Politics
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, ‘the Churchill of our time’: Reporter’s Notebook
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy needs MiG-29s. He needs shoulder-mounted, surface-to-air missiles. He needs NATO to impose a no-fly zone. However Zelenskyy already has one other weapon.
And he’s utilizing it.
“He has understood the ability of communications,” stated Senate Overseas Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez, D-N.J. “It’s a further device in his arsenal as he tries to combat off Russia.”
Political commentators dubbed President Reagan “the Nice Communicator.” Like Reagan, Zelenskyy has a background within the performing arts. He was a standup comic earlier than working for president. However Reagan by no means needed to get out a message whereas a warmonger pummeled his nation.
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Benefit, Zelenskyy.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
(Getty Photos/AP)
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Zelenskyy has a knack for stagecraft. He is aware of his viewers. Zelenskyy speaks to the group in essentially the most private of phrases.
Zelenskyy started his distant tackle to the Canadian Parliament by referring on a number of events to his buddy “Justin” – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Zelenskyy spoke particularly about what would occur if there have been an assault in Vancouver or if bombs destroyed the CN Tower in Toronto.
In wartime, that is “stratcom.” Successful the messaging struggle. And whereas the Ukrainian navy is supposedly no match for Russia, Zelenskyy is no less than prevailing on the knowledge entrance.
Zelenskyy continued his marketing campaign on Wednesday.
The Ukrainian chief delivered some of the impassioned speeches offered to Congress in many years. A dire plea to lawmakers, jacked into the Congressional Auditorium by video hyperlink on an enormous, 40-foot display, buttressed by 4 American flags.
Zelenskyy’s message was so simple as the olive inexperienced T-shirt he wore.
Zelenskyy’s getup solely enhanced his picture because the chief of a nation beneath siege who might need to sprint out the door any minute to fireplace off a couple of mortar rounds.
Apparel doesn’t matter in struggle. However phrases do.
“Within the darkest time for our nation, for the entire [of] Europe, I name on you to do extra,” implored Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy painted an image in language, steeping his tackle in American icons like Mount Rushmore and invoking Martin Luther King.
“I would like your assist,” beseeched Zelenskyy, “Which suggests precisely the identical [way] you are feeling once you hear the phrases, ‘I’ve a dream.’”
Zelenskyy might have painted his canvass with verbiage. However he additionally leaned on a brief, disturbing video which confirmed the horrors of struggle. Zelenskyy confirmed this placing video in the midst of his speech. A “play inside a play.” It will punctuate Zelenskyy’s message and underscore the carnage. Maimed our bodies. Docs frantically pumping chest compressions on a wounded physique. Droplets of blood splattered throughout a hospital flooring. Lifeless kids mendacity on concrete, lined with coats they’d put on to recess. Staff slinging a corpse right into a burial ditch as casually as they’d toss out a bag of trash.
“I see no sense in life if it can’t cease deaths,” stated Zelenskyy.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to the U.S. Congress by video to plead for assist as his nation is besieged by Russian forces, on the Capitol in Washington.
(AP Picture/J. Scott Applewhite, Pool)
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Zelenskyy’s presentation might have been essentially the most important speech delivered to Congress by a wartime, international chief since British Prime Minister Winston Churchill spoke to Congress, simply after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
The UK declared struggle on Nazi Germany in September 1939. So the U.Okay. had been at struggle for greater than two years previous to the USA getting into the fray in December 1941 after the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor.
Home and Senate members convene most Joint Conferences of Congress within the Home chamber. However Congress elected to welcome Churchill within the smaller Senate chamber. Churchill would ship his oratory on the day after Christmas. It was thought that some lawmakers would have already deserted Washington for the vacations. There’s nothing worse for a Joint Assembly of Congress that includes a international dignitary than empty seats. However the Senate chamber swelled with attendees. Lawmakers occupied all 96 Senate desks (there have been solely 48 states then). Cupboard secretaries and Supreme Court docket justices crowded into the room.
