<Republican Wyoming Rep. Landon Brown said Saturday that former President Donald Trump has "hijacked" the GOP and that he is "unfit" to serve in office for a second term.

Speaking on CNN, Brown added that the Republican Party is currently being run by a "fringe" group of far-right conservatives. He also issued his support for fellow Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who was recently censured for serving on a House committee tasked with investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol building.

"I think what's happened here at this point is we've seen a fringe group that is on the far right of our party, has taken over our party, and they are the ones that are pushing this narrative. They've been working behind the scenes to come out and come against Liz Cheney since day one with her support of this January 6th panel," Brown said.

"The Republican Party had the opportunity to stand behind her and they left that, and unfortunately that shows too many people across this country that Trump has hijacked the Republican Party," he added.

The lawmaker is the only Wyoming House Republican who has publicly issued support for Cheney amid an ongoing divide within the GOP. Last week, the Republican National Committee (RNC) voted to censure both Cheney and Illinois Republican Adam Kinzingerfor their involvement in investigating the January 6 insurrection, as well as for their criticisms against Trump.

The censure resolution characterized the January 6 attack as "legitimate political discourse" and accused both lawmakers of "participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse, and they are both utilizing their past professed political affiliation to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power for partisan purposes."

The censure drew a strong response within the GOP, with several Republican lawmakers praising the RNC while others slammed the decision for remaining too loyal to Trump.

Brown also said that he will stand by Cheney as she faces an upcoming election this November, while adding that he will do "everything" in his power to prevent Trump from running for office again in 2024.

"President Trump has a maximum of four years more in office, and I stand with Liz Cheney that I will do everything in my power to make sure that's not happening [again] as well," he continued. "At the end of the day, what he did and the way he handled himself on January 6th, it is clear to everybody that he is unfit for office."

Trump has not yet made a formal announcement that he will run for office again in 2024, but he has repeatedly hinted at it since he left office. However according to a January poll, as many as 70 percent of Americans have indicated that they do not want the former president to run for office again.>

<A Florida security contractor fired a worker via Signal chat 10 minutes after they raised concerns about COVID-19 safety, lawsuit says

A Florida security contractor fired a worker after they raised concerns about COVID-19 safety, a lawsuit says.

The worker also raised concerns about firearm storage, said the Department of Labor, which is bringing the suit.

The DOL found the company had violated the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

A security contractor fired an employee fewer than 10 minutes after they raised concerns with supervisors about COVID-19 and firearm storage safety, a US Department of Labor (DOL) lawsuit says.

The DOL says in the suit, filed Monday, that Gainesville, Florida-based VRP Group, doing business as Regius Investigations and Protective Services, illegally terminated the worker in August 2020.

Employees at companies including Amazon, GameStop, and Instacart have complained about unsafe working conditions during the pandemic, including a lack of personal protective equipment, hazard pay, and clear COVID-19 safety policies. Concerns about health and safety are one of several factors driving workers out of customer-facing roles in favor of remote work, which is fuelling record quit rates.

The Regius worker was part of a group of employees temporarily relocated in or around Port Arthur, Texas, in August 2020, to supply security services to Entergy Texas, a power generation company, in response to hurricanes Laura and Marco, the DOL lawsuit says. The workers were first put up in a hotel before being moved to temporary housing, the suit says.

The worker raised concerns about the relocation in a group chat with supervisors on encrypted-messaging app Signal, citing concerns about COVID-19 policies and secure firearm storage, the lawsuit says. It says the relocated Reguis staff, including the since-fired employee, carried firearms as part of their employment.

VRP Group fired the worker in the Signal chat "less than ten minutes after his first text asking about the COVID-19 protocols," the DOL says in the lawsuit.

The worker filed a retaliation complaint with the DOL's Occupational Safety and Health Administration in September 2020. The DOL found that VRP Group had violated the Act by terminating the employee for making a health and safety complaint.

The DOL filed a civil suit Monday, asking a court to order VRP Group to pay the worker damages for wages and benefits lost due to their termination, as well as compensatory damages for emotional pain and distress, among other things.

VRP Group did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, which was made outside regular working hours.

Eric S. Harbin, OSHA regional administrator for Dallas, said in a press release: "Employers who retaliate against workers who raise valid safety concerns create an unsafe work environment for all of their workers. In addition to violating federal law, such coercive behavior can have a chilling effect on workers that may prevent them from reporting issues or conditions that put their health and well-being, and others – including their co-workers – at risk.">

<Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mocks Fox News analyst after he says Canadian government could have arrested Martin Luther King Jr.

"Freedom Convoy" truckers in Canada are protesting COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared a state of emergency.

Fox News legal contributor Jonathan Turley compared the move to the American Civil Rights movement.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mocked a Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley after he said that the Canadian government's clampdown on the truckers protesting vaccine mandates meant, "They could have arrested Martin Luther King" — not mentioning that during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, King was arrested more than two dozen times.

"Fox News analysts already reaping the benefits of banning books, I see," she tweeted Tuesday, apparently referencing the recent uptick in efforts to ban books around race and sexuality.

Turley's comments about the Canadian truckers protesting vaccine mandates and other COVID-19 mitigation measures were made on Tuesday on Fox News's "Your World."

"And so the troubling aspect of what is coming out of the prime minister's office is that by this rationale, they could have cracked down on the civil rights movement. They could have arrested Martin Luther King," Turley said, calling the Canadian government's response to the protests "excessive."

Turley's argument left out that Martin Luther King, Jr. — who penned the famed "Letter from Birmingham Jail" — was arrested more than two dozen times throughout his life, according to the King Center. Many of those arrests were during acts of civil disobedience when Black Americans were protesting segregation and calling for equal rights.

Turley also referenced "good trouble," a quote from the late civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis. On March 7, 1965 Lewis's skull was fractured by police while he and hundreds of others were protesting against police brutality and calling for voting rights for Black Americans in Selma on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on what came to be known as "Bloody Sunday."

After receiving widespread criticism online, Turley tweeted, "Not to feed the trolls, but I never said that Dr. King was not arrested."

"The point is how such protests would be treated today under the emergency powers being used by the Trudeau government," Turley added. "The concern remains the free speech implications over the emergency powers."

