President Biden says he is not taking back his comments in Warsaw last weekend that “for God’s sake, this man,” Russian President Vladimir Putin, “cannot remain in power.” …
“I’m not walking anything back,” Biden said as he released his Fiscal Year 2023 federal budget Monday. “But I wasn’t then, nor am I now, articulating a policy change.” (Per The Guardian.)
Democratic political consultant and strategist to the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign, Paul Begala, likened Biden’s “for God’s sake” ad-lib, on NPR’s Morning Edition, to President Ronald Reagan calling the Soviet Union “the evil empire.”
Meanwhile
Negotiators from Kyiv and Moscow continue to meet in Istanbul to try and reach a ceasefire. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has offered “neutral status”, meaning he will not seek NATO membership, if Putin removes his troops from the country.
Breaking Tuesday
As Ukraine outlined its peace proposals in Turkey, Russia said it will “drastically reduce” its “activity” in areas around Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and Chernihiv, “to increase mutual trust and create the necessary conditions for further negotiations,” said Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin (per The Washington Post).
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About Biden’s Budget — White House budget requests, at best, serve as starting points for what the president’s party in Congress want for the coming fiscal year. For the record, Biden’s $5.8-trillion request includes more money for affordable housing and local police funding while – here’s the controversial part – proposing a minimum 20% income tax on billionaires. Although Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is on record as opposing such taxes on the rich, The Hill says at the very least Biden will use this as a political cudgel for the 2022 midterms and possibly the 2024 presidential election.
Republicans will have a hard time campaigning against taxing billionaires, The Hill posits, citing a ProPublica story last June that several of the richest people in the U.S. pay little or no taxes, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Tesla and SpaceX’s Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Fox News’/Succession inspiration Rupert Murdoch.
The White House claims the president’s budget request would cut the deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next decade and no one earning less than $400,000 per year will pay a penny more in taxes. Biden also requests $773 billion for the Department of Defense for FY23.
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‘Yuge’ Next to Watergate’s 14-Minute ‘Gap’ – President Trump’s White House records handed over to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection are missing seven-hours, 37-minutes of communications, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and CBS News. Bob Woodward and Robert Costa report the House panel is “investigating whether it has the full record” as turned over by the National Archives earlier this year, or whether Trump communicated from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. that day using his aides’ phones and/or personal “burner” phones, people familiar with the probe told Woodcosta.
Our Reference
“Fourteen-minute gap” refers to a blank spot in the Watergate tapes recorded by Richard M. Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods. Those tapes nevertheless contributed to the president’s eventual resignation ahead of a probable bi-partisan impeachment.
Attempted Coup News You Can Use
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter on Monday said Donald J. Trump “more likely than not” committed federal crimes in trying to obstruct the congressional count of electoral votes January 6, 2021 (WaPo), which is seen as putting more pressure on the Justice Department to investigate the 45th president.
Meanwhile
The House January 6 panel referred to the DOJ contempt charges against former Trump aides Peter Navarro (trade policy) and Dan Scavino (communications) for refusing to testify over their alleged plan to overturn the November 2020 election. Former White House advisor, and current Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner is scheduled Thursday to testify before the 1/6 committee, which may now call on Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, over her texts exchanged between the election and the insurgency with then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
--Compiled by Todd Lassa