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Putin And Xi Say They Need To Oppose International Interference – From Other Countries

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China’s president Xi Jiinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin have agreed their countries should both try to oppose international interference – something both nations have been actually been accused of.

According to a Kremlin press briefing, they both lashed out at the US in particular, denouncing the “US policy of interfering in the internal affairs of other states”.

The two leaders spoke during an hour-long phone call on Thursday and discussed establishing a “multipolar, fairer world order”.

The Moscow Times reported that the Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told journalists: “The leaders of the two countries realise that the US is practically implementing a policy of double containment [toward] both Russia and China.”

The US has sanctions against both Beijing and Moscow right now.

A readout from the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV also reported that Xi suggested the two “should closely collaborate strategically, defend the sovereignty, security and development interests of their respective countries, and resolutely oppose interference in internal affairs by external forces.”

The UK and its allies actually called out Russia for its own sustained attempts to interfere in UK politics and democratic processes only in December 2023.

Meanwhile, China was criticised by Taiwan for “repeated interference” in its elections only in January.

Xi and Putin’s relationship has strengthened significantly since Russia invaded Ukraine, and, according to the Kremlin, the leaders agreed today to continue having “close personal interaction”.

Weeks before the war began, Xi signed up to a “no-limits” friendship with Putin, with a series of long-term energy deals.

Xi went to Moscow last March, and Putin visited Beijing in October – a particularly surprising move from the Russian president, because of the international arrest warrant out against him.

Although the Kremlin’s press service said the bond between their two countries was at “an unprecedentedly high level” right now, they do not have any more visits scheduled.

According to CCTV, Xi said the two countries have “weathered many storms together” and they are “facing new opportunities for development”.

The two also spoke about “the development of Sino-Russian comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation over the recent period.”

China-Russia trade reached the new high of $218.2 billion (£173.12 billon) during January-November, according to Chinese customs data.

Russia has been able to rely on China as a key economic lifeline since the West imposed unprecedented sanctions on Moscow over its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

In exchange, China has access to Russia’s cheap energy exports and natural resources.

Xi also wished Putin success in the upcoming elections. Russia recently banned a popular antiwar opponent from standing in the election, and Putin is expected to win comfortably.

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Donald Trump Serves Up A Delusional New Take On His Massive Legal Woes

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Donald Trump bizarrely and falsely suggested on Wednesday that he had come out on top in his New York civil cases.

“Are you thinking of potentially trying to use campaign funds to pay some of the penalties?” a reporter asked the former president at a news conference following his meeting with Teamsters Union leaders in Washington, DC.

“What penalties?” Trump asked.

“In the New York fraud cause and the defamation case,” the reporter replied.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” said Trump. “I mean, that’s been proven as far as I’m concerned.”

He claimed that “actually, we won in the court of appeals”.

Actually, he didn’t.

In the defamation case, jurors awarded writer E Jean Carroll an astonishing $83.3 million in damages on Friday. She had accused him of defaming her after she came forward in 2019 with allegations he raped her in 1996.

In a separate trial in May last year, a jury concluded that Trump was liable for sexually abusing, but not raping, Carroll and for defaming her. He was ordered to pay $5 million in damages. He has denied all wrongdoing and appealed that verdict; there has been no outcome yet.

He has also vowed to appeal Friday’s decision.

As for New York civil business case, Trump was found liable for fraud in that matter before the trial began.

Following an 11-week trial, Judge Arthur Engoron is expected to rule on six additional claims including falsifying business records and insurance fraud, and to rule on how much Trump and his co-defendants must pay, as well as whether they can continue to do business in New York.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has asked for $370 million in the lawsuit.

Engoron had previously ordered the dissolution of Trump’s businesses in the state, a decision which is on hold pending Trump’s appeal.

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The US Right’s Newest Conspiracy Is The Super Bowl-Taylor Swift-Joe Biden ‘Psyop’

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It’s a conspiracy involving the deepest of deep states: The world’s most popular entertainer, America’s most popular sporting event and the president of the United States. Its goal, according to theories circulating in the outskirts of MAGA world, is to covertly compel fans to throw the 2024 election to the Democrats.

Right-wing speculation reached a fever pitch this week around pop mega-star Taylor Swift and boyfriend Travis Kelce after Kelce’s team, the Kansas City Chiefs, qualified for Super Bowl LVIII on Sunday, a victory the two celebrated with much-photographed postgame smooch. A day later, The New York Times ran a piece noting President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign is hoping for Swift’s endorsement.