The Senate added klieg lights so officers may movie the tackle. Two microphones apiece from NBC, CBS and MBS (the Mutual Broadcasting System) sprang out of the Senate flooring like sunflowers in entrance of the dais.
Like Zelenskyy, Churchill had a activity at hand. He wanted to clarify to the USA what they had been in for now that it joined the World Battle II fray. Pearl Harbor pushed the U.S. into the battle. However Churchill knew that the UK and democracy may solely survive if the U.S. was absolutely dedicated to the trigger.
The speech was traditional Churchill. Stark. Spare. And, most significantly, inspirational.
“The forces organized towards us are monumental. They’re bitter. They’re ruthless,” noticed Churchill.
Churchill warned that U.S. would wish a year-and-a-half earlier than they may start to see progress. Churchill was additionally cautious. He warned these in attendance that “many disappointments and unsightly surprises await us.”
However Churchill additionally admonished those that would problem the UK and United States.
“What sort of a folks do they suppose we’re? Is it potential that they don’t notice that we will by no means stop to persevere towards them till they’ve been taught a lesson which they and the world will always remember?,” requested Churchill.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stands alongside different authorities officers in a video posted to social media Friday vowing to defend the nation from a Russian invasion.
(Armed Forces of Ukraine)
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He questioned if “depraved males” didn’t know “they are going to be referred to as to horrible account if they can not beat down by power of arms the folks they’ve assailed.”
Churchill returned for one more speech to a Joint Assembly of Congress in 1943.
The parallels between Zelenskyy’s remarks and what unfolded on Capitol Hill eight many years in the past wasn’t misplaced on Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the highest Republican on the Home Overseas Affairs Committee.
McCaul characterised Zelenskyy as “the Churchill of our instances” throughout an look on Fox Information.
After which McCaul virtually echoed Churchill.
“Historical past will decide this second and can ask the query, ‘What did you do to cease this?’”
That query now faces Congress. And, the reply Zelenskyy hopes to search out lies inside the partitions of the Home and Senate.
After contemplating Churchill’s 1941 speech, there’s a purpose why Zelenskyy invoked America’s entry into World Battle II and different cataclysmic occasions.
“Bear in mind Pearl Harbor. The horrible morning of September eleventh,” stated Zelenskyy, shifting the eye of lawmakers to essentially the most brazen assaults on American soil.
Zelenskyy then requested the U.S. and NATO to impose a no-fly zone.
“We’re asking for a reply to this terror from the entire world. Is that this loads to ask for?” queried Zelenskyy.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends a joint press convention together with his counterparts from Lithuania and Poland following their talks in Kyiv on Feb. 23, 2022.
(SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP by way of Getty Photos)
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However Congress isn’t prepared for that.
“President Zelenskyy appeared to have offered an either-or state of affairs. He indicated in his remarks that he helps the institution of a no-fly zone. However didn’t point out any different,” stated Home Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.
“Europe has to steer on the no-fly zone,” stated Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan. “We don’t need to make this a mano a mano, Russia versus U.S. factor. I feel there’s much more that we will do to assist management with out placing American planes within the air.”
Zelenskyy isn’t the primary Ukrainian chief to attraction to Congress. Former Ukrainian chief Petro Poroshenko spoke to a Joint Assembly of Congress in September 2014, simply months after Russia annexed Crimea.
Poroshenko’s remarks proved prophetic.
“Are we on the eve of the brand new Chilly Battle? Is the opportunity of the brand new horrible, unimaginable European struggle there? Is what till lately seen then, unthinkable, now turning into a actuality? Sadly, at this time, the reply to all of those query is sure,” stated Poroshenko.
Poroshenko was attempting to goad lawmakers into motion eight years in the past. The identical with Zelenskyy. And to a point, this was the identical problem going through Churchill in 1941.
“Churchill had been attempting to attraction to Individuals for the earlier two years. However the USA was divided between isolationists and internationalists, particularly in Congress,” stated former Senate historian Don Ritchie. “They couldn’t resolve they usually weren’t going to get into the struggle except they had been thrust into the struggle.”
