White House Dossier's

God Save the Queen and Biden’s Foreign Policy . . .  ‘God save the queen, man!” said Joe Biden, in an unexpected windup to remarks in Connecticut about gun control last week. Like many of his utterances, the strange outburst prompted widespread confusion. What could this latest eructation from the presidential brain mean? The remark made a curious sort of sense, inadvertently reflecting the confused, uncertain and slightly out-of-touch approach to the rest of the world that characterizes the administration’s foreign policy. He’s as confused about Afghanistan, Ukraine and the Middle East as about the British monarch. What else could explain the news last week that the Biden team is putting together a deal that isn’t a deal with the ayatollahs in Iran? Wall Street Journal

Biden says threat of Putin using tactical nuclear weapons is 'real' . . . President Joe Biden said on Monday the threat of Russian President Vladimir Putin using tactical nuclear weapons is "real", days after denouncing Russia's deployment of such weapons in Belarus. On Saturday, Biden called Putin's announcement that Russia had deployed its first tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus "absolutely irresponsible". "When I was out here about two years ago saying I worried about the Colorado river drying up, everybody looked at me like I was crazy," Biden told a group of donors in California on Monday. Reuters

It's why Team Biden has been luring Ukraine, a buffer state between Russia and NATO, into the Alliance, knowing full well that it's Putin's red line.

A indecent Russian proverb comes to mind (my apologies in advance) - we call it pulling the bear by the genitals. (In Russian, it sounds even worse).

Trump claims conversation with Putin delayed Russian invasion of Ukraine: ‘Don’t do it' . . . Former President Donald Trump claimed Monday that a conversation he had with Russian President Vladimir Putin delayed the country's invasion of Ukraine for a number of years. Former President Trump claimed Monday that a conversation he had with Russian President Vladimir Putin delayed the country's invasion of Ukraine for several years. Trump made the claim during an exclusive interview on Fox News' "Special Report," describing the conversation to anchor Bret Baier, when he told Putin an invasion would be a "catastrophe," and that there would be "hell to pay." Fox News

Here's the real reason why Putin didn't invade Ukraine during Trump's presidency:

There Is Only One U.S. Leader Putin Actually Fears | Rebekah Koffler | The Federalist

Key Moments From Donald Trump's Interview With Bret Baier on Fox News . . . Donald Trump sat down for an interview Monday night with Fox News host Bret Baier, who pressed the former president on his classified files case, his stance on key foreign policy issues and the 2024 presidential race.  Trump remains the frontrunner to win the Republican primary, as polls show him beating a number of high-profile challengers including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence. He touched on a number of the issues that have so far dominated the 2024 presidential race. See them on Newsweek

Trump controversies drown out GOP rivals . . . Those seeking to overtake Trump in the polls as the new GOP party leader have struggled to break through the noise around the arraignment. Instead, Republican candidates have been saddled by questions about Trump’s indictment, whether it was justified and whether they would consider pardoning the former president if elected.
Some candidates have expressed frustration with the lack of opportunity to make their case on the campaign trail, underscoring the difficulty GOP candidates will have breaking through in a field that has already been dominated by Trump. “He has a wide lead because he dominates the conversation,” Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who launched his campaign last week, said Sunday on Fox News. The Hill
 

After years behind closed doors, John Durham confronts Congress. Here are 8 questions he may face . . . Durham's final report lambasted FBI for opening the Russia collusion probe without evidence. After years working with grand juries mostly in private, Special Counsel John Durham will step this week into the political arena to face lawmakers and address questions that weren’t answered by his final report that definitively concluded the FBI opened its Russia collusion investigation of Donald Trump during the 2016 election without any evidence of wrongdoing. Just the News

Barack Obama attacks Sen. Tim Scott . . . What happened to all the talk about bipartisanship and racial healing? Shouldn’t Barack Obama be celebrating that a Black person for the other party is a legitimate contender for the presidency? Of course not. He’s probably jealous – Scott would not only make Obama’s achievement less singular, but he would be the first president descended from slaves – and what he cares about is his ideology. Keeping Blacks on the Democrats’ political plantation is critical to the party keeping its power. White House Dossier

