220;A lot of the policies that we have put in place has kind of helped lead the devastation in Venezuela. And we sort of set the stage for what we&#8217;re arriving today, this particular bullying and the use of sanctions to eventually intervene and make regime change really does not help the people of countries like Venezuela and it certainly does not help, it&#8217;s not in the interest of the United States.&#8221;
Regan said to Rubio, &#8220;That&#8217;s Ilhan Omar, the representative from Minnesota.&#8221;
Rubio interjected, &#8220;She doesn&#8217;t know what she&#8217;s talking about.&#8221;
Regan continued, &#8220;So somehow, the problems of Venezuela are the United States, and the results of whatever the United States has done?&#8221;
Rubio stated:
<blockquote>
Yeah, I think she was just recently elected, she has no idea what she&#8217;s talking about, she&#8217;s just making it up. She doesn&#8217;t even follow this issue, most of the people in Washington aren&#8217;t following this issue. She doesn&#8217;t know what she&#8217;s talking about. I mean, the sanctions that are on Maduro have been in place for two months, before that all the sanctions were on individuals.
She won&#8217;t find a single Venezuelan other than those in the regime that would even agree with, it&#8217;s ridiculous. They&#8217;ve stolen the money; they&#8217;ve degraded the country by literally stealing, they haven&#8217;t upgraded their, for example, their electric grid in 25 years. Any money that was ever made from the oil was stolen and put into people&#8217;s pockets. So honestly, I don&#8217;t even feel like addressing the comment because it&#8217;s not an informed one, it&#8217;s not an intelligent one. It&#8217;s silly, it&#8217;s ridiculous, and it&#8217;s actually embarrassing.
</blockquote>
Rubio has been intimately involved in the situation in Venezuela; he is a fierce supporter of acting President Juan Guaido; in mid-February he <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/marco-rubio-venezuelan-soldiers-would-be-committing-crime-against-humanity">warned</a> soldiers in Venezuela if they blocked U.S. aid to the nation it would be a &#8220;crime against humanity.&#8221;
In March, Rubio<a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/rubio-starving-venezuelans-about-to-suffer-in-a-way-we-have-not-seen"> stated</a>, &#8220;The suffering people of Venezuela are about to experience the most dramatic shortages they have ever faced, the implications of which we cannot fully predict. Venezuela is just a handful of days away from running out of basic staples, wheat and corn meal and cooking oil, again, because of complete and utter mismanagement. All of the leaders of Venezuela are overweight, and yet the people, on average, are losing 24 pounds in a year. I assure you, none of the Maduro regime cronies are going to go hungry, but millions of Venezuelans are going to continue to go hungry and [it will be] exacerbated in a way we have not seen.&#8221;
On April 30, Rubio attacked CNN for its coverage of Venezuela, writing, &#8220;Just saw <a href="https://twitter.com/CNN">@CNN</a> shamefully call what is happening today in <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Venezuela?src=hash">#Venezuela</a> a &#8216;coup attempt&#8217; <a href="https://twitter.com/jguaido">@jguaido</a> is recognized as legitimate interim President of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Venezuela?src=hash">#Venezuela</a> by constitution, over 50 countries &amp; OAS. The only coup is the one carried out by <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Cuba?src=hash">#Cuba</a> in support of dictator <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Maduro?src=hash">#Maduro</a>.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Just saw <a href="https://twitter.com/CNN?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CNN</a> shamefully call what is happening today in <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Venezuela?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Venezuela</a> a &#8220;coup attempt&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/jguaido?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@jguaido</a> is recognized as legitimate interim President of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Venezuela?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Venezuela</a> by constitution,over 50 countries &amp; OAS.
The only coup is the one carried out by <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Cuba?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Cuba</a> in support of dictator <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Maduro?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Maduro</a>
&#8212; Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) <a href="https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1123226997864501248?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 30, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Video below:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/marcorubio?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@marcorubio</a> on <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/IlhanOmar?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#IlhanOmar</a> blaming the DEVASTATION in Venezuela on the U.S.: &#8220;She has NO idea what she&#8217;s talking about&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TrishRegan?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TrishRegan</a> <a href="https://t.co/JcrYo1Jy2g">pic.twitter.com/JcrYo1Jy2g</a>
&#8212; Trish Regan (@trish_regan) <a href="https://twitter.com/trish_regan/status/1124107959460610048?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 3, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>