Pearl Harbor supplied the thrust for the U.S. to enter World Battle II.
And to this point, Zelenskyy’s pleas aren’t sufficient for the U.S. to get extra concerned.
new video loaded: Supreme Court’s Immunity Decision Sets ‘Dangerous Precedent,’ Biden Says
transcript
transcript
Supreme Court’s Immunity Decision Sets ‘Dangerous Precedent,’ Biden Says
President Biden spoke after the Supreme Court’s ruling that former President Donald J. Trump is entitled to substantial immunity from prosecution on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election.
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No one, no one is above the law, not even the president of the United States. But today’s Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity, that fundamentally changed. For all, for all practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what the president can do. This is a fundamentally new principle and it’s a dangerous precedent, because the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law, even including the Supreme Court of the United States. The only limits will be self imposed by the president alone. Now, the American people will have to do what the courts should have been willing to do, but would not. The American people have to render a judgment about Donald Trump’s behavior. The American people must decide, do they want to entrust the president once again — the presidency — to Donald Trump now knowing he’ll be even more emboldened to do whatever he pleases whenever he wants to do it.
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Politics
Democratic senator 'horrified' by Biden's debate performance, says campaign needs to be 'candid'
U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, said he was “horrified” and remains concerned about President Biden’s performance during last week’s presidential debate, which has put Democrats on the defensive about their presumptive nominee’s health and mental capacity.
Whitehouse was interviewed by 12 News about his reaction to the Thursday debate, which pitted Biden against former President Donald Trump in Atlanta.
“I think like a lot of people I was pretty horrified by the debate,” Whitehouse told the news outlet. “The blips of President Biden and the barrage of lying from President Trump were not what one would hope for in a presidential debate.”
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He said Democrats remain united in the need to defeat Trump. Following the debate, reports began surfacing almost immediately that Democrats were in a state of “panic” over Biden’s performance.
“People want to make sure that…the president and his team are being candid about his condition that this was a real anomaly and not just the way he is these days,” said Whitehouse.
WASHINGTON – JUNE 13: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., leaves the Senate Democrats’ lunch in the Capitol on Tuesday, June 13, 2023. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Fox News Digital has reached out to the senator’s office.
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The optics prompted journalists at various outlets to report on dozens of Democratic Party officials who said the 81-year-old Biden should consider refusing his party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.
“I don’t debate as well as I used to,” he told a crowd at a North Carolina rally on Friday. “I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done.”
Other Democrats have raised issues following the subpar debate performance.
“I’ve been very clear that it was an underwhelming performance on Thursday during the debate, as President Biden and his campaign have acknowledged,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told MSNBC on Sunday.
Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., told CNN he “thought it was a tough night” for the president.
Fox News Digital’s Aubrie Spady contributed to this report.
Politics
Column: After the Supreme Court's immunity ruling, can Donald Trump still be tried for Jan. 6?
The Supreme Court ended a tumultuous term with one final sledgehammer blow on Monday. Its decision on Donald Trump’s claim of immunity from criminal charges forecloses any possibility that he will be tried for Jan. 6 before the election, substantially guts the prosecution and reshapes the Constitution to place the president singularly beyond the reach of criminal law.
The opinion was even more expansive in its grant of presidential immunity than commentators anticipated after the oral argument suggested the conservative majority was headed that way. And while it theoretically permits prosecution of some of the long list of Trump’s pernicious and treacherous acts in the weeks after the 2020 election, it erects a series of legal roadblocks and presumptions that make it anyone’s guess whether Trump will ever face accountability under the indictment.
The court’s essential holding is that constitutional principles of separation of powers forbid the criminal prosecution of a former president for “official acts” that took place during his term, while allowing it for “unofficial” acts. The 6-3 decision broke down along familiar lines, with the conservative majority continuing its project of remaking the law and the structure of the federal government.
How to draw the line between official and unofficial conduct? The court provides several criteria that, albeit somewhat opaque, clearly protect swaths of conduct that would strike nearly everyone as corrupt and lawless — not least much of what Trump undertook after the 2020 election.