The Biden Admin Says It's Cracking Down on Illegal Chinese Vapes. You Can Still Buy Them Next Door to the FDA . . . President Joe Biden's Food and Drug Administration in late May minced no words in a warning to tobacco retailers: Stop selling illegal flavored Chinese vapes, or we will come down on you with the full weight of the law. It seems to have given a pass to a retailer in its own backyard. The FDA announced just a few weeks ago, on May 31, that it was in the midst of a "retailer inspection blitz" to crack down on the sale of outlawed disposable e-cigarettes such as the Elfbar, a flavored vape manufactured in China by a subsidiary of Shenzhen IMiracle Technology.

The agency claims that on May 24 it inspected the White Oak Convenience Store, which is located just 250 yards away from the FDA's headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., and observed no violations, including but not limited to selling outlawed Chinese vapes. But the same convenience store on Thursday sold an outlawed strawberry banana-flavored Elfbar BC5000 to a Washington Free Beacon reporter, raising serious questions about the FDA's "enforcement strategy" for the illicit Chinese products. Free Beacon

Video | Rep. Anna Eshoo has to literally pull Biden in the right direction

Expert predicts Blinken’s 'unacceptable' China trip outcome: ‘Looks like World War III’ . . . Just after the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrapped his first meetings while on his visit to Beijing, China, one foreign policy expert warned that America should not be discussing any kind of cooperation. "Remember, we're talking about a totalitarian state in China where the Chinese military, which operated this spy balloon, is not a state military," Gatestone Institute senior fellow Gordon Chang said on "Mornings with Maria" Monday. "It reports to Xi Jinping directly."

Blinken met with Jinping and other Chinese state officials on Monday where he repeatedly raised the need for establishing military-to-military communications, the secretary claimed in a press briefing. But Blinken clarified that China allegedly did not agree to move forward with that initiative. Fox Business

Brussels stumbles in effort to toughen its stance on China . . . Brussels has stumbled in its attempts to further beef up its economic safeguards against rivals, including China, as EU member states demand more evidence before endorsing tighter rules.  The European Commission has been pressing EU capitals to consider a regime to scrutinise outbound investments, alongside a better-co-ordinated system of export controls in highly sensitive technology. But a draft of the EU economic security strategy, seen by the Financial Times, suggests that more analysis is needed before legal proposals are put forward as Brussels considers how best to enhance its trade and investment controls. Financial Times
 

Why bother when you can make business deals with Beijing and have America pay for your defense when China starts World War III? Europeans are rational actors.

Microsoft says early June service outages were cyberattacks . . . - Microsoft said on Friday that the outages that affected certain services of the company through some of the earlier days of this month were the result of cyberattacks, but said it saw no evidence of any customer data being accessed or compromised.

"Beginning in early June 2023, Microsoft identified surges in traffic against some services that temporarily impacted availability'" . Microsoft said it opened an investigation and began tracking the DDoS activity by the threat actor it refers to as Storm-1359 after it identified the threat. DDoS attacks work by directing high volumes of internet traffic towards targeted servers in a relatively unsophisticated bid to knock them offline. Reuters

Ukraine said it had shot down 32 of 35 Iranian-made Shahed drones launched from Russia's Bryansk region and the Azov Sea.

But a "critically important facility" was struck in Lviv, far from the front lines and around 70 km (43 miles) from the border with NATO member Poland, regional governor Maksym Kozytskiy said. He gave no other details of the facility. Reuters

India’s Modi Sees Unprecedented Trust With U.S., Touts New Delhi’s Leadership Role . . . Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said ties between New Delhi and Washington are stronger and deeper than ever as India moves to secure what he sees as its rightful place on the world stage at a moment of geopolitical turmoil. “There is an unprecedented trust” between the leaders of the U.S. and India, Modi said in an interview ahead of his first official state visit to Washington after nine years in office. He hailed growing defense cooperation between the two countries as “an important pillar of our partnership,” which he said extends to trade, technology and energy.  Wall Street Journal

That is until it comes to making weapons purchases - then India still favors Russia, Putin invasion or not. It's a rational economic choice that India and some other supposed friends of America make, given that Russian military hardware, while not as superior as American, it does do the job and is less expensive.

