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madamspeaker · 1 month

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Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Emeriti of the House of Representatives, has a famously packed schedule. By midday she’s already been on the House Floor, speaking in support of the bill to force TikTok’s Chinese owners to divest its US assets. Before that, a sizeable portion of her morning was consumed by meetings with House and Senate’s 97 military veterans – part of her battle to get Biden’s stalled funding package for Ukraine back on track. Then there’s an interview with veteran NBC host Andrea Mitchell, where she reinforces the case for providing aid to Ukraine alongside retired Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman.

Joining with the Ukrainian-born Purple Heart recipient and former national security council director for European Affairs to make the case is vintage Pelosi, who knows how to exploit political pressure points.

But at exactly one minute before the designated time slot for an interview with the Business Post, she strides down the corridor of the Longworth Building towards her corner office; a diminutive force of nature dressed in a fire-red pantsuit and stiletto heels.

She’s a strikingly attractive woman, with enormous dark eyes and an incandescent smile that belies the steely resolve that propelled her to the pinnacle of American politics, smashing glass en route.

Somewhere between her journey back from the House floor and our interview, she has exchanged the interlinked US and Ukraine flags that were pinned to her lapel with a one-inch square Irish flag.

As we enter her private office, she notices the spring blossoms that Washington DC is famous for at this time of year outside her window. “Look at that,” she beams, “they weren’t there yesterday.”

A consummate host, she invites me to sit where I can enjoy the view of the blossoms and the Capitol behind them.

Israel

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to allow a vote on the foreign aid package is deeply frustrating for Pelosi who knows the votes are there, on both sides of the aisle.

“How can this be the party of Ronald Reagan – ‘Mr Gorbachev tear down this wall’ - and they’re at a place that’s so far and so distant from that. It’s shocking,” she said.

“I'm rarely surprised at anything around here, but it is shocking to hear them speak in a pro-Putin way and that’s just a reflection of Donald Trump, there’s no question about that.”

Still, she is optimistic about passing the aid package: “There are other routes. They may take longer but we’ll get there.”

Her tenacity and willingness to apply pressure when persuasion fails has stood Ireland in good stead.

In particular, when it seemed as though it could unravel following the post-Brexit manoeuvrings towards a hard border – and the volatility introduced by Trump’s pro-Brexit stance.

“The strong bipartisan support in the House and the Senate for the Good Friday Accords enabled me to go to England and say to the parliamentarians there in different meetings; Don’t even listen to Trump when he says ‘if you get a bad deal in Brexit you’ll have a bilateral with the US.’,” she said.

“We told them ‘Forget that. It ain’t going to happen. You mess with the Good Friday Accords and the border issues and you ain’t got nothing,” Pelosi said, delivering the last line with relish.

Pelosi has been a stalwart supporter of Ireland since before the Good Friday Agreement, a tireless champion of its economic as well as its political interests.

Her affinity for Ireland is bolstered by family connections; her daughter Jacqueline’s husband Michael Kenneally. Their three children, Pelosi’s grandsons, were baptised in the church near the paternal family home in Kilquade, Co Wicklow.

Witnessing the joint address and standing ovation for First Minister Michelle O’Neill and Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly at the Ireland Funds Gala on Wednesday night provided her with another yardstick by which Northern Ireland’s transformation can be measured.

During their US visit, Northern Ireland’s new leaders urged the US to bring the same approach to pursuing a ceasefire in the Middle East as it did in Northern Ireland.

Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza is a vexed topic for Pelosi and she bristles at suggestions that Biden isn’t doing enough to help Palestinians – or that he needs to put more distance between himself and Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Well, I don’t think we ever gave our proxy to Netanyahu. I’ve had a problem with him for decades,” she said. “But our support for Israel as our ally in the region is strong. What happened on October 7 was barbaric. There has to be recognition that Hamas is a terrorist organisation. And if you had family members who were kidnapped or killed that day, you’d want some justice to be done. How that justice is done though, when it comes at the expense of civilian women and children, has to be calibrated in a different way.”

Pelosi continues: “I just really have a problem with everyone putting this at Joe Biden’s doorstep. This is at the doorstep of Netanyahu. This is at the doorstep of many of the Arab countries who never came to the aid of the Palestinians before.”

Trump

Meanwhile, there’s the overarching challenge of defeating Trump in November in what she agrees is the most consequential election in US history.

She runs through a long litany of Trump transgressions, concluding with a reference to former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly claim last week that Trump told him Hitler “had done some good things”.

“This is a very strange person,” she concludes. “I say he's having a limbo contest with himself to see how low he can go.”

Asked whether she fears for the future of US democracy she replies; “No, I don’t because we just have to win the election. We don’t agonise. We organise. We’ll just go out there and get the job done.”