For starters, the court prescribes absolute immunity for any exercise of “core constitutional powers.” These include at a minimum the enumerated presidential powers of Article 2 of the Constitution, such as acting as commander in chief of the armed forces, issuing pardons and appointing judges. A president acting within these areas is untouchable.
Importantly, the court holds that this immunity precludes any consideration of motive. So a president who, for example, issues a pardon in return for a bribe or fires an executive branch official out of racial animus is just as protected from the law as one who takes such actions for appropriate and conventional reasons.
This could authorize some of the most vicious and problematic presidential conduct. There is no apparent reason, for example, that it doesn’t encompass what had been taken as a devastating hypothetical offered by Judge Florence Y. Pan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit: a president’s use of Navy SEALs to assassinate a political rival. If the reason for a president’s use of commander-in-chief powers is outside the bounds of inquiry, such conduct is indistinguishable from a conventional military mission.
Motive is the soul of the criminal law. It’s what divides conduct society accepts from conduct for which we put people in prison. The declaration that it has no role to play in determining a president’s criminal liability is nearly tantamount to making him a king.
Yet the court’s decision goes considerably further. It immunizes not just core constitutional functions but also any conduct within the outer perimeter of executive authority — the same capacious standard that already applies to civil lawsuits over presidential conduct.
And though there is some debate on this point, the court appears to go even further by imposing a presumption of immunity for conduct outside that perimeter unless the government shows that a prosecution would “pose no dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.”
How this will play out in the Jan. 6 prosecution is to some extent for U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to try to figure out, with Trump challenging every move she makes along the way. The court emphasizes that distinguishing “the President’s official actions from his unofficial ones can be difficult” and may necessitate a “fact-specific” inquiry into their context (not including the president’s motive).
But the court drops some very strong hints about which aspects of the prosecution are precluded. It essentially says that Trump’s alleged efforts to level false accusations of election fraud in Georgia with the aid of a Justice Department functionary are off-limits. That’s because the charge implicates the president’s official power to investigate and prosecute crimes.
The opinion also strongly suggests that the alleged plot to strong-arm Vice President Mike Pence into violating the Constitution may be protected because it pertains to the interactions of the executive branch’s top two officials.
And the court seems to want to give a pass to Trump’s incendiary rhetoric near the Capitol on Jan. 6 on the basis that communication with the public is part of what the president does.
The only aspect of the indictment that the court seems disposed to preserve is the alleged extensive effort to set up fraudulent slates of electors. Even there, however, the court prescribes a detailed inquiry that puts the burden on special counsel Jack Smith’s team to counter Trump’s argument that his conduct was official “because it was undertaken to ensure the integrity and proper administration of the federal election.”
Even if Trump loses the election and the case is allowed to proceed beyond this year, it will require more time-consuming legal combat. Every aspect of the application of the court’s opinion to the case could be appealed to the D.C. circuit and the Supreme Court.
And where does it all come from, this fundamental reordering of our tripartite system of government and the principle — to which the court continues to give lip service — that the president is not above the law?
The answer is no more than the court’s view that the president must be able to take bold and energetic action without worrying about subsequent criminal prosecution. The justices are not, strictly speaking, interpreting any provision of the Constitution but rather applying their notion of what makes for an effective president. The conservative majority is essentially grafting its political science principles onto constitutional structure and using them to drive a truck through the principle of equality before the law.
The majority dismisses the liberal dissenters’ insistence that the decision puts the president above the law as amounting to “ignoring the Constitution’s separation of powers and the Court’s precedent and instead fear mongering on the basis of extreme hypotheticals about a future where the president ‘feels empowered to violate a federal criminal law.’ ”
But there is nothing fearmongering, unrealistic or extreme about those worries. They concern a reality that is right before the justices’ eyes. They have chosen to ignore it, ensuring that justice for the most serious assault on the Constitution in our history will be much delayed and largely denied.
Harry Litman is the host of the “Talking Feds” podcast and the “Talking San Diego” speaker series. @harrylitman
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