The Roundup

Elections in South Africa, Mexico, and India, Nigel Farage gets a drink thrown in his face, a former producer of Donald Trump's reality show spills the tea, observing D-Day, and more!

Election News

South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) has had its worst election result in 30 years. The ANC has long dominated politics since 1994, which was the first post-apartheid election where Nelson Mandela became president. That was then and this is now. Support for the ANC has been slipping for a while due to anger over high levels of corruption, unemployment, and crime.

Meanwhile in Mexico, they have elected a new president that is history in the making. Claudia Sheinbaum is the first female president elected in Mexican history. She is also that nation's first Jewish president. Mexico now joins Ukraine and Israel in having an elected Jewish head of state.

The only sour news is that the day after that historic election, the mayor of Cotija in Michoacán, Yolanda Sánchez, was gunned down. She was the first woman elected as mayor in that town in 2021. She had not only frequently faced death threats but last year she was kidnapped by armed men who held her for three days. It is widely believed that a drug trafficking cartel is behind Sánchez's murder.

In India the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have barely held on to its majority in the world's biggest election, which was held in seven phases over six weeks with almost half a billion people registered to vote.

Nigel Farage Gets His Just Desserts

Nigel Farage, the far right-wing British politician who was a huge advocate of the Brexit vote and is also a very close friend of former president and convicted felon Donald Trump, has announced that he plans to run in the UK election on the Reform UK party. Originally Farage said that he wasn't running in the UK elections in order to help with his BFF Trump's campaign but he changed his mind. He'll have less time to help Trump get reelected, especially if he gets elected himself next month.

Farage’s campaign went off with a smashing start as he was greeted with a drink thrown in his face on the campaign trail.

If Donald Trump stays in the race despite being a convicted felon, what happened to his friend could be an inspiration for Americans who believe in the Constitution and the rule of law to give him a similar greeting on the campaign trail. (I'm not necessarily advocating for this. But I wouldn't be surprised if someone would risk arrest by doing to Trump what was done to Farage.)

Is Trump Finally Turning Off Republican Voters?

I'm personally not a fan of those polls that the mainstream media uses to keep on proping up Trump as a viable candidate, even though they have been proven to be inaccurate in previous elections. But there's a poll out that says that one-third of Republicans think that Trump is the wrong man for their party. Unlike the other polls that the mainstream media like to cite, this poll was conducted by a Canadian firm and it was conducted shortly before Trump became a convicted felon. The details are in this video.

If that poll is accurate, it's yet another indication that the Republican Party needs to seriously consider another candidate to nominate for president before the RNC convention next month.

A Former Apprentice Producer Spills the Tea About Donald Trump

Last week, when convicted felon Donald Trump was having a horrible week, this story came out but it got buried because it came out just a few hours before Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts in his hush money trial.

Bill Pruitt, a former producer on The Apprentice, celebrated the recent expiration of that NDA he was required to sign by writing this article for Slate.com about what it was like when he worked on the first two seasons of that show. His revelations included hearing Trump refer to an African American contestant with the N word.

That contestant, Kwame Jackson, responded to Pruitt’s article in this MSNBC interview.

Donald Trump Isn’t the Only Republican Who’s in Legal Trouble

Yesterday a judge had ordered former Trump advisor Steve Bannon to surrender to prison by July 1, revoking his bail. Bannon was convicted for contempt of Congress after he defied a subpoena to testify before a House committee regarding his role in the riot that took place at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. He will serve a four-month sentence, which means that he won’t be released until just a few days before Election Day.

It’s hard to feel sorry for Steve Bannon’s plight. This guy is such an admirer of Vladimir Putin that he had been spending time trying to unite the various far-right, pro-Putin parties in Europe. This entry on the Vatnik Soup site shows what a nasty piece of work he really is. He also looks like the stereotypical drunken Irish guy whom you would cross the street in order to avoid completely because he would just try to goad you into fighting him just for the hell of it. (And I write this as someone who has one set of great-grandparents who immigrated from Ireland. My mother’s maiden name was Banahan.)

D-Day Eighty Years Later

This week is the 80th anniversary of the landings at Normandy in France. As part of the observances President Joe Biden gave a speech where he said that the fight for Ukraine echoes the struggle for freedom on D-Day.

The most memorable part about the observances is this short video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hugging a World War II vet while both men called each other hero.

Russian Propaganda is Ramping Up Nonstop

NPR has posted this story about how Russia is using a variety of tactics to get its propaganda out, including using social media to amplify controversial stories like the campus protests against the war in Gaza and putting up sham news sites with names like DC Weekly, The Boston Times, and Election Watch. The propaganda is targeted at many elections around the world (including the US) and the upcoming Olympics in Paris. The purpose of this propaganda blitz is to distract from its ongoing war in Ukraine. If it also results in the Kremlin's preferred politicians getting elected (such as Donald Trump) then so much the better for them.

The State of the Russian Economy Despite Sanctions

Russia has been mostly cut off economically since it began its invasion of Ukrainr two years ago but it has managed to thrive despite that. There are concerns about that nation's long-term economic development since it is currently devoting a sizable chunk of its resources to keeping the war going.

Putin's Latest Temper Tantrum

Recently Ukraine has used US made weapons to strike inside of Russia. Vladimir Putin is now threatening that Russia could supply similar arms to attack Western targets. Putin has also said that the recent conviction of Donald Trump has “burned” the idea that the US is a leading democracy.

Meanwhile Russia is sending combat vessels to the Caribbean in a show of Russia's global power. Port of calls are likely to include Cuba and Venezuela.

The Guardian's Expose of the Latest Kremlin Propaganda Trick

The Guardian has exposed a Russian-state legal defense foundation known as Pravfond as a Kremlin influence operation that is active in 48 countries across Europe and around the world. You can learn more right here.

The Current State of Ukrainian Education in the Russian-Occupied Areas

This video shows how innocent Ukrainian children in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine are subjected to being brainwashed with Kremlin propaganda in the schools.

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