Rubio Trashes Ilhan Omar For Blaming U.S. For Venezuelan Problems

Venezuela

There appears to be an increasingly wide rift developing in Washington between conservative Iran hawks and Iran lesser-hawks. The issue is whether the United States should fully let expire the next batch of oil waivers for the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43339/hammer-iranian-revolution-forty-years-old-stand-josh-hammer">fanatical</a> jihadist regime that governs the Islamic Republic of Iran. The rift exposes Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and a small handful of other Republican senators, alongside National Security Advisor John Bolton, on one side, and the institutional U.S. State Department &#8212; embodied by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo &#8212; on the other side.
Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-11/fresh-u-s-divide-on-iran-emerges-over-expiring-nuclear-waivers">reports</a>:
<blockquote>
In a letter to President Donald Trump this week, a group of Republican senators demanded that Secretary of State Michael Pompeo stop letting Iran continue its limited civilian nuclear research program.
At issue are three waivers the Trump administration granted after it withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal last year. They allow Iran to work with nations that remain in the deal at three sites &#8212; Fordow, Bushehr and Arak &#8212; to ensure it doesn&#8217;t seek to enrich uranium to high levels. It&#8217;s part of an effort to limit the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation.
In their April 9 letter to Trump, six Republican senators including Ted Cruz of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Marco Rubio of Florida argued that the administration shouldn&#8217;t extend the waivers when they expire in early May.
&#8220;There is extensive evidence Iran channeled its nuclear weapons program through civil nuclear projects after 2003,&#8221; the senators wrote. &#8230; They urged the president to &#8220;finally end all U.S. implementation&#8221; of the 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
</blockquote>
The Daily Wire received a copy of the senators&#8217; letter, courtesy of a Republican staffer. The letter urges the Trump Administration to take four concrete steps: (1) once and for all end all U.S. implementation of the Iran deal by refusing to reissue waivers permitting civil nuclear work, (2) urge the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to reopen its file on the possible military dimensions of Iran&#8217;s nuclear program, (3) properly designate all Iranian entities named in the Israeli government&#8217;s previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/30045/iran-lied-netanyahu-reveals-israel-smuggled-100000-ben-shapiro">seized nuclear archive</a> from Tehran, and (4) explicitly reference the aforementioned nuclear archive in the Trump Administration&#8217;s upcoming report to Congress on &#8220;Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments.&#8221;
At least on issue (2), it seems like the senators may be fighting an uphill battle. As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44212/classic-iaea-head-says-he-can-not-speak-past-josh-hammer">reported</a> last month, the IAEA tends to be less than forthcoming on the issue of Iran&#8217;s hegemonic nuclearization ambitions:
<blockquote>
On Monday in Vienna, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Yukiya Amano hedged hard when asked about the extent of the Iranian regime&#8217;s prior nuclear activity. Specifically, Amano said that he could &#8220;not speak of&#8221; such previous activity &#8212; effectively refusing to confirm or deny that the Islamic Republic has engaged in prior nuclearization efforts.
</blockquote>
At The Federalist last month, Erielle Davidson persuasively <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2019/03/27/ted-cruz-right-united-states-axe-irans-oil-waivers/">argued</a> Cruz and his fellow senators are correct to push for a full evisceration of Iran&#8217;s oil waivers:
<blockquote>
Waivers have been used as a balm to protect Iran from economic collapse following President Trump&#8217;s exit from the Iran Deal and the swift reinstatement of sanctions this past November. The Trump administration has expressed aims of removing Iranian crude exports entirely from the market very soon, but arguments within the State Department questioning the feasibility of such an aim have garnered suspicion. &#8230;
The waivers have allowed Iran to continue to rake in billions of dollars, thus enabling the country&#8212;and the repressive regime&#8212;to stave off economic collapse. Many experts on both sides of the Iran debate think Iran is positioned to wait out the Trump administration&#8217;s pressure campaign, perhaps indefinitely, unless the Iranian economy sustains a dramatic shock.
</blockquote>
Sen. Cruz has made hawkishness on Iran a centerpiece of his foreign policy profile. As I argued in a Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43151/hammer-ted-cruzs-non-interventionist-hawk-foreign-josh-hammer">op-ed</a> in February:
<blockquote>
Since joining the U.S. Senate in 2013, Cruz&#8217;s foreign policy has consistently been in the wide chasm between Ron Paul-style isolationism and Dick Cheney-style moralistic interventionism. Cruz has been blisteringly hawkish on true national security threats to the United States and our core allies &#8212; his stances on the Shiite supremacist Iranian terror regime mullocracry and the Sunni supremacist Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas alike both come to mind &#8212; but as a doctrinal rule, he has generally been warier of the risk of prolonged military deployments.
</blockquote>