Alibaba CEO to step down to focus on cloud business in surprise leadership reshuffle . . . Alibaba Group said in a surprise announcement Tuesday Eddie Wu will succeed Daniel Zhang as its chief executive, a move that will free Zhang to focus on the company’s cloud intelligence business. This succession plan comes after China’s largest e-commerce company said in March it will restructure its company into six business groups in the most significant reorganization in its history, aiming to reinvigorate the company after slowing economic growth in its home market and tougher Beijing regulations combined to hit its bottom line. CNBC

Military briefing: Russian ‘Alligators’ menace Ukraine’s counteroffensive . . . Russia’s “dragon teeth” tank traps, minefields and multi-layered fortifications are just one set of obstacles in Ukraine’s budding counteroffensive. Another formidable foe turns out to be airborne: the Russian Ka-52 “Alligator” attack helicopter. In one of the campaign’s early battles near Orikhiv, in Zaporizhzhia province, a Ukrainian infantry company drove into a minefield and reportedly came under fire from Alligators, losing several US-supplied Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and a German-built Leopard 2 tank. It was unclear how many vehicles were destroyed or later recovered. Nor has Kyiv shed light on to how many Ukrainian soldiers were killed. But images of that battle, shared by Russian media and pro-war bloggers, spoke powerfully of the obstacles Ukraine’s forces will have to overcome. Financial Times

Money

Wall Street is betting against America’s downtowns . . . Investors are paying less for bonds linked to New York subways and buses. Downtown-focused real-estate investment trusts trade at less than half their prepandemic levels. Bondholders are demanding extra interest to hold office-building debt. Downtowns have been a mother lode for American cities over the years, providing billions of dollars in tax revenue along with their distinctive skylines. In turn, investors who bet on downtown office towers, or on the trains and buses delivering workers to them, could generally trust they held a winning hand. Now, with white-collar workers spending more time in their home offices, a phenomenon that shows few signs of ending, investments linked to downtowns are trading at falling prices in volatile markets. Wall Street Journal

Hunter Biden Worked With Burisma Executives To Open Account With Shady Maltese Bank, Emails Show . . . Hunter Biden helped executives from Ukrainian energy firm Burisma open an account with a corrupt bank in Malta when he served on Burisma’s board, emails on his laptop show. Biden sent income statements, passport bills and utility bills in 2016 to Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi so he could open an account with the Malta-based Satabank, Biden’s emails show. Daily Caller

Culture

Wokeness is antithetical to military service . . . “Wokeness” is all about oneself. It is political correctness on steroids. It promotes the right to be offended at the slightest trigger. This ideology has infected America's military and is wreaking havoc among our troops. Young adults entering the armed forces are indoctrinated into being afraid to think for themselves. Self-sacrifice is foreign to them. They are being pushed to believe that their nation, their upbringing, their families, and their history are all based on hate. These characteristics are directly at odds with service to one’s country. Washington Examiner

VIDEO: Target Dog Attempts To Get Girl To Change Her Gender - Babylon Bee

Why Russophobia Has Become a Moral Obligation . . . Is there a moral alternative to Russophobia after Russia’s reported deliberate destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine? Unfortunately, probably not. In light of Russia’s apparent wholesale embrace of barbarism, Russophobia — or, hatred of the state, not of the people — has become a valid moral response to the evil that the Kremlin represents. Genocide has been Russia’s modus operandi for centuries.  Russians must embrace Russophobia and thereby initiate their country’s move toward decency. They’ll have to dissociate themselves from the state that claims to personify them and prioritize their moral value as human beings over the power and the glory promised by the evil empire. Turning against Vladimir Putin and his entourage would be a good place to start.