Fox News did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

This week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared a national emergency over the "Freedom Convoy" truckers that have disrupted the country, stopped up city streets, and even delayed international trade for more than two weeks in protest of COVID-19 vaccine mandates and other pandemic-related measures.

<Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is reportedly spearheading a behind-the-scenes push to counter former President Donald Trump’s influence over the midterm elections. But while McConnell might win some battles, it’s clear that he’s losing the war.

According to a new report from The New York Times, the Kentucky Republican and some of his allies are “quietly” moving to “thwart Trump” with influence campaigns by party bigwigs and offers of millions of dollars in support for a Senate run, emboldened in part by signs that Trump is losing some traction in the polls. According to the Times, “It’s all aimed at recapturing the Senate majority, but the election also represents what could be Republicans’ last chance to reverse the spread of Trumpism before it fully consumes their party.”

The fact that McConnell is seeking to wage this campaign covertly already puts him at a disadvantage.

If we are to grant that last point — that McConnell sincerely finds some tenets of Trumpism objectionable on an ideological level — then he has little reason for optimism about his plan.

As the Times reports, a number of McConnell’s preferred candidates to represent the establishment GOP wing are “declining to subject themselves to Mr. Trump’s wrath all for the chance to head to a bitterly divided Washington.” But even if McConnell is able to recruit some anti-Trump (or at least non-Trumpian) candidates to run for Senate, it’s unclear how he could possibly be sanguine about the future beyond 2022.

The fact that McConnell is seeking to wage this campaign covertly already puts him at a disadvantage. If McConnell lacks the fortitude to rebut Trump’s ideological project publicly and forcefully, then how can he steer the direction of the party? Operating quietly is a posture of fear — and gives the advantage to the voices in the party who are loudest. Simply put, if the establishment GOP is actively aligning itself with Trumpism or is remaining silent on Trumpism — which it mostly is — then potential candidates are going to make calculations about the viability and desirability of a run based on that political climate. McConnell’s preference for not starting open flame wars with Trump makes some sense on a short-term tactical level, but it also ensures that the party is winnowing down the potential candidate pool for those who don't align with the anti-establishment wing of the party.

Perhaps just as importantly, McConnell's scrambling to capitalize on Trump apparently losing some of his grip on the party requires a kind of willful delusion about the way Trump has already restructured it. It’s true that Trump has made some strategic errors in backing candidates that his base dislikes and that there is some appetite for other 2024 presidential contenders among Republicans. But he’s still the most popular figure in the party and, according to a recent CNN poll, half of Republicans still want their party to nominate Trump for president again. Among Republicans who don’t want to see him on the ballot, most aren't specifically opposed to seeing him become president again. Rather, they express, among other things, concerns about his electability. Notably, that poll showed only one serious potential challenger to Trump: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose political lane amounts to out-Trumping Trump. DeSantis mimics the former president’s political style and has even nudged Trump to become quieter about vaccines. In other words, Trump’s biggest 2024 threat is a politician who’s famous for turbo-charging his own political approach.

Other signs that Trump has changed the party also abound, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas begging for Tucker Carlson’s forgiveness for deeming the Jan. 6 rioters terrorists. Cruz is the embodiment of political ambition — and has openly signaled interest in a 2024 run — and his bending the knee before Trump’s most powerful media ally is a neat summary of how Trump’s influence over the party is trending.

McConnell might win some of the Senate recruitment battles against Trump, whose power always lies in political culture rather than institutional competence or strategy. But the idea that that alone can act as a defense against the spread of Trumpism is fantasy.>

<....The fight over the truth about Trump's wealth and business operations was always going to become a family affair. As soon as they became adults, Trump made his children top executives. Nestled behind the walls of secrecy granted to privately held firms, they were trusted to do business his way, which meant they polished the image of wealth and success that was central to his identity. But this effort required that they know exactly how Trump's world runs, which may explain why they have fought so hard to avoid questioning.

At the heart of this controversy is what Trump termed the "truthful hyperbole" he employed to promote himself and his businesses. Prime examples were seen by viewers of his TV show, "The Apprentice." The first sentence uttered in the pilot for the show included his false claim that "I'm the largest real estate developer in New York." After Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen said the hype became fraud in Trump's financial claims, investigators began their pursuit of the truth.

If their appeals fail and the Trumps are deposed, the prosecutors will, for the first time, have three chances to find the loose threads that could unravel the Trump mystique. Indeed, it was Trump's unproven claims to enormous wealth and success that powered his fame and rise to the presidency. Along the way, his children dutifully echoed his claims. They couldn't do this without knowing the truth both the New York attorney general and Manhattan district attorney are trying to discover.

The prosecutors' main questions revolve around the financial statements the Trump Organization submitted to lenders, insurers, tax authorities and others. Ten years' worth of these statements were repudiated by the accounting firm that created them with data provided by Trump. In a letter recently made public, MazarsUSA, the accounting firm, warned Trump "to no longer rely upon those financial statements." The company also severed its relationship with the organization. MazarsUSA's announcement could affect the organization's loans, contracts, insurance policies and tax status.

Among the discrepancies uncovered by investigators have been Trump's claim his New York City residence is almost triple its actual size and an estate he owns in the suburbs includes seven mansions that have not been built. Since Trump has personally guaranteed more than $400 million in debt held by his companies, the value of these assets is vitally important.

The fallout from MazarsUSA action includes a Congressional committee's call for the government to consider terminating the lease that allows him to operate a hotel in a former Washington post office. This call could disrupt Trump's deal to sell the lease for $370 million. "No one should be rewarded for providing false or misleading information to the federal government or for seeking to profit off the presidency," the committee said. The possible disruption of the hotel deal is just one example of the peril created as investigators bear down on Trump. As Cohen put it in an interview with the Guardian, "The house of Trump is crumbling."

In response to the judge's decision to require the Trumps to testify, the former president released a statement that included claims of his financial condition. In it, he offers just four numbers including assets of more than $5.7 billion and, if one does some math, liabilities of more than $500 million. With no specifics, Trump appears to ask others to accept his claims on faith and focus more on the statement's lengthy cry of victimhood including the charge prosecutors devoted "historic amounts of time, energy and money trying to `get Trump.'"....>

<Justice Amy Coney Barrett delivered a speech this week that echoed decades of conservative talking points about the proper, limited role of judges in a democracy. But that restrained vision is completely divorced from Barrett’s own conduct as a conservative justice — not to mention that of the Republican majority she consistently votes with.