Senate Hawks Push White House To Stop Extending Certain Iran Nuclear Waivers

State Department

Trump Administration

Last week, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) teamed up with Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) to push for a new proposal for paid family leave.
The New Parents Act was introduced in the House by Crenshaw and Wagner, and the companion legislation was introduced in the Senate by Rubio and Romney. Rubio and Wagner also introduced similar legislation last Congress.
Under their proposal, parents would be able to access a portion of their Social Security early after the birth or adoption of a child to finance three months of leave, according to a <a href="https://crenshaw.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=58">press release</a> distributed by Crenshaw&#8217;s office.
&#8220;It is rare that we get the chance to drastically improve the lives of hard-working families with no long-term impact on our budget,&#8221; Crenshaw said. &#8220;By giving families temporary access to future funds when they&#8217;re growing their family, we are helping Americans when they need it most. This will be a life-changing option.&#8221;
Wagner said that the proposal is important to allow new parents to spend time with their children &#8220;during one of life&#8217;s most precious and exceptional moments.&#8221;
Rubio emphasized that the proposal &#8220;does not raise taxes or expand bureaucracy.&#8221;
&#8220;It is time to realign our economic policies in support of American families, which is why I am proud to re-introduce the New Parents Act.&#8221;
Romney pointed out that his home state is one of two in the country where births are outpacing deaths. &#8220;That means a lot of Utah families are having children, and it also means added expenses for those families,&#8221; Romney said. &#8220;In Utah, and throughout the United States, a majority of working parents do not get paid when they take time off from work after the birth or adoption of a child, which can mean depleted savings, credit card debt, and student loan defaults. The New Parents Act will give parents the flexibility to take time off from work with pay during the first weeks of their children&#8217;s lives, without growing our national debt, raising taxes, or creating a new entitlement program.&#8221;
Last month, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) introduced similar legislation called the Child Rearing and Development Leave Employment (CRADLE) Act, CBS News <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/paid-family-leave-cradle-act-senators-joni-ernst-and-mike-lee-its-time-to-catch-up-with-other-countries/">reported</a>.
A staffer of Crenshaw&#8217;s told The Daily Wire that this proposal is similar to Lee and Ernst&#8217;s but differs in terms of &#8220;repayment options and transferability of the benefit between parents.&#8221;
In a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SenatorMarcoRubio/videos/1136266616558290/">press conference</a>, Rubio said he hopes to partner with Lee and Ernst to &#8220;find the final way to approach it.&#8221;
Ivanka Trump has championed this issue since the 2016 campaign where she stood by President Trump as he announced his support for six weeks of government-sponsored maternity leave, The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44579/hold-hank-dillon-conservative-case-paid-family-kassy-dillon">reported</a>. The Trump Administration also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44579/hold-hank-dillon-conservative-case-paid-family-kassy-dillon">included</a> paid family leave in the 2019 budget proposal, making Trump the first president to do so.
When President Trump announced his support of paid family leave during the 2019 State of the Union Address, Wagner said she &#8220;stood up and shouted yes,&#8221; during the press conference.
&#8220;We now have a Republican White House willing to work with us on a conservative and responsible solution and I am grateful we&#8217;re having such a robust conversation on how best to support our families.&#8221;
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FlIPjK5rVWs" width="560"></iframe></div>

