The White House press briefing was almost two hours late today. It started an hour and forty minutes later than scheduled. It was supposed to be at 3:45 pm. After all the delays, they came out and peddled the same crap talking points that have been gutted, burned, and pissed on by reality. Is everyone smoking the crack pipe in there because if you’re going to be late to these pressers, which is inexcusable during this Ukraine situation, you better because of some seismic shift in policy—something. New talking points? Anything.
Nope. They yanked out Deputy National Security Adviser Daleep Singh to spew hot garbage about how these sanctions weren’t really meant to hurt anyone. Better yet, he can’t even say what will be our course of action should the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv fall into Russian hands. They don’t deal in hypotheticals. This isn’t a civil action suit, man. Kyiv is going to fall within days. Within 96 hours, Russian forces could surround the capital. What’s the plan? This is going to become reality sooner rather than later. No answer.
White House: "Our sanctions are not designed to cause any disruption to the current flow of energy from Russia to the world."
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) February 24, 2022
Biden has had a busy 48 hours, monitoring the situation from the White House residence and Oval Office, speaking with his NSC advisor, his ambassador to UN; being briefed by Pentagon, speaking with President Zelenskyy; the G7 meeting; and calls with Cap Hill.
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) February 24, 2022
On Feb. 11, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said that “the President believes that sanctions are intended to deter.”
— Michael D. Shear (@shearm) February 24, 2022
Today, @potus told us: “No one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening."
Those are basically the opposite of each other.
Singh finally did entertain a hypothetical about the Ukrainian situation and our response, noting that the enacting the full package of sanctions we have could have spurred Putin to invade Ukraine. They were already going to do that. We’re back to this jumbled mess of a messaging strategy over the sanctions. Some in Biden’s crew say they were meant to be a deterrent only to be contradicted by Joe Biden hours later. If you’re going to be late to a presser, you’d think they have this talking point sorted out. Not the case.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki then took the podium and was quite adamant in detailing Joe Biden’s activity since Russian troops rolled into the rest of Ukraine. He was supposedly monitoring the situation from the Oval Office and the residence, got briefings from his national security adviser, secretary of state, and defense secretary, spoke with the Ukrainian president, and was in contact with our allies. This was obviously aimed at refuting the narrative that Sleepy Joe was indeed in REM mode while Russia attacked. We only saw Biden today in the afternoon after Russia launched their version of shock-and-awe for hours, and he was late.
Another great question that was asked is whether Article V would be invoked should Russia launch a cyberattack against the United States or any other NATO country. It’s a good question. Psaki did not give any specifics, adding that’s a debate among our allies but maybe they should get on that. This question was asked multiple times.
That’s the disturbing aspect of this administration. There are no specifics, and as we saw in Afghanistan—that’s because they don’t know what they’re doing. They have no plan. Slap some sanctions, bash Putin, and then move on to other things. Folks, John Kerry, Biden’s climate change court jester, said that a consequence of this Ukraine war is that it will divert attention away from global warming. I’m not kidding. We’re being governed by graduates of St. Mary’s Academy of the Blind, Deaf, and Dumb.
They didn’t game this out. You see this with the talking point bumper cars carnival ride we’re on here about simple sanctions and their intent. Putin did. That’s why he’s eons ahead of us. The aura you get from this government is ‘trust us.’ How can we? You screwed up Afghanistan and Joe Biden, besides having oatmeal for brains, has been wrong on every major foreign policy initiative for the past 40 years.
We’re all on the Titanic here, and we’ve already hit the damn iceberg.
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