Those two seemingly unrelated events — and the possibility that Swift would use her massive star power and huge online reach to help Biden beat Donald Trump — are driving right-wing media into a meltdown. And that one of the country’s biggest celebrities will use her fanbase to help Biden is already being treated as inevitable by some of the right’s biggest influencers.

“That will be a tsunami that will be very difficult to thwart,” Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk reportedly said to a group of young conservatives at a conference on Monday night, of the possibility of Swift and her massive army of supporters wading into the election. “We better be prepared. It seems as though things are aligning for that.”

But there’s more to this than the possibility of a Swift nod swinging a close election. For years, right-wing conspiracists have pushed the notion that Swift, who began her career in the conservative world of country music and was once referred to as “Aryan goddess” by white supremacists, is somehow a Democratic “agent” because she endorsed Democrats in the 2018 midterms and Biden in the 2020 presidential election. (Swift has admitted she regrets not getting involved in 2016.)

The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on alleged collusion with Swift and the NFL.

Kelce, for his part, appeared in a Pfizer commercial promoting the Covid vaccine. Covid shots have long been the subject of right-wing conspiracies, with adherents falsely believing the government is covering up adverse reactions or that the vaccines harbor microchips.

Now, high-profile conservative figures are promoting the unfounded idea that Swift, the NFL and the Democratic Party are together involved in a “psyop” campaign to deliver the election to Biden. Fox News host Jesse Watters recently suggested that Swift was a “front for a covert political agenda” and bizarrely called her a “Pentagon asset” — which, of course, the Pentagon denied.

“As for this conspiracy theory, we are going to shake it off,” a Pentagon spokesperson told the Daily Beast.

By that logic, Swift’s appearances at Chiefs games isn’t to cheer on her boyfriend or even to promote her tour — it’s really to get the country to vote blue in November.

“I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months,” former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who has embraced far more dangerous conspiracy theories than this one, tweeted Monday.

“You don’t have to take my word for it. The New York Times already said it’s working on what the Biden administration calls the ′Taylor strategy,’” Jack Posobiec, a conspiracy theorist known for promoting “Pizzagate”, said at Turning Point Action’s Restoring National Confidence Summit on Tuesday, the same event where Kirk mentioned Swift. (The Times article referenced no such strategy.)

“It’s not about her, it’s about the machine that’s around her,” Posobiec said, suggesting Swift is somehow in cahoots with Democrats.

The theory has some truth behind it: Biden has struggled with young voters, who are a major part of Swift’s fanbase and a reason Biden aides are hopeful an endorsement will arrive before the election. Swift’s endorsement could help encourage some of her 279 million Instagram followers to register to vote, or even to raise cash for Biden.

But just ask former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen, who earned Swift’s endorsement in a 2018 Senate race, if the pop megastar can guarantee a victory. (Bredesen lost to GOP Senator Marsha Blackburn by 11 points.)

Though even as the conservative podcasting and media spheres hype the dangers of a Swift endorsement to Trump, some of the most right-wing members of Congress aren’t convinced there’s anything political to the Swift-Kelce coupling.

“I’m a sports fan and if I’m watching a game, I’m watching the game,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) told HuffPost. Greene herself has been involved in online conspiracism, and said she’s seen some of the speculation about Swift, but didn’t care to comment.

“Taylor Swift, she’s an entertainer,” Greene said. “Apparently, she’s dating a football player.”

Other House Republicans said they hadn’t heard of what’s going on. Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) said he only wanted the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl. “She’s not adding to anything to help them be more successful,” Burlison said.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) joked that maybe Swift is a “double deep plant” who will actually help Republicans.

“I remember when she was country — she was in Nashville, and I like country music,” he said. “I’m not a pop person.”

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Trump Pushes For Total Immunity — Including For Events That ‘Cross The Line’

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Former President Donald Trump, who faces federal criminal charges over his unprecedented efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election, argued on Thursday that presidents should have complete immunity from prosecution for any crime they may commit while in office.

“EVEN EVENTS THAT ‘CROSS THE LINE’ MUST FALL UNDER TOTAL IMMUNITY, OR IT WILL BE YEARS OF TRAUMA TRYING TO DETERMINE GOOD FROM BAD,” Trump wrote in all capital letters on his social media platform, Truth Social.