Ultimately, Russophobia exists and will continue to exist because the Russians tolerate and embrace the crimes of their state. The ball is in their court. If they fail to turn against Russia and make it democratic, Russophobia will disappear only after the Russian state follows in the footsteps of other imperial dictatorships and disappears. Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR. The Messenger

Wow. Let that sink in. This is what this professor is teaching American students.

Many businesses owned by Russian Americans had to close down in New York and the Washington DC area, mostly grocery stores and restaurants. They lost clientele since Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Depriving these Americans of their livelihood because they haven't embraced Russophobia is YOUR moral obligation, according to this ethnic Ukrainian Professor.

Do you agree?

Rome opens site of Caesar's assassination to public
Largo Argentina dates back to the 3rd century BC . . . Four temples from ancient Rome, dating back as far as the 3rd century B.C. stand smack in the middle of one of the modern city's busiest crossroads. But until Monday, practically the only ones getting a close-up view of the temples were the cats that prowl the so-called "Sacred Area," on the edge of the site where Julius Caesar was assassinated. With the help of funding from Bulgari, the luxury jeweler, the grouping of temples can now be visited by the public. Fox News

FBI arrests Michigan man accused of planning mass synagogue killing . . . Seann Patrick Pietila was charged at a Michigan court on Friday with planning a mass killing at a synagogue in East Lansing. He discussed the plan on Instagram with antisemitic remarks about hating Jews. FBI agents recovered from his phone threats listing Shaarey Zedek synagogue for targeting on March 15, 2024, an apparent reference to the deadly New Zealand mass shooting on that date in 2019. An FBI search of his home recovered numerous firearms, including a 12-gauge shotgun and ammunition, a .22 caliber rifle, a Sig Sauer .40 caliber pistol, and knives, skull masks, and a red and white Nazi flag. DEBKAFile

Newt Gingrich’s New Book Reveals Behind the Scenes of 1994’s ‘Republican Revolution’ . . . The Republican “Contract With America” is arguably one of the most influential political documents in recent history. In 1994, then-Reps. Newt Gingrich of Georgia and Dick Armey of Texas drafted the Contract With America, rallying Republicans around key policy priorities ahead of that year’s midterm elections. Gingrich credits the document with leading to Republicans’ historic House takeover. In his new book, “March to the Majority: The Real Story of the Republican Revolution,” Gingrich explains how the Contract With America fundamentally changed the Republican Party. He also shares stories about President Ronald Reagan and weighs in on the current political climate. Daily Signal

AI can predict person’s politics by their looks, whether they smile in pics: study . . . Artificial intelligence algorithms can help predict a person’s political ideology based on their facial characteristics, a study conducted in Denmark found. The tech found right-wing politicians were more likely to have happy facial expressions in photos while people pictured with neutral facial expressions were more likely to identify as left-wing, the study said. The study, "Using deep learning to predict ideology from facial photographs: expressions, beauty, and extra-facial information," found that AI can predict a person’s political ideology with 61% accuracy when analyzing a photo of a person. Fox News

Rescue of lost Titanic-bound sub would be deepest recovery mission in history . . . The daring rescue of the Titanic-bound submersible that disappeared deep below the water off Newfoundland on Sunday morning would be the deepest recovery mission in history if crews are able to pull it off before the vessel runs out of oxygen. Coast Guard crews announced Monday night they have just 70 to 96 hours to locate the missing OceanGate Expeditions-operated sub and rescue the five people aboard in what would be a record-breaking effort. The search is focused on an area about 900 miles off the coast of Cape Cod — at a depth of roughly 13,000 feet (2.4 miles), Coast Guard officials said. NY Post

Woman starts knocking inside coffin during her wake: 'Gave us all a fright' . . . An Ecuadorian woman declared dead at the age of 76 woke up five hours into her remembrance service and started knocking inside her coffin. Doctors declared retired nurse Bella Montoya dead following a possible stroke and cardiopulmonary arrest. She did not respond to resuscitation efforts, Ecuador’s health ministry said. Fox News