Few powerful women – except maybe Hillary Clinton – have enraged the cultural warriors of the right like Pelosi. Her effectiveness as a legislator and her fearlessness as a political leader prompted Steve Bannon to label her ‘a total assassin’.

The bitter partisanship that roiled America has impacted the lives and careers many politicians on both sides of the aisle. But Pelosi has paid a higher price than most. “Nancy, where are you, Nancy?”, the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6 called as they roamed the Capitol corridors, vandalising and smashing as they went and ransacking Pelosi’s office.

Later that evening, Pelosi, unbowed by the violence, insisted that Congress reconvene and finish their constitutionally mandated role of certifying the results of the 2020 election.

For Pelosi, the events of January 6 cast a longer and more menacing shadow. In the early hours of October 28, David DePape broke into Pelosi’s San Francisco home where 82-year-old husband, Paul, was sleeping. “Where’s Nancy?” DePape demanded, in a chilling reprise of the January 6 chant, before attacking her husband with a hammer, fracturing his skull and inflicting multiple injuries to his arms and hands.

Last November, DePape was convicted by a federal jury of assaulting a family member of a federal official and of the attempted kidnapping of a federal official, charges that carry maximum sentences of 30 and 20 years in prison respectively.

The attack was devastating for Pelosi. “They weren’t after my husband; they were after me. So I have a guilt to carry for that. But it happened in our home, in our home,” she said, her voice wavering. “It’s hard when you have to go by the entrance place where the man came in, and into our bedroom.” Her husband, who she says is about 80 per cent recovered, is still dealing with the physical trauma.

Strangely she said they’ve never discussed the attack.

“We don’t talk about it. He and I have never had a conversation about what happened that night. I heard what he testified in court. That was required so I learned a little more then. But the doctors have said to him ‘don’t revisit it. Don’t watch it on TV. It only reinforces the trauma.’”

Despite the divisiveness that has roiled the country, she believes the majority of Trump supporters are ‘good people.’ “Insecurity about a role economically in the future for themselves and their children is what I think drives them,” she said.

Although she turns 84 next week, she shows no signs of slowing down. “I only intended to stay for ten years,” she marvels when I point out that she’ll have served four decades in Congress when she completes her next term.

The press obsession with age is selective, she notes wryly.

Pelosi was the chief antagonist in Trump’s presidency. “She’s going to get us,” Steve Bannon, then Trump’s chief strategist, warned following their first meeting.

Over the next four years, Trump wheeled in the television cameras to relay the battles that followed, confident he could humiliate and subjugate the Democratic leader.

But Pelosi proved far too nimble an opponent for his blunderbuss approach. And she seemed to relish cutting through his bluster and calling his bluff.

“To be very honest with you, he really didn’t know what he was talking about most of the time,” she said.

She cites Biden’s recent State of the Union address as an example of a president who “had command of the issues, who spoke of the legislation pending, of what he did but more importantly what he was going to do.”

“Donald Trump could never make a speech like that and that’s why he reduced his spewing forth to culturally hateful rather than professionally constructive issues,” she said.

Trump quickly discovered its limits when dealing with Pelosi. She refused to be cowed and there were plenty of mischief-tinged moments; including her exaggerated applause during a State of the Union and a reference to Trump as being morbidly obese.

Given the former president’s famously thin skin, was this a deliberate attempt to tweak him?

“Well no,” she said, wide-eyed. “I think I was just stating a fact.” Her expression gives her away before a chuckle escapes.

“About Joe Biden I would say this; he has the wisdom and knowledge – not just of issues but what has worked and what doesn’t work. Judgement that comes with experience and that’s so important,” she said.

“I can tell you this from personal experience in politics that as time goes by, you’re less judgmental. You’re much more. I don’t want to say respectful because you always have to be respectful, but you roll and you don’t get yourself bogged down. And I think because what’s his name – that other Bozo – because he doesn’t have any experience in politics, he just gets meaner.

“But this is a very sick person who needs an intervention from his family or from his advisers. Whatever is in it for them, greed for power, greed for money, I don’t know. But they should have intervened for the good of their family for the good of the creature and for the good of their country.”

Music lover

Pelosi’s long association with Ireland has brought her an unlikely dividend. A perennial access all areas pass to U2 concerts.

“I’ve attended more U2 concerts than any other politician. I’m certain of it,” she said, including in Las Vegas at the Sphere recently.

She picks up her phone and starts scrolling through it.

“There he is. Oh listen to this, listen to this.”

She beckons me in close and plays a clip where Bono, paying tribute to America concludes by saying; ‘I want to thank you Nancy Pelosi.’ From her phone you can hear excitement erupt amongst the family members who accompanied her.

An enormous smile lights up Pelosi’s face.