He added: “SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO LIVE WITH ‘GREAT BUT SLIGHTLY IMPERFECT.’ ALL PRESIDENTS MUST HAVE COMPLETE & TOTAL PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY, OR THE AUTHORITY & DECISIVENESS OF A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WILL BE STRIPPED & GONE FOREVER. HOPEFULLY THIS WILL BE AN EASY DECISION. GOD BLESS THE SUPREME COURT!”

Trump’s lawyers argued in federal court earlier this month that his actions seeking to overturn the 2020 election, leading up to the violent January 6, 2021, attack on Congress, were official acts and that he is, therefore, immune from prosecution by the Justice Department, which has charged him with three counts of conspiracy and one count of obstructing an official proceeding.

However, the US District Court of Appeals judges seemed likely to reject that argument. Trump’s comments on Thursday signaled that he hopes the conservative 6-3 Supreme Court will take up the matter and rule in his favor.

Trump’s bid for total immunity has drawn bipartisan criticism. Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, his leading 2024 presidential primary rival, dismissed it as “ridiculous”, while Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) called it “antithetical to what we all believe in”.

Still, Trump has picked up momentum following his resounding win in the Iowa caucuses earlier this week. He currently has the support of a majority of Senate Republicans, and more are expected to hop on the bandwagon in the coming weeks.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), in his endorsement of Trump last week, said that Trump would almost certainly be the GOP nominee and that Republicans needed to get behind him to oust Democrat Joe Biden from the White House.

“I’ll take the mean tweets,” Lee added, referring to Trump’s rants online. “I choose Trump.”

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Trump Asks Court To Find Jack Smith In Contempt, In Further Bid To Delay January 6 Trial

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Former President Donald Trump asked the district court judge overseeing his trial for his actions leading up to January 6, 2021, to hold special counsel Jack Smith in contempt of court, according to a filing submitted on Thursday.

Trump’s filing claims that Smith, who is prosecuting the former president in a DC federal court, is in violation of a stay order put in place by Judge Tanya Chutkan after the prosecutor submitted new pretrial filings during the ongoing stay period.

The stay order was put in place after Trump appealed a previous decision by Chutkan rejecting Trump’s assertion of absolute immunity from criminal prosecution. That appeal will be heard by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on January 9. Smith’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The argument Trump puts forward in his filing is that Smith’s motions are filled with “partisan rhetoric” that “mirrors the Biden Administration’s dishonest talking points”. Since Trump is relieved of having to respond by the stay order, “the prosecutors seek to weaponise the Stay to spread political propaganda”.

Like many Trump-related legal motions, this filing is likely little more than a bid to buy time. Since his multiple indictments for trying to steal the 2020 election and illegally taking classified documents, Trump has engaged in a legal battle to delay his trials as much as possible, since he would become immune from prosecution, and even have the power to dismiss federal charges, if he were to win the 2024 election and take office again.

Former President Donald Trump asked a district court on Jan. 4 to hold special counsel Jack Smith in contempt of court.
Former President Donald Trump asked a district court on Jan. 4 to hold special counsel Jack Smith in contempt of court.

Jacquelyn Martin via Associated Press

Trump faces four charges in the trial, including conspiracy to defraud the country by lying about election fraud, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding for planning to derail the counting of electoral votes on January 6, obstruction of an official proceeding for the attempt to do so, and conspiracy against rights for his efforts to threaten people’s right to vote.

It’s one of four separate legal battles the former president is facing: two related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, one regarding his alleged mishandling of classified documents, and one relating to his 2016 hush money payment to a porn star.

The request that Smith be held in contempt revolves around the prosecutor’s continued filing of pretrial motions during the stay period where Trump is relieved of the “burdens of litigation”. That relief means that Trump need not respond to motions filed by the prosecution until the appeal is concluded.

The prosecution’s continued motions, Trump argues, place an ongoing burden of litigation on him, in contravention of the stay order.

The pretrial filings Trump accuses Smith of improperly submitting are known as motions in limine, which state what evidence or arguments should be held inadmissible during the trial. The court previously ordered Smith to file these motions by January 9, which is also the date Trump’s appeal is slated to be heard by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

Smith’s motions aim to hold that filing deadline, which Chutkan said may still stand, depending on the appeal verdict, in her stay order.

