Blinken: Biden Admin. Taking College Protests ‘Into Account’ on Israel Policy, But We Won’t Cut Israel Off

 

During a portion of an interview with CNN National Security Correspondent Kylie Atwood on Friday that was aired on Friday’s broadcast of CNN International’s “One World,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken reacted to demonstrations on college campuses by stating that “we listen to the American people and we’re supposed to both represent them and reflect their views. So, we take all of this into account.” But the administration also focuses on America’s best interests and they won’t stop shipping weapons to Israel.

Atwood asked, “When we look at these protesters, you said earlier that protests in the United States are a hallmark of democracy, but will these protests at all impact the policy of the Biden administration?”

Blinken answered, “In our democracy too, of course, we listen to the American people and we’re supposed to both represent them and reflect their views. So, we take all of this into account. But, again, it’s important that –.”

Atwood then cut in to ask, “So you might consider stopping shipping weapons to Israel? Because that’s what they’re calling for.”

Blinken responded, “No. We’re focused on what’s in the interests of the United States, how do we best reflect both our interests and our values in our foreign policy across the board, whether that’s with Israel or with anyone else.”

In another segment of the interview, Blinken stated that some in the protests are antisemitic, but others are just passionate about issues in the Middle East.

Report: Steven Spielberg ‘Involved Strategically’ in Biden Campaign, Convention Planning

 Multiple reports indicate that Hollywood director Steven Spielberg is strategically working with President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign and is helping to plan the Democratic National Convention.

Puck News’s Matt Belloni was the first to report Spielberg “has been quietly but actively working with the Joe Biden campaign to help choreograph August’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago,” as his colleague Dylan Byers pointed out in a post on X.

His work with the campaign also includes “participating in multiple strategy sessions on how to best tell the president’s story,” Belloni wrote.

The report was confirmed by Deadline and the Hollywood Reporter Friday afternoon, with the Reporter’s Zoe G. Phillips writing Spielberg is “joining the Biden campaign” and Deadline’s Dominic Patten noting he will be “involved strategically” in both the campaign and convention.

Spielberg’s representatives did not respond to comment requests from the outlets, but one “well-placed source” told Deadline the Poltergeist director “wants to be as helpful as possible to the president.”

“He believes this is one of the most important elections in the nation’s history,” the source added to the outlet.

This is not the first time Spielberg will be helping a Democrat candidate or his first time having a hand in a convention.

“Puck also reported that Spielberg helped with the 2020 convention, held virtually at the height of COVID-19,” Phillips noted. “The director does not currently have plans to create a film portion for this summer’s events, though he did produce a film for President Obama’s campaign in 2008.”

Notably, Biden campaign co-chair Jeffrey Katzenberg was Spielberg’s former partner at Dreamworks, and the pair remain friends, per Phillips.

News of Spielberg’s involvement comes as worry has mounted on the left about the potential for widespread anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian protests at the convention. Notably, the 1968 convention in Chicago was marred by protests over the Vietnam War. Time has noted an estimated 10,000 demonstrators took to the streets, and nearly 700 were arrested.

Politico, citing organizers, recently reported the number of protesters at the August 19-22 convention could be 30,000.

WWIII Watch: Ukraine Bombs Oil Field Inside Russia the Same Day Biden, Democrats and RINOs Signs Ukraine War Funding Bill

 

Ukrainian drone swarm strikes a major Russian oil depot in the Smolensk region of Russia on Friday.

Ukraine bombed the Russian oil field in the Smolensk region inside Russia on Wednesday.

This was the same day that Speaker Mike Johnson, Democrats, RINOs, and Joe Biden signed over another $60 billion to the eastern European nation in its now — offensive campaign — against Russia.

Joe Biden signed into law on Wednesday an aid package providing crucial military assistance to Ukraine, capping months of negotiations and debate.

Then Ukraine blew up a Russian oil field.

The Biden regime, Mike Johson, RINOs and Democrats support this war.

 

Only President Donald Trump can put an end to this madness.
Only Trump can prevent World War III.

BREAKING:

Ukrainian drone swarm strikes a major Russian oil depot in the Smolensk region of Russia.

