The Roundup

Donald Trump gets his sentencing delayed, Russian peace activists create a fictional pro-Putin poet, Roger Waters goes off the deep end, videos of the mighty Belarus military, and more!

This week is the Fourth of July holiday here in the US and the news has been incredibly busy this week.

Another Reason to Vote Against Donald Trump in November

Here is his special Fourth of July message where it's more about him than the fact that it is the 248th birthday of a nation whose democracy is threatened by the likes of Trump. This post on Truth Social proves that Trump in an unpatriotic anti-American convicted felon who should never be able to gain access to the White House ever again.

UK Election News

This year July 4 wasn't just the annual Independence Day in the United States. The United Kingdom held its elections where Labour totally swept the Tories. The UK now has a new prime minister, Keir Starmer. Here's hoping for a similar upset in November in the US when we American voters can vanquish Donald Trump and his MAGA movement once and for all.

The Palestinians in Gaza are Getting Fed Up With Hamas

More and more Palestinians are increasingly getting fed up with the leadership of Hamas in Gaza where open criticism of the terrorist group has been growing on both the streets and online.

Taking on Project 2025

The Democratic lawmakers in Congress are starting to take on the threat from the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 by forming the Stop Project 2025 Task Force. Here is an interview with the founder of that task force, Rep. Jared Huffman.

Donald Trump Gets His Way Yet Again

Throughout his entire life Donald Trump has long gotten away with the kind of things that most other people could never get away with. He has been shielded, in large part, by his gender (male), race (white), and class (very rich). If Donald Trump had been—let’s say—an African American man from a poor family in the inner city of Baltimore, he probably would either be in the middle of serving a very long prison sentence right now or he would have died at an early age because he pissed off someone so much that he ended up being shot to death in revenge.

Once again he has gotten his way using a tactic that has worked very well for him in the previous 4,000 lawsuits that have been filed against him in over three decades before he was elected president in 2016: File an appeal in an attempt to get a delay. When he became a convicted felon in his hush money trial regarding payments to porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence regarding their brief sexual fling, he immediately filed to the Supreme Court in an effort to prevent a New York courtroom from handing down his sentence on July 11, just a few days before the start of the Republican National Committee Convention on July 15. Thanks to this week’s Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, the New York judge has decided to delay the sentencing to September. While Trump can now participate in the RNC Convention without worrying about being sent to prison beforehand, the issue surrounding the fact that he is a convicted felon running for president still remains.

Steve Bannon is Less Lucky

This week Trump’s former advisor Steve Bannon begins serving his four-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress after he refused to testify before a House committee regarding his role in the riot that took place at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. This means that he won't be available to help his buddy Donald Trump regain the White House during the last few crucial months of the election. Oh well.

Russians are Still Resisting the Russian Government Very Quietly

Vladimir Putin’s incredibly strict laws, many of which were enacted after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, may have curtailed the vast majority of the street protests, but there are still anti-war activists who are trying to make their views known in a much more subtle way.

Recently a poet named Gennady Rakitin has been posting his poetry on VKontake, which is the Russian equivalent of Facebook, where he praises Vladimir Putin and his “special military operation” in Ukraine. His poetry really resonated with Russian lawmakers and senators. His poems were entered into competitions, celebrated at festivals, and shared on channels dedicated to “Z poetry.” Even his headshot shows Rakitin as the quintessential bohemian poet who happens to be just as completely behind Putin and the current ongoing invasion of Ukraine as the Russian singer Shaman.

There was one problem: It was all fake. Gennady Rakitin’s photo was actually AI generated. His poems were basically translations of Nazi poems that were written in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. References to Germany were changed to Russia but, otherwise, the poems were translated as originally written. One such poem, called “Leader” and included a photo of Vladimir Putin, was originally called “Führer” and it was written by the Nazi-supporting writer Eberhard Möller as a dedication to Adolf Hitler. The Nazi poems were translated and put online by a group of anonymous anti-war pranksters as a way of making the Russian people aware that there are disturbing similarities between Vladimir Putin’s Z and Adolf Hitler’s Nazis. The last poem that was published on Rakitin’s VKontake page is the only one that was a real original and not just a translation of a Nazi poem: “Gennady long mocked / Z poems on his feed / In the end, his message was / Fuck the war”.