Her remarks, which were offered at an academic symposium hosted by Notre Dame Law School, were grounded in the rhetoric of judicial restraint that Republican politicians have used to talk about the proper role of the courts at least as far back as Richard Nixon.

The Court’s youngest justice drew a distinction between “pragmatists,” judges who “tend to favor broader judicial discretion,” and “formalists,” who “tend to seek constraints on judicial discretion” and “favor methods of constitutional interpretation that demand close adherence to the constitutional text, and to history and tradition.” She placed herself in the latter camp.

As a justice, however, Barrett has behaved as an unapologetic pragmatist. Along with the Court’s other Republican appointees, Barrett supports flexible legal doctrines that give her Court maximal discretion to veto federal regulations that a majority of the justices disagree with — especially regulations promoting public health or protecting the environment. And she’s joined her fellow Republican justices in imposing novel limits on the Voting Rights Act that appear nowhere in the law’s text.

The rhetoric of judicial restraint is potent, so it is understandable why Barrett wants to tap into that potency. Formalist rhetoric enables the justices to claim that they didn’t roll back voting rights or strike down a key prong of President Joe Biden’s efforts to promote vaccination because they prefer weaker voting laws and a flaccid public health system — they simply did what the law requires.

And Barrett is hardly the only justice to engage in such rhetoric. Justice Neil Gorsuch recently published an entire book claiming that judges should rely almost exclusively on the text of a statute or constitutional provision while interpreting it. Justice Clarence Thomas frequently calls for radical shifts in the law, claiming they are necessary to restore the “original understanding” of the Constitution. Even Justice Samuel Alito, the Court’s most partisan justice, recently attributed his new, entirely atextual limits on the Voting Rights Act to having taken “a fresh look at the statutory text.”

The problem with this rhetoric, in short, is that it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the current Supreme Court’s actual behavior....>

<....An interesting footnote in the sentencing memorandum suggests Johnson may have wished to turn his notoriety into a fundraising efforts for his own personal causes:

Right or wrong, Adam has received significant attention from the media. To ensure that he does not profit from his actions on January 6, 2021, Adam has agreed to turnover to the United States any compensation he receives for writing or speaking about the incident. Adam suggested donating the profits to a charity like the Wounded Warriors or Tunnel to Towers but the idea was unworkable.

Elsewhere, the document says Johnson “declined numerous invitations for personal appearance[s]” to focus on family matters. It also says Johnson’s family received death threats, his wife’s medical practice “suffered financially,” and that longtime friends “will no longer speak to him or his family.” It further argues that Johnson shoulders a “[l]esser [d]egree of [c]ulpability than [o]thers.”

“Unfortunately, he received considerable attention simply because the lectern belonged to Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi,” the defense document suggests. “Arguably, if he latched onto some other piece of government furniture for his photo opportunity jail time would not even be a consideration.”

Federal prosecutors wrote otherwise. They’re asking for 90 days in jail, one year of supervised release, a $5,000 fine, $500 in restitution, and 60 hours of community service.

A screen shot of Adam Johnson’s social media posts is contained within court papers compiled by the FBI and filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

While noting that Johnson ultimately accepted responsibility for his actions and “did not personally engage in violence during the riot,” prosecutors argued that “Johnson encouraged his fellow rioters to engage in property destruction and was part of a mob that pushed its way past Capitol police officers to get closer to the House Chamber.”

“As with scores of other defendants, Johnson’s conduct on January 6th took place within the context of a violent riot that relied on numbers to overwhelm law enforcement, breach the Capitol, and disrupt congressional proceedings integral to the peaceful transfer of power,” prosecutors continued. “But for his actions alongside so many others, the breach of the Capitol likely would never have happened.”

“In light of Johnson’s participation in a riot that succeeded in halting the certification of the 2020 election, his encouragement of violent conduct, his attempt to enter the Speaker’s office, and the need to deter future political violence, a jail sentence is both necessary and appropriate in this case,” they concluded....>

<Fiona Hill doesn't know whether President Joe Biden can lead Western allies to ward off Russia's threat to Ukraine. But unlike his predecessor, he's trying.

Hill has a special vantage point on this slow-rolling crisis that US officials say could bring war in Europe at any moment. As a White House national security aide, she advised then-President Donald Trump on Russia and Ukraine -- and became a star witness in impeachment proceedings that resulted from his conduct.

Now, outside the government as a Brookings Institution senior fellow, she's among the Russia specialists Biden has consulted as he revives foreign policy priorities shared by every president since World War II except Trump.

After Trump derided and weakened the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Biden has rallied NATO on Ukraine's behalf.

After Trump pressured Russia's beleaguered neighbor for his personal benefit, Biden has steeled Americans for shared sacrifice in defense of Ukraine's right of self-determination.

After Trump deferred to Russian President Vladimir Putin over the US government's own intelligence agencies, Biden has deployed those agencies' tradecraft in a multi-pronged transatlantic effort to deter Russian aggression.

"You couldn't get a sharper contrast," Hill observed in an interview.

For the moment, at least, she sees Biden's approach paying some dividends.

As described in her recent memoir, There Is Nothing For You Here, Hill followed an unusual path to becoming one of America's leading experts on Russia. Raised in a working-class family in Britain, she parlayed academic scholarships into advanced degrees from Harvard and an analyst's job at the National Intelligence Council beginning in 2006 during President George W. Bush's administration.

Witnessing Britain's industrial decline helped her understand the populist appeals Trump rode to the White House. But the celebrity real-estate developer's handling of foreign policy in the Oval Office -- driven not by expertise or the national interest but by his personal experiences, impulses and interests -- was like nothing Hill or her national security colleagues had ever seen.

"There's no Team America for Trump," Hill recalled. "Not once did I see him do anything to put America first. Not once. Not for a single second."....>

The rest to come.

