Closing the tabs ....
4) and I look forward to our discussions
— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) February 28, 2025
Wash, rinse and repeat
And he should have worn a suit
Ed: There is room to criticize all sides here, but only one side needed a resolution on this trip. Trump and Vance could have shut this down and sent the media out of the room when Zelensky got chippy over Vance's argument about diplomacy, but Rich is right. Zelensky wanted to fight for his asks in front of the press, and that's not smart diplomacy.
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JUST IN - Sen. Lindsey Graham calls on Zelensky to apologize for disrespecting President Trump and VP Vance
— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) February 28, 2025
pic.twitter.com/qrbZVd2EUw
Ed: As Jacqui Heinrich points out, Lindsey Graham has been a consistent voice for supporting Ukraine. Having Graham scold Zelensky publicly shows solidarity with Trump to be sure, but it also shows the risk Zelensky runs by trying to one-up this White House at the Oval Office. This was a moment for cautious diplomacy, not an election debate.
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Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) scolded President Donald Trump over his Oval Office tirade against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, calling it “a bad day for America’s foreign policy.” ...
“Ukraine wants independence, free markets and rule of law. It wants to be part of the West. Russia hates us and our Western values. We should be clear that we stand for freedom,” argued Bacon.
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Thank you America, thank you for your support, thank you for this visit. Thank you @POTUS, Congress, and the American people.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) February 28, 2025
Ukraine needs just and lasting peace, and we are working exactly for that.
Ed: This came out after Zelensky left the White House. Perhaps he learned a lesson. Hopefully, it will prompt a second try at working out a plan for Ukraine that will achieve something significant.
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The war has pushed Russia closer to China which is the one existential threat to the U.S.
— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) February 28, 2025
The U.S. wants to end the war in Ukraine to begin a path of reversing that trend.
Whatever your feelings on the players (and I support Ukraine) that is the backdrop of everything.
Ed: Yes. My friend John understands the geopolitical consequences of a rupture here.
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Rauch’s credulous view of bureaucracy is of a piece with his view of Trump’s Jan 6 pardons: He sees what’s wrong with them but walks right past what’s wrong with the pardons issued less than a month earlier by that paragon of insitutionalism, Joe Biden. Biden, of course, redefined the phrase “abuse of office” by pardoning his son, his brothers, and (preemptively) a whole bunch of his political allies.
More broadly, while Rauch has some legitimate and worrisome insights into Trump’s style of governance — insights those of us hoping for a successful Trump presidency need to take seriously — he misses the forest for the trees.
We had an election. Trump won. He won despite (and likely in some ways because of) his unconventional view of governance, a view with which the electorate was well aware when it went to the polls. In the end, a troubling amount of what Rauch says is simply a more thoughtful form of election denial.
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OH, THE IRONY.
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) February 28, 2025
The same people who remained silent, or even cheered, while the Biden administraiton suppressed conservative voices, are now crying about censorship, a lack of transparency, and attacks on the free press. pic.twitter.com/hMZDs0U6f7
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For many outlets, those are doled out by another journalistic cartel known as the Periodical Press Gallery, which requires news outlets to demonstrate they are supported "chiefly by advertising or by subscription." That gallery is controlled by an executive committee composed of reporters from Politico, The Hill, and Punchbowl News, among others.
Not a single one of our colleagues in the mainstream media has raised hackles over this assault on our First Amendment rights—one that has for over a decade been in their power to rectify.
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Federal worker suggests she didn’t get much done last week because she was “distracted” before whining about how distracting it was to explain in 5 bullet points what she did last week.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 28, 2025
These people really aren’t doing anything and now they’re admitting it.
“I was literally… pic.twitter.com/hejiSTMzrK
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We’re supposed be upset that so many federal employees are suddenly looking for work. There they were, toiling away for our benefit with incredibly well-paying jobs with fantastic benefits and an otherwise impressive level of job security—though we shouldn’t think about any of that because they were really sacrificing for us, you see—and now they’re out on the streets.
Of course, they were told layoffs were coming and that if they took the buyout offers, they’d get eight months of severance pay, but many didn’t believe him.
Now they’re on the news going on about their sob stories.
Personally, I don’t give a damn.
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KJP slams Democrats for forcing Biden off the ticket, calling it a 'firing squad'
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) February 28, 2025
READ: https://t.co/QV5aZgSNar pic.twitter.com/UQr88tAIER
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Conservative reaction was fierce. CNN was part of the cover-up. You can't find them running this kind of "sinful" expose in 2023 and 2024 on Joe Biden's decline. You can easily find Brian Stelter and others promoting the notion of a 25th Amendment removal of President Donald Trump as "mentally unfit" in his first term. You can also find then-CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy echoing Biden spokesman Ian Sams, ripping the liberal media for helping the Republicans push a Biden-decline message.
That said, we need a book like this that finally exposes what happened behind the scenes in the Biden White House.
Ed: Yes, we do. But we need one that truly exposes all of it, including the role of the Protection Racket Media in keeping the cover-up in place. And that won't come from the platforms that acted as a Praetorian Guard the last four years.
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