Comment on Putin: West wants to defang, declaw Russian bear

Dan Pfeiffer: “The message is that Donald Trump is a danger to democracy, and he is running for president to help himself, avoid legal accountability, and punish his enemies. The fact that he was convicted of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to interfere in an election seems more than a little relevant.” Brian Beutler: “In the almost 48 hours since a New York jury returned its verdict against Donald Trump, many liberals who are normally sanguine about the Democratic Party’s approach to partisan combat have found themselves astonished by what they’ve seen.

President Biden issued a statement on Monday as jury selection began in his son Hunter Biden’s criminal trial, saying that he has “boundless love for my son, confidence in him, and respect for his strength,” Axios reports. Said Biden: “As the President, I don’t and won’t comment on pending federal cases, but as a Dad, I have boundless love for my son, confidence in him, and respect for his strength.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Monday warned the U. S. against the potential “fatal consequences” of allowing Kyiv to deploy U. S.-supplied weapons against targets inside Russia, CNBC reports. Said Ryabkov: “I would like to warn American leaders against miscalculations that could have fatal consequences. For some unknown reason, they underestimate the seriousness of the rebuff they may receive.” Financial Times: Russia’s nuclear threats are losing their power.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and said her treatment may require her to be “occasionally absent” from Capitol Hill, The Guardian reports.

“House Republicans are poised to grill Dr. Anthony Fauci at a hearing on Monday as lawmakers continue to scrutinize his response to the Covid-19 pandemic and examine theories of the origin of the virus,” ABC News reports.

“Former President Donald Trump has described his plans to remove large numbers of unauthorized immigrants from the country if elected to a second term by citing the mass deportations under President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s,” the New York Times reports. “In that initiative, federal agents and law enforcement officers used military techniques such as sweeps, raids and surveillance checkpoints — as well as a blunt form of racial profiling — to round up undocumented workers and load them onto buses and boats.