<....It showed in Trump's praise for the authoritarian leader of Russia, an American adversary that had boosted his finances as a business executive. It showed in his reluctance to embrace America's mutual defense commitments to European allies, which for decades have constrained Russian behavior; instead, Trump treated NATO as what Hill called a "protection racket."

Most notoriously, it showed in Trump's attempt to squeeze Ukraine's President for manufactured dirt on Biden to help his 2020 election campaign. He held up American military aid as a political lever as Ukraine faced the long-running Russian military threat that now has the entire world on edge.

"All this did was say to Russia that Ukraine was a playground," Hill said.

At home, Trump softened Republicans' once-hawkish approach to Russia. Today, the leading Fox News hosts and other conservative voices -- "the ultimate stooges," as Hill calls them -- buttress Russian arguments as armed conflict looms.

Yet even friendly foreign counterparts found limitations in Trump's scattershot style, which for Hill evokes the old saw about "playing chess with a pigeon." Russia's bid to upend the post-Cold War security order in Europe, beginning in 2008 with its invasion of Georgia and continuing with its 2014 seizure of Crimea -- requires a steadier negotiating partner.

"Ultimately Putin wants some kind of deal," Hill said. "They think Biden is the kind of president who could actually make a deal. Trump never could."

So far, Biden has held NATO allies together in rejecting Russia's core demands, bolstering their forces in Europe and threatening punishing sanctions even though they guarantee domestic economic blowback. Steeped in decades of bipartisan foreign policy consensus, the Democratic President has also drawn support from top Republicans such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who have shunned Trump's embrace of Putin.

That demonstration of resolve has at minimum made Putin stop and think. Biden has warned for weeks that Russia could launch a new invasion of Ukraine at any time. It hasn't yet.

"They might have thought we were going to crumble, and we didn't," said Hill, who became an American citizen twenty years ago. "It might have deterred a full-scale invasion. Now (Putin) is basically recalibrating, recalculating."

But durable success for Biden and European allies will depend on staying power. Even if Russian tanks don't roll across the border, Hill envisions an extended "boa constrictor" siege in which Putin applies escalating pressure in hopes of bending Ukraine to Russia's will.

<Protestors in Ohio rallied outside of GOP Representative Jim Jordan's local office, urging the secretary of state to remove him from the ballot and prevent him from seeking another term in Congress.

Jordan, a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump, has received substantial backlash from Democrats, and some Republicans, over his support for Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. The Ohio Republican spoke with the former president on the phone multiple times on January 6, 2021—when pro-Trump rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol.

Although Jordan previously suggested that he only spoke to Trump after the riot began, phone records first reported by CNN in early February showed that the congressman talked to Trump for about 10 minutes on the morning of January 6 before the assault against the federal legislative building. He also forwarded a controversial text message before that day, which laid out a strategy to overturn President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory.

Hometown Stations (WLIO) in Lima, Ohio, reported on Saturday that Democratic demonstrators gathered outside Jordan's office and demanded he be removed from the ballot over his actions related to January 6. They argued that Ohio's Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, can remove the GOP congressman from the ballot—citing the 14th Amendment, Section 3.

"Frank LaRose can disqualify him from being on the ballot," Taft Mangas, an organizer of the anti-Jordan rally, told the local news channel. "He needs to take a look at this and do what is right and make sure that the people that are running for office are actually qualified to run for office. That they are legitimately allowed to run for office."

A spokesperson for Jordan responded sarcastically to the protesters demands. "Nothing says Democracy like keeping someone's name off the ballot," he told Newsweek.

The protestors held signs with messages including, "Stop the Big Lie" and "Never Forget Jan. 6." Some also held posters laying out the 14th Amendment and their argument that Jordan should be blocked from running for office again.

Rob Nichols, press secretary for LaRose, told Newsweek: "The Secretary has no legal authority to do that, and these people should know that."

The 14th Amendment, Section 3 states:

"No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."

Trump and Jordan critics routinely refer to the events of January 6 as an "insurrection." Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, used that term in recent remarks about the Capitol attack as well.

"We all were here. We saw what happened. It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election, from one administration to the next. That's what it was," the top Senate Republican told reporters earlier this month.

After news broke of Jordan's 10-minute phone call with Trump ahead of the violent Capitol assault, some Democrats quickly suggested he was hiding something. They pointed out that he previously suggested he spoke with the then president after the attack.

".@Jim_Jordan, this report directly contradicts what you said before the Rules Committee. What are you trying to hide? It's past time for you to go before the @January6thCmte and speak honestly about what happened that awful day," Representative Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, tweeted on February 4.

Russell Dye, Jordan's communications director, rejected McGovern's assessment.

"McGovern's statement is straight from the Select Committee's dirty playbook of leaking and misleading information, because Mr. Jordan told McGovern's committee that he may have spoken to President Trump on the morning of January 6th but didn't remember for sure," Dye told Newsweek at the time.

Newsweek reached out to the Ohio Democratic Party for comment, but did not immediately receive a response.

This article was updated with comment from spokespeople for Jordan and LaRose>

<....Trump’s full statement:

Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America

My long-term accounting firm didn’t leave me for any other reason than they were harassed, abused, and frightened by DA’s and AG’s that for years have been threatening them with indictment and ruination. They were “broken” by these Radical Left racist prosecutors, and couldn’t take it anymore. Even the letter they sent stated, “Mazars performed its work in accordance with professional standards. A subsequent review of those work papers confirms this.” Further, their disclaimer clause in the financial statements has for years stated much the same.

My company is incredible with some of the greatest assets in the world and very low debt. Also, we’re loaded with cash. The Fake News Media hates talking about it!>

His ruination is drawing ever nearer.

Hahahahaha!

<Candace Owens in a tweet Sunday said the US should deploy troops to Canada's trucker protests. Troops were needed "to deal with the tyrannical reign of Justin Trudeau Castro," she said. Populists like Owens have sought to grow their audiences by stirring support for the truckers. Right-wing provocateur Candace Owens drew criticism Sunday for saying that the US should invade Canada in response to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's crackdown on the trucker protests there.

"STOP talking about Russia. Send American troops to Canada to deal with the tyrannical reign of Justin Trudeau Castro," wrote Owens, a supporter of Donald Trump known for stirring controversy online.

