President Donald Trump's manner with Russian leader Vladimir Putin was in contrast to the anger he flashed at NATO allies. (AFP / Brendan Smialowski)
Appearing on CNN on Saturday morning a former director on the National Security Council addressed the terrorist mail-bombing campaign allegedly carried out by an avid supporter of Donald Trump, saying Russian President Vladimir Putin must be pleased he backed the right presidential candidate.
Speaking with host Victor Blackwell, Sam Vinograd -- who served in the Obama administration in various national security positions -- said she looked at alleged bomber Cesar Sayoc from a "national security and global perspective."
"I think Vladimir Putin's thinking, 'boy, I really bet on the right horse in 2016,'" she predicted.
"Even a terrorist attack against a president's predecessor, against the office of presidency, is a divisive issue for this president," she explained.
"He is using it to pit Democrats against Republicans still, he is assailing our First Amendment rights -- we work here at CNN, we were attacked and he blaming the media," she continued. 'He is undercutting the law enforcement community by peddling a conspiracy theory yesterday or before whether the bomb threat was in fact real."
"For all of those reasons, the president looks like the divider-in-chief rather than using this as unifying moment, which signals that the Russians were right that ... Donald Trump was a candidate that helped their objectives, not the objectives of unifying our country," she noted.
"It is a scary day when investigators are probably looking at the president's Twitter feed to get leads on who else might be a potential target in this kind of attack, a copy-cat attack or whether the suspect sent multiple bombs out that haven't been found yet," she added.
Eighty-nine bodies have been recovered since a boat carrying migrants from Lebanon sunk off Syria's coast, Syrian state media said Saturday, as the Lebanese army said it arrested a suspected smuggler behind one of the deadliest recent shipwrecks in the eastern Mediterranean.
Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), called it a "heart-wrenching tragedy".
At least 14 people rescued were recovering in hospitals in Syria while six others were discharged, as search efforts continued, with several people still missing since the boat sank on Thursday.
"There are 89 victims, while 14 people are receiving treatment at Al-Basel Hospital, two of whom are in intensive care," Syria's official news agency SANA reported, quoting Iskandar Ammar, a hospital official.
Lebanon's army said it arrested a Lebanese man who "admitted to organizing the recent smuggling operation from Lebanon to Italy by sea".
Lebanon, a country which hosts more than a million refugees from Syria's civil war, has since 2019 been mired in a financial crisis branded by the World Bank as one of the worst in modern times.
It has become a launchpad for illegal migration, with its own citizens joining Syrian and Palestinian refugees clamoring to leave.
As many as 150 people were on board the small boat that sank off the Syrian port of Tartus, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Tripoli in Lebanon, from where the migrants set sail.
Those on board were mostly Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians, and included both children and the elderly, the UN said.
Families in Lebanon were to hold a second day of funerals Saturday after they were handed bodies of relatives on Friday night through the Arida border crossing with Syria.
'Death boats'
Since 2020, Lebanon has seen a spike in the number of migrants using its shores to attempt the perilous crossing in jam-packed boats to reach Europe.
The UN children's agency, UNICEF, said they had initial reports that 10 children were "among those who lost their lives" in the latest disaster.
"Years of political instability and economic crisis in Lebanon have pushed many children and families into poverty, affecting their health, welfare and education," UNICEF added.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said: "No one gets on these death boats lightly...
"People are taking this perilous decisions, risking their lives in search of dignity."
Lazzarini said more must be done "to offer a better future and address a sense of hopelessness in Lebanon and across the region, including among Palestine refugees".
Antonio Vitorino, head of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said: "People looking for safety should not be compelled to take such perilous and often deadly migration journeys."
Most of the boats setting off from Lebanon head for European Union member Cyprus, an island about 175 kilometers (110 miles) to the west.
Appearing on MSNBC's "The Katie Phang Show," former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade claimed that Donald Trump's actions following the search at his Mar-a-Lago resort that led to the discovery of boxes of stolen documents have made it difficult for the DOJ to not file charges against him.
Speaking with the host, McQuade stated that the search of Mar-a-Lago likely would have gone unnoticed if Trump hadn't taken to social media to announce it and that has put the DOJ on the spot to follow up with criminal indictments.