Ukraine continues its intensified campaign against Russian oil and gas infrastructure.

pic.twitter.com/bLHJK2bEax

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) April 24, 2024

Drones sent by Ukraine's SBU security service struck two Rosneft-owned oil depots in Russia's Smolensk region in an overnight attack, a Ukrainian intelligence source said https://t.co/vR1uLXcxLEpic.twitter.com/K5wlfdd912

— Reuters (@Reuters) April 24, 2024

Business Insider reported:

Ukraine launched a new wave of long-range drone strikes on oil depots in Russia this week as part of a campaign targeting the Kremlin’s critical infrastructure.

Drones sent by Ukraine’s security service hit two Rosneft-owned oil depots in Russia’s Smolensk region on Wednesday, multiple outlets reported, citing a Ukrainian intelligence source.

A source in the Ukrainian defense sector told Agence France-Presse that the depots stored 26,000 cubic meters of fuel.

Metallurgical and pharmaceutical plants in Lipetsk in southwest Russia have also been attacked, reports say.

Bidenomics: GDP Drops Lower than Expected in First Quarter as Inflation Rises to 3.7%

 The GDP dropped faster than expected in the first quarter of 2024. Real GDP increased 1.6% after rising 3.7% in the fourth quarter of 2023 based on government spending. 

Meanwhile, inflation rose to 3.7% in the first quarter – squeezing consumers who are already strapped in the Biden economy.

Zero Hedge described the seriousness of this latest economic news to consumers.

Abysmal economic data released on Thursday painted a not-so-rosy picture for the US economy. In the last 3 post-pandemic years, nominal growth has been positive while quality of life has deteriorated behind the scenes of officially released data, and the latest data continues the trend.

GDP growth slowed from 3.4% to 1.6%—missing economist expectations by 90 basis points (0.9%). Not bad enough? Core PCE inflation has also accelerated (on a quarterly basis) from 2% to 3.7%. I wouldn’t weigh these numbers as gospel, since they are not yearly figures, but the fact remains that nominal growth is sputtering and consumer prices, the most sticky ones, are red hot:

FOX Business Network reported:

 

U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) dropped faster than expected in the first quarter, but a key metric used by the Federal Reserve to measure inflation kept rising, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). 

Real GDP increased at an annual rate of 1.6% for the January-through-March period after rising 3.4% in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) advance estimate released Thursday. Economic forecasts had called for a deceleration of growth over the previous month, with the expectation that the economy would expand by 2.4%, according to a Reuters report.

Compared to the fourth quarter, the deceleration in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected decelerations in consumer spending, exports and state and local government spending and a downturn in federal government spending. This slowdown was partly offset by an acceleration in residential fixed investment…

…The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, excluding food and energy prices — a key metric the Federal Reserve tracks to measure inflation — increased by 3.7% after rising to 2% in the fourth quarter.

‘Zero Evidence’: Biden Slammed For Once Again Lying About Driving ‘An 18-Wheeler’

 President Joe Biden has been slammed for telling yet another lie — and it’s one he’s repeated several times after claiming that he used to “drive an 18-wheeler” truck.

At a speech in Florida at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa Bay, Biden made the false claim about his biography, telling the crowd, “I used to drive an 18-wheeler.”

RNC’s Zach Parkinson, who is also the director of RNC Research, posted the video on X of Biden and said, “There is *zero evidence* that Biden ‘used to drive an 18 wheeler.’”

“The extent of Biden’s trucking experience is that he **rode in** a truck once, for one night in 1973 (he made sure to return home by plane though),” he added, sharing a newspaper clip of Biden’s ride in a truck.

“Biden has always been a chronic liar — now, coupled with his cognitive decline, he’s a national security risk,” the official account for RNC Research wrote on X.

CNN ended up fact checking the claim, too, and admitted it is fictional, despite the repeated times the president has used the debunked tale.

“Biden’s claim remains untrue. There is no evidence he ever drove an 18-wheeler,” the outlet reported.

 

In 2021, during a tour of the Mack Trucks facility, the president claimed, “I used to drive an 18-wheeler, man. I got to,” the Daily Mail noted.

That same year at another event, he told college students, “I used to drive a tractor-trailer. I only did it for part of a summer, but I got my license anyway,” the Daily Mail noted.

Last week, Biden claimed that his uncle Ambrose Finnegan — “Uncle Bosie” — “flew those single-engine planes as reconnaissance over war zones, and he got shot down in [Papua] New Guinea. They never found the body because there used to be, there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea.”