Rubio, Romney And Crenshaw Team Up To Push For Paid Family Leave

Dan Crenshaw

Ivanka Trump

Mitt Romney

On Friday, President Trump announced the declaration of a national emergency in order to collect what he believes is the appropriate amount of funding for a southern border wall.
According to a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trumps-border-security-victory/">press release</a> from the White House, the president will allocate approximately $8.1 billion in funding from, but potentially not limited to, the following three sources:
<blockquote>
About $601 million from the Treasury Forfeiture Fund
Up to $2.5 billion under the Department of Defense funds transferred for Support for Counterdrug Activities (Title 10 United States Code, section 284)
Up to $3.6 billion reallocated from Department of Defense military construction projects under the President&#8217;s declaration of a national emergency (Title 10 United States Code, section 2808)
</blockquote>
During a speech on Friday, Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/15/trumps-bewildering-national-emergency-press-conference-annotated/?noredirect=on&amp;utm_term=.90a9a9042973">stated</a> in part:
<blockquote>
[A national emergency has] been signed many times before. It&#8217;s been signed by other presidents. From 1977 or so, it gave the presidents the power. There&#8217;s rarely been a problem. They sign it; nobody cares. I guess they weren&#8217;t very exciting. But nobody cares. They sign it for far less important things in some cases &#8211; in many cases. We&#8217;re talking about an invasion of our country with drugs, with human traffickers, with all types of criminals and gangs&#8230;
And by signing the national emergency, something signed many times by other presidents many, many times &#8211; President Obama, in fact, we may be using one of the national emergencies that he signed having to do with cartels, criminal cartels. It&#8217;s a very good emergency that he signed, and we&#8217;re going to use parts of it in our dealings on cartels. So that would be a second national emergency. But in that case, it&#8217;s already in place.
And what we want &#8211; really want to do is simple. It&#8217;s not like it&#8217;s complicated. It&#8217;s very simple. We want to stop drugs from coming into our country. We want to stop criminals and gangs from coming into our country&#8230;
</blockquote>
When asked by a reporter about the constitutionality of his order, as well as the precedent it could set, Trump said that &#8220;the courts will determine that,&#8221; and that he expects &#8220;to be sued.&#8221;
He added: &#8220;We have an invasion of drugs and criminals coming into our country that we stop, but it&#8217;s very hard to stop. With a wall, it would be very easy. So I think that we will be very successful in court.&#8221;
Trump then noted that former presidents have declared national emergencies in the past, which he cited as the creation of precedent.
Several conservative Republican lawmakers have voiced concern with the president&#8217;s actions.
On Thursday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) <a href="https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=DF492447-444A-4F9E-B7AC-F26870C9CE08">stated</a>:
<blockquote>
We have a crisis at our southern border, but no crisis justifies violating the Constitution. &#8230; Today&#8217;s national emergency is border security. But a future president may use this exact same tactic to impose the Green New Deal. I will wait to see what statutory or constitutional power the President relies on to justify such a declaration before making any definitive statement. But I am skeptical it will be something I can support.
</blockquote>
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) <a href="https://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=press_release&amp;id=4324">slammed</a> the bipartisan funding bill, but noted that he would wait to evaluate the legal grounds on which the president declared an emergency before making a judgement:
<blockquote>
Democrats&#8217; intransigence has left the president with no other choice but to take executive action. I am a constitutionalist, and I have long advocated that every president, Republican or Democrat, be bound by the Constitution and federal laws. I will wait to see what specific course of action the president pursues and what legal authorities are cited as a basis for it.
</blockquote>
On Friday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) <a href="https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/dr-rand-paul-releases-statement-funding-deal-and-president-trump%E2%80%99s-emergency-declaration-plans">stated</a>:
<blockquote>
I, too, want stronger border security, including a wall in some areas. But how we do things matters. Over 1,000 pages dropped in the middle of the night and extraconstitutional executive actions are wrong, no matter which party does them.
</blockquote>
Sen. Mike Lee took a slightly different approach, <a href="https://www.lee.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=04D75C88-5D6C-4D71-8725-B166B8E2D7E6">saying</a> that his &#8220;initial assessment is that what President Trump announced is legal.&#8221;
However, he added, &#8220;whether or not it should be legal is a different matter. Congress has been ceding far too much power to the executive branch for decades. We should use this moment as an opportunity to start taking that power back.&#8221;
The laws President Trump specifically cites in his White House press release are 10 U.S. Code § 284 &#8211; Support for counterdrug activities and activities to counter transnational organized crime, and 10 U.S. Code § 2808 &#8211; Construction authority in the event of a declaration of war or national emergency.