#nancy pelosi #madam speaker #LOVE THIS

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 2 years

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Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth on Friday called for military leaders to “stand up for women” amid a roiling Defense Department controversy over how to respond to vicious criticism of female soldiers by Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

A fierce debate was triggered after Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe was recently scolded by the Army — and his retirement put on hold — for defending female soldiers, with one of his tweets last year calling out Carlson.

Retired Col. Yevgeny Vindman — the twin brother of retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who testified at Donald Trump’s first impeachment investigation during his presidency — lashed out last month at the treatment of Donahoe by an Army cowed by the political right because he “stood up to Fox/ Tucky.”

The Pentagon and the Army “are lost. They fear the right,” Yevgeny Vindman tweeted. “They are losing their moral compass and service-members will vote with their feet.”

Carlson has repeatedly bashed women in the military with misogynistic insults, as he denigrates an increasingly “feminine” U.S. armed forces — and hails the brutish “masculine” militaries of Russia and China. Carlson has never served in the military.

Wormuth warned at a conference earlier this week that Army leaders need to stay “out of the culture wars” — and out of politics.

“We have got to ... have a broad appeal,” she cautioned. “When only 9% of kids are interested in serving” in the military, “we have got to make sure that we are careful about not alienating wide swaths of the American public to the Army,” Wormuth added.

But on Friday, she clarified her comments amid a furious backlash.

“Let me be clear: I expect @USArmy leaders to stand up for women—and all Soldiers—who are unduly attacked or disrespected,” she tweeted.

She added in another tweet: “Use good judgment online. Keep it professional.”

Several top military leaders have angrily responded to Carlson’s insults — without referring to him by name — and issued statements supporting women in the armed forces.

Donahoe had named Carlson in a tame retort in March 2021, saying the right-wing Fox host “couldnt be more wrong” with his insults against women in the military.

That’s when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) fired off a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, accusing Donahoe and other military leaders of partisanship for sticking up for soldiers and other service members.

A report on the issue by the Army’s Office of the Inspector General, obtained last week by the website Task & Purpose, stated that “while potentially admirable,” Donahoe’s post “brought a measurable amount of negative publicity to the Army.”

A headline on a Washington Post opinion column early this month asked: “Why is the Army punishing a General for calling out MAGA lies?”

The military is “rightly eager to stay out of politics, but this laudable instinct can lead it to run away from controversy even at the cost of ceding the information battlefield to the far-right forces trying to subvert American democracy,” warned writer Max Boot.

Donahoe’s “only offense was to champion on social media the very values the Army claims to stand for,” Boot added.

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actualrealnews · 10 months

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Did Wagner [mercenary] Group Take Over [Russian] Military Headquarters? What We Know

Emerging news that Putin’s own paid mercenaries -- frustrated by weeks of insufficient support from Putin’s military defense department and leading to massive loss of soldiers -- may have taken military action against Russian Military HQ.

From the article:

Videos purporting to show the Wagner Group seizing Russian military headquarters in Rostov have emerged after organization founder Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed to have taken the first step in his "war" against the Russian defense ministry.

In an audio statement early Saturday morning, Prigozhin said that his mercenary forces were "entering Rostov" without resistance. Hours earlier, on Friday, he claimed that he was "declaring war on the Russian Ministry of Defense" in retaliation for an alleged attack on his forces positioned in Ukraine.

A short time later, video showed unidentified troops surrounding the Russian Southern Military District headquarters in Rostov, which has played a key role in orchestrating the Russian war in Ukraine. Multiple experts claimed that the video showed Wagner troops taking control of the building.

"Those are not Russian National Guard troops," Alexander Vindman, the Ukrainian-born former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, tweeted alongside a video of the building being surrounded by troops. "That looks like Wagner troops entering the SMD HQ."

Continue reading here for updates on this emerging event.

Putin has immediately called for the arrest and investigation of Prigozhin as a traitor.

Could Putin be deposed by his own disgruntled, underpaid mercenaries?

#russia #putin #war #ukranian-russian war #ukraine #oceans rise empires fall #news #politics #military

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justiceheartwatcher · 1 year

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Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! Your end-of-week roundup includes: Feinstein temporarily shingled out of the Senate; Fetterman gets more done in intensive care than when he’s in the office; you won’t believe how much money FTX misplaced; another democrat official caught with kiddie porn; a Florida bill seeks to disclose blogging dark money; Governor DeWine goes to Palestine and hits pay dirt; Alexander Vindman scores some blood money; East Palenstine’s air tested by independent scientists who don’t agree with EPA; and in local news, my city commissioners were forced to take a pay cut after being grilled by the State.

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mariacallous · 2 years

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In a new book, the former US ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland defends his conduct around Donald Trump’s first impeachment, derides Democrats for their investigation of Trump’s attempt to extract political dirt from Ukraine – and calls his former boss a narcissist and a “dick”.