With Trump asking the court to rule that the prosecution’s motions be withdrawn, and that they be forbidden from submitting any more filings until the stay is lifted, the contempt request can be seen as Trump’s effort to tie up Smith’s motions and further delay the trial if he loses his appeal.

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Seth Meyers Unearths ‘Amazing’ Old Video Of ‘Sheepish’ Donald Trump

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Seth Meyers on Thursday contrasted the “blustery, unhinged” figure that former President Donald Trump cuts in public to the Trump “who only exists when he’s under oath” and under threat of perjury.

Trump when testifying is “suddenly much calmer, he’s more restrained, you could even say sheepish,” noted the Late Night comedian.

To prove the point, Meyers aired a video deposition from the future president in a 2016 lawsuit. In the clip, Trump answers questions in a respectful tone.

“That footage is amazing,” said Meyers. “It’s like watching the neighbourhood Rottweiler who’s always terrorising the mailman suddenly mope around in a cone.”

“Like in public he’s a raving lunatic screaming shit like, ‘Radical woke Democrats are using windmills and secret satellites to kill Christmas’ and then under oath he’s practically Emily Post,” he added.

It’s because under oath is “the only place Trump faces consequences,” explained Meyers, who later noted how the ex-POTUS’ latest outburst against a court staffer in his civil fraud trial — in violation of a gag order which banned him from doing so — saw him slapped with a $10,000 (£8,256) fine.

Watch Meyers’ full monologue here:

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US Confirms It Has Sent Artillery Previously Meant For Ukraine To Israel

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The US has confirmed that shells originally intended to aid Ukraine in its war against Russia have now been sent to Israel amid its conflict with the Palestinian militants, Hamas.

Reports that tens of thousands of artillery shells – specifically 155mm projectiles – previously earmarked for Ukraine, were being redirected to Israel started circulating last week.

And on Monday, a US senior defence official confirmed some had indeed been re-routed.

The unnamed official told journalists that “prior to the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack, some 155[mm shells] had been withdrawn from the war reserve stockpile in Israel, to replenish US stocks in Europe”.

The New York Times has previously reported that the US had been moving munitions, potentially up to 300,000 shells, from Israeli storage to Ukraine since 2022.

But, as the official noted, there’s now been a U-turn in the Pentagon, following the outbreak of war in the Middle East.

They said: “Much of that has been redirected and provided to the Israel Defence Forces for their use.”

The Pentagon had been keeping munitions in Israel as an emergency in case of war in the region or as a resource for other US allies.

The US does not formally need Israel’s consent to move such items, but local officials confirmed they had it anyway – from then-prime minister Yair Lapid’s –when looking to transport the munitions to Ukraine.

As Reuters noted in January, if such transfers had happened under current PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s watch, it may have stretched his budding relationship with Russia.

Now, munitions have been redirected back to Israel – even though Ukraine still has more than 1,000km of active frontline to fight.

Ukraine’s minister for strategic industries, Oleksandr Kamyshin, told POLITICO on Monday that the Israel-Hamas war showed the West needs to increase its arms production.

“The free world should be producing enough to protect itself. That’s why we have to produce more and better weapons to stay safe,” Kamyshin said.

Back in the US media briefing on Monday, journalists asked the Pentagon representative why weapons were going to Israel, even though the White House has regularly emphasised how much munition Ukraine needs.

The official said the US is “assessing US stocks globally and what can be made readily available to the needs of Israel as well as Ukraine”, before adding: “Also the United States can walk and chew gum at the same time.

“So we’re going to continue to ensure that Ukraine has what it needs to defend its territory. And at the same time we’re ensuring that Israel has what it needs. Two very different operational environments with different levels of need and consultation. And we’re continuing to prioritise both.”

The change follows a domestic split in US politics about just how much funding and weaponry Washington DC should continue to send to Kyiv more than 18 months after Russia first invaded.

As Nikolay Kozhanov, a consulting fellow at the Russia and Eurasia Programme of think tank Chatham House told HuffPost UK, the conflict in the Middle East works to Russia’s advantage as a means to distract the West from the Ukraine war.

The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed in his own press briefing on Tuesday that the West’s ability to keep supplying Ukraine was limited, according to Sky News.

It’s worth remembering that are some complicated international politics at play between the two wars, too.