Megyn Kelly, the host of “The Megyn Kelly Show” podcast, reacted to Biden’s “Uncle Bosie” tale and said, “He can’t go two seconds with telling another familial lie, something about his background, his son. … The latest one is about Uncle Bosie.”

Kelly then played a clip of Biden’s claim of cannibalism. “Okay, so virtually none of that was true,” she added. “There is a dead uncle. Died in WWII. Was not in a single engine, he was in a double engine plane. Was not shot down. Officials say they don’t know what happened to the plane, both engines failed.”

“There were no cannibals,” Kelly continued, recalling what the survivor of the crash said, “and went on to tell us what happened.”

New York Appeals Court Tosses Harvey Weinstein Rape Conviction

 A New York appeals court moved on Thursday to overturn the 2020 rape conviction of former Miramax producer Harvey Weinstein, citing “egregious” rulings that allowed allegations unrelated to the charges to be introduced in testimony.

The court’s 4-3 ruling came down in Weinstein’s favor, leaving it up to prosecutors whether or not they will try him again.

“We conclude that the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes,” the decision read in part. “The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial.”

“It is an abuse of judicial discretion to permit untested allegations of nothing more than bad behavior that destroys a defendant’s character but sheds no light on their credibility as related to the criminal charges lodged against them,” the decision continued.

The virtual flood of accusations against Weinstein — whose accusers included “Charmed” star Rose McGowan and others — cascaded in 2017 following a New Yorker exposé written by Ronan Farrow. What followed was a slew of additional accusations against Weinstein, which sparked the #MeToo movement.

Judge Madeline Singas penned a dissent on behalf of the minority, saying that the decision meant the court was “whitewashing the facts to conform to a he-said/she-said narrative,” following a “disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.”

 

“The majority’s determination perpetuates outdated notions of sexual violence and allows predators to escape accountability,” she wrote.

Weinstein will remain in prison — despite the New York conviction being overturned — because his 2022 conviction in Los Angeles still stands.

Chinese Company ByteDance Appears To Ignore Threat Of U.S. Ban, Says It ‘Has No Plans’ To Sell TikTok: Report

 According to Toutaio, a news and information content platform that is a core product of the Chinese company ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, ByteDance has no plans to sell TikTok.

Last weekend, Congress passed a measure that gave ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok or it will be banned in the United States. If a sale is in progress during those nine months, an additional three months would be added. On Wednesday, President Biden signed the measure into law.

“Foreign media reports that ByteDance is exploring the sale of TikTok are untrue. ByteDance has no plans to sell TikTok,” Toutaio stated on Thursday.

TikTok had responded to Biden signing the bill with a statement on X:

This unconstitutional law is a TikTok ban, and we will challenge it in court. We believe the facts and the law are clearly on our side, and we will ultimately prevail. The fact is, we have invested billions of dollars to keep U.S. data safe and our platform free from outside influence and manipulation. This ban would devastate seven million businesses and silence 170 million Americans.

Despite the fact that Biden signed the measure into law, his reelection campaign informed NBC News Wednesday that it still uses TikTok to appeal to voters for another year.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), an outspoken critic of TikTok who has been fighting against its influence for years, called for a Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) review of TikTok back in 2019. He stated:

For years, we’ve allowed the Chinese Communist Party to control one of the most popular apps in America. That was dangerously shortsighted, but thankfully we are waking up to the threat China-controlled companies pose to America. We must move more quickly in the future when we encounter similar threats, because China won’t give up. There will be lawsuits, new apps, and new plots from Beijing.

Rubio said in an August 2023 opinion piece, “TikTok’s public-policy chief blatantly lied under oath when he denied US data is stored in China. … ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based parent company, was caught in October using the app to spy on American journalists.”

Rubio noted that The New York Times reported TikTok stores Americans’ private information, which includes driver’s licenses, addresses, and device IDs, in China, where they can be accessed by ByteDance employees. He also pointed out that Forbes revealed that the tax information and Social Security numbers of content creators on TikTok are also stored in China.

 

“China’s totalitarian regime hates the United States and is bent on displacing us as the world’s greatest power,” Rubio wrote. “If TikTok users believe their sensitive data are safe in Beijing’s hands — that Beijing wouldn’t use those data to influence, coerce, extort or spy on them in the case of a geopolitical conflict­­ — they need to think again.”