"He has fundamentally declared himself dictator and is waging war on innocent Canadian protesters and those who have supported them financially," she wrote of Trudeau.

Some critics responded with mockery.

"One of the things I love about this dumb person is how literally no one of importance ever listens to her as she screams into the void," wrote Ben Domenech, a conservative commentator and the founder of The Federalist online magazine.

However Joe Walsh, a radio host and anti-Trump Republican, said that her views shouldn't be so quickly dismissed.

"Candace Owens isn't fringe," he tweeted. "If there's one takeaway from everything I say, it would be this: Candace Owens is not fringe, she's very much mainstream GOP base these days. And that's scary."

Her comments echo those of other right-wing populists in the US, including Fox News personalities and former President Donald Trump. They have spoken out in support of the truckers in Canada who've been protesting against a mandate requiring haulage workers making frequent cross-border trips to get vaccinated against COVID.

The protests have been hailed as a stand against government overreach by Republicans, who've stirred support for the truckers and used the protests as a fund-raising cause.

They've attacked a crackdown on the protests by Trudeau, who has sought to freeze their funding and invoked emergency powers to restore order.

At the same time, influencers like Owens have spoken out in support of Vladimir Putin's Russia as it menaces Ukraine with invasion.

They have sought to lay the blame for Russian aggression with NATO, and opposed US involvement in the crisis.>

<Marjorie Taylor Greene insinuated that fellow congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not "smart" because she worked as a bartender before moving into politics—the latest jab in a long-running feud between the Georgia Republican and the New York Democrat.

Speaking at an America First rally in support of Texas GOP congressional primary candidate Christian Collins, Greene singled out Ocasio-Cortez while criticizing proposals that form part of the Democrats' Green New Deal, which Ocasio-Cortez has strongly supported.

Addressing the crowd at Grace Woodlands church in Montgomery County, Texas, Greene questioned where the power will come from to source President Joe Biden's ambitious plans to build 500,000 charging stations for electric vehicles across the country as part of a drive to move the auto industry away from fossil fuel.

"Where is that energy going to be created? Y'all, solar and wind," Greene said in a mocking tone.

"Come on, AOC is so much smarter than all of us, she was a bartender," Greene said, prompting laughter and cheers from the crowd.

"You silly conservative Republicans, you probably have small businesses. And things like that. Shame on you independent people that know how to balance a checkbook. Everyone in Congress knows you don't balance a checkbook, you spend as much money as possible and you just keep printing it."

A clip of Greene's comments was shared online by the Patriot Takes Twitter account, where it has since been viewed more than 180,000 times.

Earlier this month, Ocasio-Cortez appeared to question Greene's intelligence after she mistakenly referred to Capitol Police as being like the cold soup "gazpacho" instead of the Gestapo, the secret police of Nazi Germany, while discussing disputed claims that officers were "spying" on GOP lawmakers.

"At least she leads by example. She clearly banned all books from her house years ago," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on February 9.

Greene's remarks in Texas were not the first time that Ocasio-Cortez's past life as a New York bartender has been brought up in verbal sparring between the pair.

In May 2021, Ocasio-Cortez described Greene as the type of person she "threw out of bars all the time" while discussing an apparent confrontation between the pair outside the House chamber.

Greene is alleged to have yelled at Ocasio-Cortez that she supported Antifa and Black Lives Matter, calling them "terrorist groups", before describing her as a "chicken" who "doesn't want to debate the Green New Deal" after she walked away from her.

"I used to work as a bartender. These are the kinds of people that I threw out of bars all the time," Ocasio-Cortez told reporters following the incident.

In a tweet responding to the remarks, Greene suggested Ocasio-Cortez has "never thrown anyone out of a bar" and that she was "too scared to talk to anyone" before again attacking the Green New Deal.

Greene added: "You're too weak & afraid to debate me about your own socialist policy that would plunge your own constituents into poverty. You only know how to hide and play victim."

Ocasio-Cortez has been contacted for comment.>

<...Among the many threats he issued in his declaration of war, the most chilling was reserved not for Ukraine but for the “outside forces” who might come to its defense, a thinly veiled reference to Kyiv’s allies in the U.S. and Europe. Addressing them toward the end of his speech, Putin said: “Anyone who tries to get in our way, let alone tries to threaten us and our people, should know that Russia’s answer will be immediate, and it will lead to consequences of the sort that you have not faced ever in your history.”...>.

<What I see on the faces and hear in the voices of so many of the people around me is sheer disbelief about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and a brutal war in Europe: Aren’t we supposed to be past this? Didn’t history move on? The Wall came down, the Cold War ended, and democratic liberalism was the wave of the future, which wouldn’t be so kind to strongmen like Vladimir Putin.

Well, Putin didn’t get the message. Nor did plenty of others around the world. Our notions about history were innocent and disregarded most of it. They also depended on a solipsistic projection of Western — and, especially American — culture and beliefs onto nations that share neither.

I don’t know if it’s a boomer thing, a modern thing, an elite thing or some other thing, but in my lifetime, in this country, among many of my generational peers, there has been a sense that people had learned particular lessons and were evolving past extremes of pettiness and barbarism, certainly in the corners of the globe deemed more enlightened.

In Europe, so devastated and so educated by World War II, sovereign nations wouldn’t be invaded just because their neighbors were mightier, meaner and more rapacious. That was a grandiosity and folly of the past — before the European Union and before all of our “advances,” a word we’ve used so frequently and clung to so tightly, as if the accretion of knowledge and the epiphanies of science were guarantors, or at least harbingers, of affluence and peace.

This perspective wasn’t just overly optimistic about history’s arc. It was blind to the present — to the unabated factionalism in the Middle East, to the blood spilled on borders all around the world, to the enduring and enduringly potent strains of territorialism and tribalism, to human nature. We are creatures of magnificent grace, capable of extraordinary altruism and empathy, and I usually choose to focus on that. But we are also acquisitive, aggressive, envious, suspicious. Look no further than the theaters of political warfare here in the United States — exemplar and tribune of the West — for evidence aplenty of that.

