Good Morning DC! The Lukashenka regime endangered the lives of more than 120 passengers, including U.S. citizens, and Blinken is outraged.
Good Morning DC! It’s a rainy Monday morning in our nation’s capital. President Biden came back last night from Camp David. His schedule today seems light, with solely a visit to FEMA.
I was thinking of starting with inspiring news from the golf course, talking about Phil Mickelson’s victory at the age of 50 but, what happened in the skies in Belarus is the most important news we had over the weekend.
If you have not heard by now, Ryanair’s flight en route to Lithuania was forced, under the false claim of a bomb threat, to land in Minsk so that journalist Roman Protasevich could be arrested.
The Lukashenka regime endangered the lives of more than 120 passengers, including U.S. citizens, and Blinken is outraged. Initial reports confirmed by the State Department indicate the involvement of the Belarusian security services and the use of Belarusian military aircraft to escort the plane to land in Minsk. Protasevich’s girlfriend, a Russian citizen, Sofia Sapega has also been arrested when the aircraft landed in Minsk, although the charges are unclear.
“We are closely coordinating our response with our partners, including the EU and Lithuanian and Greek officials. Given indications the forced landing was based on false pretenses, we support the earliest possible meeting of the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization to review these events,” said Blinken.
“It is shocking that the West calls the incident in Belarusian airspace ‘shocking,’” Maria Zakharova, spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry, wrote on Facebook. She said that the internet remembers the case when the jet of the Bolivian president Morales was forced to land in Vienna amid suspicions Edward Snowden on board.
Biden, being Biden, did not comment anything on the record but worked the phones behind the scenes. Quitely.
At the request of President Biden, Blinken will travel to Jerusalem, Ramallah, Cairo, and Amman. In the Middle East, he will look at solidifying a ceasefire between Hamas and Isreal. He will meet with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, and other senior Israeli officials.
If Trump were to run in 2024, a new poll conducted by McLaughlin & Associates shows he would win.
If Donald Trump ran for President again in 2024, 82% would support him for the Republican nomination, and 83% would vote for him in the 2024 general election.
Trump only believes in polls when they have optimistic predictions about him. Otherwise, it’s fake news. His pattern is predictive, including the election fraud claim that only in his mind happened in the states he lost, but not in those he won.
Did you know? Three Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a U.S. intelligence report that could add to calls for a fuller probe of whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the lab. When Trump said it, it was labeled the right-wing conspiracy, but apparently, it’s not any longer.
Finally, we would like to wish a very happy 80th birthday to Bob Dylan!
And that’s a wrap for this Monday morning, May 24, 2021. Thanks for waking up with me. Good Morning DC will be back tomorrow to bring you the latest first.