Prominent Conservative Republican Lawmakers Voice Concern Over Trump’s Emergency Declaration

Drugs

Illegal Immigration

Rand Paul

Republican Party

Southern Border

On Sunday, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) appeared on CNN&#8217;s &#8220;State of the Union&#8221; with host Jake Tapper. During the approximately ten minute segment, Tapper asked Rubio about the partial government shutdown and border security.
Tapper first asked Rubio if the shutdown strategy was &#8220;a huge mistake,&#8221; especially in light of the economic damage it caused. Rubio noted that while he doesn&#8217;t believe &#8220;shutdowns are good leverage,&#8221; the goal of a secure border is worthwhile:
<blockquote>
I think it&#8217;s important to separate the tactics from the goal and the policy aim &#8211; and what the president wants is not unreasonable. It&#8217;s a fraction of what Democrats have voted for in the past. And, more importantly, I think, at least for me &#8230; achieving border security is the key that unlocks the door to doing other things on immigration that he&#8217;s expressed a willingness to do &#8211; the extension of TPS [Temporary Protected Status], dealing with the DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] population.
I believe he&#8217;s willing to go even further and do something reasonable with people who have been here a long time unlawfully, but are not criminals. But all of that is being held up by the inability to get agreement on border security, which the president campaigned on.
So, I hope people will separate the tactics from the policy, because I think the policy is reasonable and solid.
</blockquote>
Tapper rebutted Rubio, saying that &#8220;the Democrats voting for more money in border security in the past, especially in 2013 &#8230; was in exchange for a lot of other things having to do with undocumented immigrants, having to do with a path to legal status. It wasn&#8217;t just given out willy-nilly.&#8221;
&#8220;You see there&#8217;s an opportunity here over the next three weeks to get something done?&#8221; Tapper added. &#8220;Where does that optimism come from?&#8221;
Rubio pushed back, saying: &#8220;Well, first of all, we shouldn&#8217;t be trading border security for anything, because it&#8217;s something we&#8217;re all for.&#8221;
<blockquote>
If you are for something and I&#8217;m for something, why do we need to barter and negotiate over it? And the second part about it is, they don&#8217;t have to leverage the president on what to do with people in DACA or TPS, because he&#8217;s already expressed a willingness to do things on that.
And I think people will be surprised at how much this White House is willing to do, maybe not as far as the Democrats want to go, but how much certainty they&#8217;re willing to provide people under DACA, under TPS, people that have been here for a long time, but aren&#8217;t criminals, if the president can get his primary promise, which should be something we all share.
And that is that we want to protect our borders in a way that&#8217;s effective. And that&#8217;s why, to me, apart from the fact that we should protect our borders and everyone should be in agreement with that, is the fact that it opens the door to doing much more on these other issues and finally beginning to solve this issue of immigration that for 20 years people have talked about, but no one has done anything about it.
</blockquote>
Tapper then stated that the reason Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients are &#8220;insecure&#8221; is because the president took &#8220;away the protections that had previously existed for them.&#8221;
Rubio, however, noted that the protections were always temporary, and that through negotiations, they could become permanent:
<blockquote>
Yes, but understand those programs are called temporary protective status for a reason. And if you just were to look at it from a hard, cold, analytical perspective, the controversy, the crisis that justified those TPSes had long ago passed.
So, at this point, the reason why people like me want to see TPS extended and perhaps even provide permanency for people from Haiti, from Honduras and other places is, they have been here a long time. Some of these people are business owners. They have children that are U.S. citizens. They have children that are deployed on behalf of this country.
So, the longer time passes, the deeper roots people have in our country, the more sense it makes to allow them to stay. But TPS, by name, by design, is supposed to be temporary. The president is simply following the law in that regard.
That said, he has said he is willing to extend it, maybe even find permanency. In fact, they&#8217;ve told me they&#8217;re willing to provide permanency in some cases for these people, but he&#8217;s got to get his first priority done. It&#8217;s the way he can justify it. And it&#8217;s the key that unlocks the door to everything else.
That&#8217;s why I hope, tactics aside, we can all agree that border security is important for America and it creates opportunity to do more on these other issues.
</blockquote>
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WATCH: Sen. Marco Rubio Calls ‘Border Security’ The ‘Key That Unlocks The Door To Everything Else’