Knowledge is no antidote to the most destructive human qualities. It’s no vaccine. To wit: vaccines. As my Times colleague Bret Stephens recently noted about conspiracy-minded Americans of the current moment: “Here we are with a vaccine that can save you from dying or going to the hospital with Covid, and tens of millions of people refuse to help themselves by taking it. Which goes to prove that no pandemic is deadlier than stupidity.”

We reach fresh zeniths of sophistication; we tumble into the same old savagery. We devise technologies to usher us into a new information age; they become tools of misinformation. Three steps forward, two steps back, because, as my colleague David Brooks wrote last week, we’ve been cavalier about the constant hard work of progress and inadequately mindful of the full, messy spectrum of human tendencies. It’s not just that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it; it’s that the past repeats itself, not precisely but to a significant degree, because the psychologies that shaped it survive it.

I was struck by a passage in Madeleine Albright’s excellent guest essay yesterday about Putin and her first impressions when, as the U.S. secretary of state, she met him in 2000. In the notes that she wrote down of their encounter, she remarked not only that he was “small and pale” but also that he was “embarrassed by what happened to his country and determined to restore its greatness.”

He has stewed in that embarrassment ever since. He has grown more intent and less inhibited. And now the small and pale man has struck. He announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine today. He ordered and commenced a sweeping invasion by land, air and sea. By late this morning there were already reports of dozens of Ukrainian casualties, and there were explosions not just near the Russian border but also in cities all across the country, whose citizens find themselves at the mercy of Putin’s megalomania.

Embarrassment, vanity, viciousness: History never moves on or gets past these forces, which drove invasions and conquests in centuries past and will drive invasions and conquests in years to come. There should be no great shock about Russia’s audacious attack on Ukraine — only profound sadness and painstaking thought about what to do and what’s to come.>

<Donald Trump said Russia's invasion of Ukraine wouldn't have happened if he were still president.

Trump was impeached in 2019 after freezing nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine. He previously said Crimea was part of Russia and praised Vladimir Putin's actions as "genius."

Former US President Donald Trump, who was impeached for withholding nearly $400 million in military aid from Ukraine, said the country's current crisis "would never have happened" if he were still in office.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine early Thursday, with Russian troops swarming into the country from its northern, eastern, and southern borders. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a Thursday-evening address that 137 Ukrainians had died and 306 had been wounded as a result of the invasion.

Trump released a statement Thursday, saying, "If I were in Office, this deadly Ukraine situation would never have happened!"

Trump earlier this week praised Putin's justification for invading Ukraine as "genius" and "savvy."

"I went in yesterday, and there was a television screen, and I said, 'This is genius.' Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that's wonderful," Trump said when asked about the news. "I said, 'How smart is that?' And he's going to go in and be a peacekeeper."

His comments stood in contrast to those of US officials, who warned that Putin's recognition of two Kremlin-backed separatist regions in Ukraine was part of an effort to create a false pretext and invade the country.

Trump was impeached in 2019 on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The articles of impeachment were related, in part, to Trump's efforts to strong-arm Zelensky into launching politically motivated investigations against the Bidens ahead of the 2020 election and withholding vital military aid while doing so.

The hold on the security assistance was lifted after Politico reported on Trump's actions and House Democrats launched an investigation into the matter.

In 2018, Trump again shocked American allies by eschewing years of US foreign policy and telling G7 leaders that the territory of Crimea was part of Russia. His remarks were especially jarring to the leaders of other member states given that it was Russia's decision to annex Crimea in 2014 that led to its expulsion from the G8.

But Trump told reporters before that year's G7 summit that he believed Russia should be admitted back into the alliance, and he also reportedly wondered aloud at the summit why world leaders sided with Ukraine over Russia.

Before Trump's statement Thursday, he made similar remarks during a Fox News interview. Just as the Russian offensive in Ukraine was beginning to unfold, he blamed the situation on the 2020 US election, which he called "rigged."

"Well, what went wrong was a rigged election and what went wrong is a candidate that shouldn't be there and a man that has no concept of what he's doing," Trump said on Fox News, adding that the invasion "never would have happened with us — had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened.">

<On stage in a hotel ballroom glowing red, white and blue, Ron DeSantis was recalling his days in Congress and a book he wrote about America’s troubles. It was “read by about a dozen people,” the Florida governor said with rare self-deprecation.

DeSantis then told a gathering of grassroots conservatives on Thursday: “I look back at that time, it almost seems a little quaint to me because the threats we face to freedom, the threats we face to a just society, are much more pervasive than they were just 10 years ago.”

Many Americans across the political spectrum would agree that something has gone terribly wrong over the past decade. Liberals might point to deepening inequality, a rise of white nationalism and an existential threat to democracy from the authoritarian right.

But DeSantis and fellow travellers at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, see themselves not as dismantlers of democracy but its saviours. In their worldview, the true danger comes not from former president Donald Trump’s “big lie” of a stolen election but a radical left minority imposing socialism, cancel culture and “woke” ideology on the majority.

Welcome to a parallel universe where it is common cause that Trump was spied on by rival Hillary Clinton, the January 6 insurrection was a heroic stand by patriots, and names such as Anthony Fauci, Justin Trudeau and Black Lives Matter are guaranteed to elicit loud boos.

It is a universe where Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association, an organisation accused of illegally diverting tens of millions of dollars for lavish personal trips, and which tried and failed to file for bankruptcy, can still be feted when he boasts of a record 5.4 million first-time gun buyers last year.

And it is universe where Trump still reigns supreme, his face emblazoned on toy money and Superman images, his name stitched into souvenir badges, hats, hammocks and T-shirts that proclaim “Trump 2024”. Bids for a 5x5in painting by Michael Shellis depicting the former president kissing the Stars and Stripes opened at $3,000.

The big lie lives on

Trump is due to be the headline speaker at CPAC on Saturday night. A familiar line at his recent campaign rallies has been, “I am not the one trying to undermine American democracy. I’m the one who is trying to save it.” It is an argument that many at CPAC seem to sincerely believe, based on three justifications.

First, they amplify Trump’s baseless claim of widespread election rigging. Interviews with CPAC attendees found it is taken as gospel. For example, Tom Freeman, 66, a retailer from Jupiter, Florida, insisted: “The fraud in 2020 is real, it’s huge, it’s millions of fraudulent votes. Democracy in the United States is under assault due to illegal immigration and voter fraud and manipulation that’s done on a systemic level.”