Since the Hamas massacre on October 7 and the following war between Gaza and Israel, Ukraine has sided with Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile, Russia has reiterated its support for a Palestinian state, after years of trying to build a friendship with Israel. Moscow is openly calling for a ceasefire, too.

The Israel-Hamas war is threatening to spill into a regional conflict – a fight which began in the Gaza Strip, has already led to many deaths in West Bank – and the war in Ukraine is expected to continue for some time yet.

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Critics Bring The Receipts Over Trump’s New Claim About Sidney Powell

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Donald Trump is suddenly claiming Sidney Powell was never his attorney, but reporters and social media users were quick to jog his memory.

The former president posted on Truth Social on Sunday morning that the election-denying lawyer “WAS NOT MY ATTORNEY, AND NEVER WAS.”

The post followed Thursday’s news that Powell had reached a deal with Fulton County prosecutors handling the Georgia racketeering case against Trump and 17 others over an alleged plot to change the state’s 2020 election results.

Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanours related to intentionally interfering with an election.

In exchange for her cooperation with prosecutors, Powell must serve six years of probation, pay a fine of $6,000 (£4,940) and write an apology to Georgia residents.

Over on X (formerly Twitter), people promptly pointed out someone who contradicts Trump’s latest version of events: Trump, in 2020.

Trump announced in a tweet on November 15, 2020, that Powell had joined his “truly great” legal team, weeks after losing the election to YS President Joe Biden, as the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake noted.

Trump’s former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who led the legal charge to overturn the 2020 results, also made comments explicitly to the contrary.

At a now-infamous press conference on November 19, 2020, Giuliani introduced himself, Powell and others as members of Trump’s legal team, saying, “We’re representing President Trump and we’re representing the Trump campaign.”

Powell testified under oath before the House January 6 committee that Trump had asked her to be “special counsel to address the election issues.”

Video of that moment from her deposition was shown at one of the panel’s congressional hearings last year.

Some people, including HuffPost’s SV Dáte, also noted that if Trump claims Powell was never his attorney, then that means he was never entitled to attorney-client privilege — a tidbit that prosecutors might find useful.

See some of the other posts about Trump’s claim below:

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Robert F Kennedy Jr Is Destroying Donald Trump’s Election Chances, Poll Says

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But an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National Poll released on Tuesday offered an early prediction: Biden would beat Trump by 7 percentage points when Kennedy is factored in.

If the election were held today, Biden would snag 44% of the vote to Trump’s 37%, followed by Kennedy’s 16% with 3% undecided, according to the survey.

Kennedy, whose anti-vaccine views appeal to some conservatives, is simply siphoning off more votes from Trump than Biden.

With the political scion on the ballot, Biden loses 5 percentage points among Democrats while Trump loses 10 points among Republicans, according to the poll.

Kennedy, who has received significant air time on Fox News and other conservative outlets, has been denounced by his own family, but come November 2024, he might just end up a darling for Democrats anyway.

“Although it’s always tricky to assess the impact of a third-party candidate, right now Kennedy alters the equation in Biden’s favour,” Lee M Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, said. “What this does speak to, however, is that about one in six voters are looking for another option, especially independents.”

The poll, conducted on October 11 among 1,313 American adults, shows Biden leading Trump by 3 percentage points in a head-to-head contest.

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New Footage Shows Just How Disruptive The Republican Lawmake Kicked Out Of ‘Beetlejuice’ Was Being

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It looks like Representative Lauren Boebert (Republican, Colorado) was just blowing smoke when her team denied that she was vaping and being disruptive at a performance of the Beetlejuice musical as new video appears to catch her in the act.

She initially tried to downplay the incident, but the security footage shows what really went down.

Kyle Clark of 9News shared the highlights:

A pregnant woman who said she sat behind Boebert told the Denver Post that she asked the lawmaker ― who she didn’t recognise ― to stop vaping.

She refused, and later called the pregnant woman “a sad and miserable person.”

“These people in front of us were outrageous,” the woman, who was not named, told the newspaper. “I’ve never seen anyone act like that before.”

Boebert’s team earlier this week had claimed that the only thing she did wrong was take a photo during the performance. Boebert herself wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that she was “guilty” only of “laughing and singing too loud.”

9News also has an extended cut of the footage, which shows Boebert being disruptive at multiple points during the performance, raising her hands and being very animated even at points in the performance when everyone else was sitting calmly:

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