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)

Democratic Party

Jake Tapper

Venezuela is a country driven to poverty by a socialist regime that has increasingly embraced dictatorial polices. The President/dictator of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, has helped drive the nation into a humanitarian and economic crisis that now features an inflation rate of <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/24/venezuelan-government-could-topple-on-its-own-even-without-new-us-sanctions-economists-say.html">over 1 million percent</a> and citizens starving to the point of resorting to <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/video/socialism-fail-venezuelans-eat-dogs-cats-zoo-animals-as-economy-collapses-dems-ignore-lesson">eating</a> dogs, cats, and zoo animals.
In May, Maduro was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/21/venezuela-elections-nicolas-maduro-wins-second-term">elected</a> to his second six-year term &#8212; an election that many say was illegitimate due to electoral fraud and boycotts by Maduro&#8217;s opposition, as <a href="http://time.com/5503040/juan-guaido-venezuela-democracy/">TIME</a> reports. Now, the leader of Venezuela&#8217;s National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, 35, has claimed he is the rightful leader of Venezuela.
Guaidó is a one-term lawmaker in an opposition party that controls the legislature, which is recognized by most countries despite Maduro stripping away the powers of the legislature in 2017. Guaidó has condemned Maduro&#8217;s election as rigged and vowed to be the head of state until new and fair elections can be held, citing a constitutional amendment that gives the authority to the head of the legislature to take control when there is a &#8220;vacuum of power.&#8221;
The Venezuelan game of thrones has sparked protests nationwide and has captured the world&#8217;s attention. Here are five things you need to know:
1. People have died during protests against Maduro.
Tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators have taken to the streets in cities across the country to support Guaidó. &#8220;It will fall, this government will fall,&#8221; protesters chanted, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/world/americas/venezuela-news-protests-noticias.html">The New York Times</a> reports.
According to <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2019/01/25/americas/venezuela-maduro-guaido-us-embassy-consulates/index.html">CNN</a>, at least 20 Venezuelans have died in violence related to the protests, including some who were shot to death by security forces or pro-government groups.
Guaidó has announced another rally for next week. &#8220;The people who think that we are going to fizzle, I think they are not going to be happy,&#8221; he said. &#8220;There are people here in the streets for a long time.&#8221; If he were to be kidnapped, he urged his supporters to &#8220;continue on the path and move forward in a nonviolent manner,&#8221; the Times reports.
2. The military is on Maduro&#8217;s side.
Following Guaidó announcing his right to be the head of state, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López, head of the armed forces, proclaimed his loyalty to Maduro. López insists that the effort to take away Maduro&#8217;s authority is a coup, the Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/world/americas/venezuela-news-maduro-russia.html">reports</a>. The armed forces are &#8220;here to avoid a clash between Venezuelans,&#8221; he warned. &#8220;It&#8217;s not a civil war, a war among brothers, that will resolve Venezuelans&#8217; problems.&#8221; Guaidó&#8217;s claim to power, he said, is &#8220;laughable.&#8221;
The Supreme Court likewise remains loyal to Maduro, declaring it would not recognize the National Assembly&#8217;s motion and making clear it would depose Guaidó, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/venezuelas-supreme-court-declares-congressional-leadership-invalid-nullifies-recent-anti-maduro-legislation/2019/01/21/35f20c6a-1d95-11e9-a759-2b8541bbbe20_story.html">The Washington Post</a> reports.
In a speech Friday reported by CNN, Guaidó called for Venezuela&#8217;s armed forces to &#8220;come to the side of the Venezuelan people.&#8221; But he says that he is open to dialogue with the other side. &#8220;We believe that it&#8217;s only possible through dialogue and diplomacy to find solutions to conflicts,&#8221; the opposition leader said. &#8220;Not through violence or foreign interventions or coup attempts or war.&#8221;
3. The U.S. is backing the national assembly president.