The assertion, rejected by election officials and courts, is used to justify sweeping voter suppression laws in Republican-led states.

Josh Mandel, an aggressively pro-Trump candidate for the US Senate in Ohio, won cheers when he told the CPAC audience: “We have Democrats who think it’s OK to cheat in elections, and I would submit to you that one of the most important fights of our day is to stop the cheating from the left... I want to say it very clearly and very directly. I believe this election was stolen from Donald J Trump.”

Mandel described Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, Republican members of a House of Representative select committee investigating the January 6 riot, as “traitors”, adding: “We should abolish the January commission and replace it with a November 3 commission” – a reference to the date of the 2020 election.....>

More on the way....

<....An parallel view of the Capitol attack

Rewriting the history of the insurrection is the second component of this inverted universe. At a CPAC session on Friday entitled, “The Truth about January 6th”, Julie Kelly, author of a book on the subject, accused the government of persecuting innocent demonstrators and hiding 14,000 hours of surveillance video. “We deserve to know how many FBI undercover agents and informants were involved,” she said, airing another bogus conspiracy theory.

Kelly added that if Republicans gain control of the House, they should “turn the January 6 committee 180 degrees” to investigate how Democrats and the justice department “have abused their power to punish Trump supporters to criminalise political dissent because that’s not what this country is about”.

The comments earned enthusiastic applause at CPAC, where few attendees share the conventional view of January 6 as a seditious assault on democracy. They are more likely to say it was morally justified, or that a few protesters went too far, or that it was a false flag operation by the FBI intended to discredit Trump supporters.

Lisa Forsyth, 54, from Tampa, Florida, said she was in Washington that day but did not go inside the Capitol building. “To see the amount of bad press for just being there is out of line. Some of us didn’t do anything wrong but we’re lumped in with the infiltrators. There’s video footage of these people changing into Trump gear from their black stuff. There’s video footage out there but it’s a total denial.”

Asked if she feels democracy is under threat, Forsyth, who is retired from a family pharmaceutical company, replied: “No, I wouldn’t use that phrase, I’m sorry, but that’s a line that I hear the liberals use all the time and I’m obviously not one of them. Our freedom is definitely under threat.”

<....Defending America from ‘wokeness’

Third, the movement goes on the offensive by accusing Democrats of being the true anti-democratic party. This narrative holds that an unelected, leftist minority controls schools and universities, the mainstream media and the big tech giants of Silicon Valley, pushing politically correct “wokeness” on transgender, race and other cultural issues.

It therefore follows that the conservative rank and file is fighting a righteous cause in defence of the “real America”. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas told CPAC: “We are taking this country back from the lunatic socialist left that is trying to destroy our freedom.”

Warning that major institutions have become infected with the “woke virus”, DeSantis urged courage. “We have an opportunity to make 2020 to the year that America fought back. We’re going to lead the charge here in Florida but we need people all over the country to be willing to put on that full armour of God, to stand firm against the left’s schemes.”

Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, added: “There is no threat greater to the United States than that which emanates inside our republic, emanates inside our school system. If we do not teach our children, the next generation, that we are not a racist nation, then surely the bad guys will come to be right about an America in decline.”

Such speeches cast the struggle in heroic terms so that criticism is only likely to harden the siege mentality and resolve of the foot soldiers. Those wandering the corridors of CPAC seemed to share Joe Biden’s view that a struggle for the soul of America is under way – but were convinced that the president is on the wrong side.

Lauren Lamp, 22, who works in corporate bankruptcy in New York, said: “Clearly, we can see from the past year Biden is a larger threat than Trump ever was. Trump was trying to restore the American dream. Biden: nobody knows what he’s doing because he does not address the American people. We don’t even know if it’s him working behind the scenes.”

Sam Leiter, 56, insisted that democracy is under threat from cancel culture. “You can’t say what you want. There’s no free speech. If you don’t agree with the radical left you lose your job, you can get tarred and feathered, smeared. They’ll go after you and destroy you.”

But what does Leiter make of the argument that Trump’s increasingly authoritarian Republican party is the threat to democracy? “It’s a classic case in psychology of projection,” said the speech therapist from Baltimore, Maryland. “Project on your spouse or some other person or people what you’re doing yourself.

“It’s always been around in human relationships but in American political circles Bill Clinton was a master at that and it’s gotten worse, It’s now been proven that it was a complete hoax and yet for years they were accusing Trump of Russia collusion. And it was it was Hillary that was colluding with the Russians. She literally was.”

<Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Sunday slammed a pair of House Republicans after they attended a conference hosted by a prominent white nationalist over the weekend.

"Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, I don't know them," Romney said during an appearance on CNN. "I'm reminded of the old line from the Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid movie where one character says, 'Morons, I have morons on my team.'"

The senator added there is "no place" in either political party for white nationalism or racism, calling it "simply wrong" for elected leaders associated themselves with white nationalists.

Romney's statements came after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) attended a conference hosted by Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist leader, at the Orlando World Center Marriott. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz) also appeared at the event via pre-recorded video, HuffPost reported.

"I don't know what his views are, so I'm not aligned with anything that may be controversial," Greene told CBS News. "I went to his event last night to address his very large following because that is a young, very young, following and a generation I am extremely concerned about."

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wy.) also slammed her fellow House Republicans for attending the conference.

"As Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rep Paul Gosar speak at this white supremacist, anti-Semitic, pro-Putin event, silence by Republican Party leaders is deafening and enabling," Cheney said in a tweet. "All Americans should renounce this garbage and reject the Putin wing of the GOP now."

"I would think that anybody that would sit down with a white nationalist and speak at their conference would certainly be missing a few IQ points," Romney said.>

<How will the war in Ukraine end and what, if anything, can the United States, NATO and perhaps China do to end the conflict and deaths that could be considerable for both combatants and civilians? If reports are correct that Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered an increase in the readiness of Russian nuclear forces, obviously that threat is meant to intimidate not only Ukraine but the entire world.