Sondland also takes aim at Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state, who is now a potential candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

Sondland criticizes Pompeo for firing him over his impeachment testimony and allegedly reneging on a promise to pay his legal fees. Sondland also hits Pompeo for not inviting Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the president of Ukraine, to Washington but inviting the Russian foreign minister twice.

Sondland, a hotelier, donated $1m to Trump after the 2016 election and became EU ambassador two years later. His memoir, The Envoy: Mastering the Art of Diplomacy with Trump and the World – “pause here to allow 10,000 career diplomats to roll their eyes”, the Washington Post quipped in May – will be published on 25 October. The Guardian obtained a copy.

Retelling Trump’s first impeachment, Sondland describes efforts to push Ukraine to investigate Trump’s enemies, including the role of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney.

He rejects criticism from the whistleblower, Alexander Vindman, and ex-Trump advisers John Bolton and Fiona Hill, who in her own impeachment testimony famously said Bolton, the national security adviser, mentioned Sondland was helping to “cook up” a “drug deal” regarding Ukraine.

In testimony, Sondland described Trump’s attempted quid pro quo: a White House visit for Zelenskiy and the release of military aid in return for investigations of targets including Joe and Hunter Biden.

Sondland now insists there was nothing unusual about this, writing “Quid pro quos happen all the time” and quoting – bizarrely – as evidence both the comedian Jerry Seinfeld and “studies that show when married men pitch in and clean the bathroom, they have more sex”.

But his testimony earned the ire of Trump loyalists including Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, who Sondland suspects may have told Pompeo to fire him.

As for Pompeo, “I knew that the second I had mentioned the secretary’s name in my testimony, he would be pissed that I had dragged him in. But for me to have testified in any other way would have amounted to a series of false statements. Once I made clear Pompeo’s knowledge of what was going on related to Ukraine, I surmise the secretary … wanted me out.”

Discussing his time as ambassador, Sondland says Trump was “essentially right about many things, including how out of whack our relationship with Europe has become”.

But he also attributes Trump’s shortcomings as a leader, including an “inability to clearly explain things”, to factors including his narcissism. On that score, Sondland describes reminding Trump in 2016 that “you were kind of a dick to me when we first met”. Trump, he says, said he hadn’t thought Sondland important enough to be nice to.

Working for Trump, Sondland says, “was like staying at an all-inclusive resort. You’re thrilled when you first arrive, but things start to go downhill fast. Quality issues start to show. The people who work the place can be rude and not so bright. Attrition is a huge problem. And eventually, you begin to wonder why you agreed to the deal in the first place.”

In the vein of tell-alls by bigger Trump players and accounts by Washington reporters, Sondland describes instances of bizarre behavior.

Trump is shown baffling a group of German auto executives by complaining that the seats in their cars have become too hard to use.

“There’s too many damned buttons and knobs,” Trump said. “… What’s wrong with the old-fashioned grab bar, under the seat? Forward. Back. That’s all you need!”

Sondland says the outburst met with “awkward silence”, before Dieter Zetsche, of Daimler, mollified Trump by saying facial recognition technology would soon negate the need for twiddling with buttons, knobs or bars.

More seriously, in describing preparation for meeting the president of Romania in August 2019, Sondland describes how Trump dodged briefings.

“When I get to the Oval Office,” he writes, “the door is open, country music blasting from inside. Trump, sitting at the Resolute Desk, catches a glimpse of me … and beckons, ‘Get in here and tell me which song you like.’

“An aide is … with him, her face like a deer in headlights. ‘He’s choosing which song to use for his walk-on,’ she manages to yell over the noise. He’s vetting the theme music for his next rally. Really. Trump does focus on some details, and this is an important one. Never mind that the Oval Office sounds like a country western bar, and we are supposed to be prepping for a visit with a foreign leader. He skips forward through a couple of tracks.

“‘Mr President, [Klaus] Iohannis is showing up any minute. Don’t you want to be brought up to speed?’ I yell, scanning my briefing paper. At this moment, a group of officials and dignitaries are gathered in the Cabinet Room for an advance discussion, waiting for us. DJ Trump gives me little further response, so I walk down the hall to meet the others.”

Later, Sondland gave Trump “a few quick tidbits about the president of Romania and how we’re friends with them because we’re both opposed to a natural gas pipeline that Vladimir Putin wants to build from Russia to Eastern Europe”.

As the two men waited for Iohannis to arrive, Sondland says, Trump “pull[ed] out a box of Tic Tacs” and “scarf[ed] them down”.

Sondland said: “Aren’t you going to share?”

“Slightly sheepish, Trump pulls out the white mints and shakes some into my hand. When you call him out on not acting like a normal person, it catches him off guard – and then he kind of likes it. People do it too infrequently.”

What the fuck.

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