On Wednesday, the United States formally recognized Guaidó as the leader of Venezuela. The <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/42557/strong-trump-president-recognizes-opposition-hank-berrien">announcement</a> came after Guaidó deemed himself the head of state. The U.S. declared Maduro&#8217;s election illegitimate while offering $20 million in humanitarian aid. Several other countries in the Western Hemisphere have recognized Guaidó&#8217;s claim, including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, and Guatemala.
In response, Maduro ordered U.S. diplomats to leave the country within 72 hours, but the State Department initially refused, claiming Maduro did not have the authority to make the order. But amid safety concerns, non-emergency U.S. diplomatic staff were instructed to leave the country. 
The U.S. &#8220;is trying to mount a coup and install a puppet government [to protect] its interests in Venezuela,&#8221; he <a href="http://time.com/5512005/venezuela-us-intervention-history-latin-america/">alleged</a>, vowing that he won&#8217;t allow the country &#8220;to go back to the gringo intervention of the 20th century.&#8221;
4. Russia is warning the U.S. not to intervene.
While President Trump has used diplomatic and economic power to put pressure on the Maduro regime, Russia, an ally of Venezuela&#8217;s, has announced their opposition to any possible foreign intervention. 
President Vladimir V. Putin&#8217;s spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov condemned external intervention as &#8220;very dangerous,&#8221; asserting, &#8220;We consider the attempt to usurp the top power in Venezuela as going against the foundations and principles of the international law.&#8221;
When asked about possible U.S. military intervention, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov echoed Peskov&#8217;s statement. &#8220;We consider that would be a catastrophic scenario that would shake the foundations of the development model which we see in Latin America,&#8221; Ryabkov said.
In August 2017, Trump threatened &#8220;military action&#8221; against Venezuela, calling the country a &#8220;mess.&#8221;
&#8220;This is our neighbor,&#8221; Trump said, as reported by the <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article166835992.html">Miami Herald</a>. &#8220;We&#8217;re all over the world and we have troops all over the world that are very, very far away. Venezuela is not far away and the people are suffering. And they&#8217;re dying.&#8221;
5. U.S. lawmakers have varying opinions.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has been a vocal opponent of the Maduro regime and on Friday <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/01/25/rubio_if_something_happens_to_venezuela_interim_president_will_be_significant_consequences_maduro.html#!">warned</a>, &#8220;If something were to happen to [Guaidó] or, God forbid, to our diplomats or members of the national assembly, or the general public who&#8217;s peacefully protesting, there is going to be swift and immediate and significant consequences.&#8221; In the past, Rubio asserted there was a &#8220;very strong argument&#8221; for military intervention in Venezuela, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-26/trump-s-venezuela-military-option-gains-backers-as-millions-flee">Bloomberg</a> reports.
On Friday, freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) criticized the Trump administration for supporting Maduro&#8217;s opposition. 
&#8220;We cannot hand pick leaders for other countries on behalf of multinational corporate interests,&#8221; Omar <a href="https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1088829238164246528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1088829238164246528&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthehill.com%2Fpolicy%2Finternational%2F426988-dem-rep-us-shouldnt-hand-pick-leaders-in-venezuela-or-support-coup">tweeted</a>. &#8220; The legislature cannot seize power from the President, and Venezuela&#8217;s Supreme Court has declared their actions unconstitutional.&#8221;
In another <a href="https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1088829448487690242">tweet</a>, Omar added: &#8220;We can&#8217;t afford to get involved in costly interventions abroad when tens of millions struggle to access housing, healthcare, and clear water right here at home. U.S. meddling abroad always ends badly for us, and the people we claim to be &#8216;liberating.&#8217;&#8221; Omar <a href="https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1088829933508534273">concluded</a>, &#8220;If we really want to support the Venezuelan people, we can lift the economic sanctions that are inflicting suffering on innocent families, making it harder for them to access food and medicines, and deepening the economic crisis.&#8221;

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