Roger Waters Goes Off the Deep End

The former member of Pink Floyd was recently interviewed by Piers Morgan where he basically said that Israel is to blame for the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7 and there is no evidence that Hamas raped Israeli girls and women. There was even this bizarre moment in the interview where Roger Waters suddenly begins to turn away from Piers Morgan and start talking to himself.

It looks like Syd Barrett wasn't the only member of Pink Floyd who had completely lost his mind. While much of Barrett's life story was a tragedy, at least he never made any questionable controversial political statements nor was he ever accused of antisemitism. You can watch the interview in its entirety below.

A Former Florida Cop is Aiming Kremlin Propaganda at Americans

The BBC has revealed that a former Florida police officer named John Mark Dougan had relocated to Moscow a few years ago where he now distributes Kremlin propaganda that is aimed at Americans. Much of it is anti-Ukraine and it's aimed at getting Americans to demand that the Biden Administration cuts off all further aid to Ukraine. Dougan's most recent work was circulating a story this week that claimed that Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska had used some of that aid monet to purchase a rare Bugatti Tourbillon sports car for the equivalent of $4.8 million. It was spread on social media by pro-Russian supporters and it was accompanied by a video that was later proven to be an AI deep fake video.

The Gen-Z Lord Haw-Haw Jackson Hinkle was among those who had spread that story using supposed “evidence” of the purchase.

It turned out to be a fake. One such indication is the above invoice itself. This transaction supposedly took place at a Paris car dealership yet the entire invoice is written in English instead of French, which is the language that is actually spoken in that part of the world. Bugatti later issued a statement denying that Olena Zelenska had purchased a car from them.

This fake “Olena Zelenska bought an expensive sports car with aid money that had been earmarked for military and humanitarian assistance” story perfectly followed the format of Russian bullshit 101.

The Gen-Z Lord Haw-Haw Goes to the United Nations

Jackson Hinkle had quite a week between helping to spread false propaganda about Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska purchasing a very expensive sports car and his next big “achievement” in his “career” of being a full-time Putin propagandist. He had recently returned to the US from visiting the Russian-occupied Donbass region of Ukraine and he was invited by the Russian delegation to the United Nations to give a Kremlin-approved speech about what he supposedly saw right at the UN headquarters in New York City.

It was supposed to be a panel where Hinkle and two other people would be speaking about what they saw in the Donbass region while not deviating from the usual Kremlin talking points. There were enough chairs to hold a regular press conference. Except it lacked people who were very interested in hearing what Hinkle and his two cohorts had to say about what they saw in the Donbass while adhering to the official Russian perspective. Even the official Ukrainian government's United24 Media couldn't resist commenting on Hinkle’s speech at the United Nations using the label “Expectations vs Reality.”

What a surprise! Most people weren't interested in someone giving the official Kremlin-approved version of what's going on in the Donbass. Although that panel discussion led to this question from a Ukrainian reporter that is the most perfect rhetorical question that I've ever heard from anyone in recent years.

I guess being a career Kremlin propagandist isn't really such a great ticket to stardom. (LOL!)

Hilarious Belarusian Military Videos

Every now and then the fine military of Belarus will release videos where they try to send a warning to Ukraine and NATO to not even THINK about invading their country. Not only is Belarus among Russia's closest allies but it also has its own military that shows the world how powerful it is by making this video featuring soldiers doing backflips, breaking a long board, and forming a human pyramid. I can see both NATO and the Ukrainian military quaking in their boots over this.

And then there's this video. Look how fierce the Belarusian military is as the soldiers break boards across their foreheads. Take that, NATO and Ukraine!

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