Adding to that, she suggested he is not listening to his lawyers.
With host Phang stating it was "put up or shut up time" for Trump to make a solid case for keeping the documents, McQuade said it may be too late.
"So often Donald Trump's defense is to win the court of public opinion, to win the news day; he's thinking about today," she explained. "He's not really thinking about tomorrow and most lawyers will tell their clients not to say anything. because whatever you say can be used against you. So I think we're seeing some of that come home to roost here."
"The public wouldn't even know about this search if Donald Trump himself had not publicly announced it and, in fact, I think there is a good possibility that the Justice Department would have been happy to just get the documents back but he has made such a battle of it," she continued. "And now, I think it makes it very difficult to get the Justice Department to decline to file charges here."
Addressing the pushback to Trump's team from special master Raymond Dearie, she added, "He is not putting up with any of this nonsense. He is moving things along with what he referred to as reasonable dispatch. He is not going to play games, and he is making them articulate if there is some defense of planted evidence."
A woman picked to sit in on Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's staged town-hall styled rollout of the House GOP's latest "Commitment to America," complained to the California lawmaker that a "new" program, "social emotional learning," which teaches children to have greater self esteem, and be aware of their emotions and those of others, is "Marxist."
Social Emotional Learning, or "SEL," is not new, it was developed starting in the 1960s at the Yale University School of Medicine.
But according to the woman chosen to help McCarthy introduce what he admits is the GOP's "plan" to win back the House, SEL is just the next big "concern," after "CRT." Critical Race Theory has been used by far-right wing extremists to delegitimize that systemic racism exists in America.
"There are many other public education issues, concerning parents like myself," the woman, reading from a script, tells McCarthy, who is seated among an almost entirely white audience in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area.
The woman identified herself as Lori McRoberts "a mama bear," who says she has three children, ages 19, 17, and 14.
In her remarks she also complained about "abusive COVID protocols, or mandates," in schools, "or what they called the 'health and safety plan,'" she said, reading from her typewritten remarks. She described lunchtime for students as sitting like "prisoners," while mocking the fact that COVID is airborne, can be spread via talking, and those infected can be asymptomatic. She also described signs in schools urging children and teachers to "mask up for safety," as "propaganda," while lamenting that parents were not given decision-making abilities for COVID policies, neglecting to note they should be science-based, while expressing anger the protocols came from guidelines published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
After several minutes she got to the part where she blasted social learning programs.
"The slow creep of critical race theory," she said, reading off her list of concerns, as her voice became angered, "diversity, equity, and inclusion, gender identity, and allowing biological boys to enter girls spaces in sports."
"Now we have SEL," she lamented, "which is 'social-emotional learning,'" she said with disdain. "It's indoctrination disguised as programs, like 'kindness initiatives,' or anti-bullying programs, or diversity projects."
"These are all Marxist-style programs, targeting our children," she claimed.
The Pittsburg, Pennsylvania public schools' website says: "We all know that it is essential for children to master important academic skills, such as reading and mathematics. That’s why they go to school. But it is equally important for students to develop the 'soft skills' that we all need to navigate the world successfully. These include things like how to manage their own feelings and emotions, how to respect others and how to build strong, positive relationships. This is called Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)."
McRoberts continued her pre-written rant.
"Then, to make it all better, the current administration weaponized the Dept. of Justice," she claimed, "and all the parents speaking up at school board meetings or challenging any of these programs, like I was, was now labeled a 'domestic terrorist,'" she said, which is false.
"Our Dept. of Justice is calling me, a mom, a domestic terrorist," she claimed, again, falsely.
After her lengthy and angry remarks, she asked how the Republican Party will "protect our children from the radical agenda of the left?"
After she spoke, to applause from the audience, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, seated directly behind Congressman McCarthy, looked at McRoberts knowingly, repeatedly mouthing, "good job, good job."
McCarthy responded to McRoberts, agreeing that DOJ had called parents "domestic terrorists," which he knows is false, after The Washington Post and others have called him out on it for months.
Watch McRobert's remarks on SEL, and the full town hall staged presentation, below or at this link.