What is Putin's exit strategy? Beyond that, is there an overarching conclusion to be drawn now that will be relevant no matter how this conflict ends? And, finally, what may be one of the greatest, less visible dangers for President Biden in this crisis?

Whether any negotiation arises in the short term, as suggested by initial reports from Moscow, or awaits how the war proceeds will be answered in due course. While reference to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse has been made, a better analogy is Japan's Dec. 7, 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese imperial staff believed that, given the isolationism rampant in America, Washington would quickly capitulate. And as Russia has launched strikes across much of Ukraine, Japan likewise rapidly occupied much of the Far East.

The United States did not capitulate - the sneak attack had precisely the opposite effect. Will something similar happen as the Ukrainian resistance is galvanized and the war becomes a bloody stalemate?

Clearly, Putin must have an exit strategy. A short, intense strike to intimidate and "shock and awe" Ukraine is possible. (As a side note, as the principal author of "shock and awe," it was designed to avoid using overwhelming force and maximum damage and casualties to succeed as seems to be the case in Ukraine.)

Even if Russia were to occupy Kyiv and install a puppet government, what is the guarantee that it would last without stationing many hundreds of thousands of troops to protect it? And if street fighting broke out, images of Stalingrad and Hue City in Vietnam in 1968 come to mind.

Should the conflict persist, global economies would be sensitive to recession or worse as oil prices soared and supply lines were disrupted. Ironically, an economic downturn might prompt China to persuade Russia that a conclusion was in everyone's, i.e. China's, best interest. So, negotiation, probably sooner than later, must be Putin's smartest exit.

The Ukraine crisis demands that NATO reexamine its purposes, organization and the nature of the security condition it faces. The Cold War demanded deterring the Soviet Union. After the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO went "out of area" so as "not to go out of business." After 9/11, global extremism became the raison d'etre.

Today, U.S. focus has fundamentally shifted to Asia. Many, including this columnist, dissented. Ukraine and Russian belligerence demands a re-balancing of interests. A new strategy is also required, in this case one based on a Porcupine Defense to disrupt and halt an initial attack, making the costs too great for any aggressor to consider acceptable.

Ukraine was the ideal proving ground had it been armed with tens of thousands of sea, air and land unmanned systems; huge numbers of anti-air and anti-armor portable weapons; long range missiles to strike deeply; electronic and other systems to confuse, deceive, misinform, misdirect and confound; means to decapitate and harass command, control and leadership; and improvised devices with up to 20,000 pounds of high explosives to take out access routes, choke points, roads and bridges.

President Biden faces a daunting array of challenges. Surprisingly, one of the greatest dangers Biden faces may be the failure of domestic consensus and support for the war. Some Republicans have already blamed the war on Biden's failure of leadership, characterizing Putin as strong and our president as weak.

A significant portion of Americans question why Ukraine is important to the U.S. As of last weekend, most Americans disapproved of how the president was handling this crisis. But in fairness, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln would have been hard pressed to cope with the daunting array of concurrent crises confronting this commander in chief.>

<Sen. Ron Johnson has blamed Speaker Nancy Pelosi, among others, for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Johnson accused Pelosi and others involved in Trump's first impeachment of actions that "weakened Ukraine."

He claimed they had used Ukraine as a "pawn in their impeachment travesty."

Sen. Ron Johnson has blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others who played pivotal roles in former President Donald Trump's first impeachment for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"I do think we need to take a look at what all led up to this. I don't think Vladimir Putin would have moved on Ukraine were it not for the weakness displayed ― certainly by the Biden administration, but by the West in general," Johnson said in an interview on Fox News Sunday.

He claimed that Pelosi, along with Ret. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and Rep. Adam Schiff, had "used Ukraine as a pawn in their impeachment travesty." Johnson expressed hope that they would reflect on how they have "weakened Ukraine, weakened the West, weakened America by the divisive politics that they play."

Schiff is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and, together with Pelosi, led the impeachment inquiry into Trump's dealings with Ukraine. Vindman is a former Army lieutenant colonel who testified in then-President Donald Trump's first impeachment inquiry.

Johnson also laid some of the blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin "and his cronies," referring to "atrocities" committed on the ground in Ukraine.

The Wisconsin senator appeared to be echoing the belief among some conservatives that Biden's perceived weakness brought about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Trump on Wednesday slammed the Biden administration, claiming it was their "stupidity" and "incompetence" that led to the invasion. He also claimed that the crisis would never have unfolded if he had been president.

GOP figures Sens. Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, and Ted Cruz echoed these sentiments.

During his presidency, Trump was impeached in 2019 for withholding nearly $400 million in vital military aid from Ukraine. At the time, he stood accused of attempting to strong-arm Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into launching politically motivated investigations against the Biden family ahead of the 2020 election.

While in office, Trump also repeatedly bashed NATO and raised the possibility of the US leaving the alliance.>

<Donald Trump described Russia's attack on Ukraine as a "holocaust" in a Fox News interview.

It is an abrupt shift from Trump's recent praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump's relations with Russia and Ukraine have long been mired in controversy.

Former President Donald Trump described Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine as a "holocaust" and urged an end to the fighting there, in an abrupt shift from his recent praise for Russia's president.

In an interview Wednesday with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo, Trump said Russia has to "to stop killing these people" and suggested that a deal could be struck with Russia to stop the fighting.

"We're watching a holocaust. We're watching something that I've never seen before, the way that they're going to go in — they're blowing up buildings with children, with women, with professionals, with people — think of just people," Trump said.

"They're blowing up indiscriminately, they're just shooting massive missiles and rockets into these buildings and everybody is dying."

"But they don't respect the United States and the United States is like, I don't know, they're not doing anything about it. This is a — this is a holocaust. This is a horrible thing that's happening. You're witnessing and you're seeing it on television every night."

Trump's comments represent a huge shift, exactly one week since he praised Putin as a "genius" and "very savvy" on February 23.

Putin builds on past Crimea invasion to encroach further on Ukraine At that point, Putin had recognised two separatist regions of Ukraine as independent states, as a pretext for overtly deploying Russian troops into Ukraine.

On the following day, February 24, the limited incursion escalated into an all-out war as Russian forces pushed into Ukraine from multiple directions and bombed major cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv.

Even in his Wednesday exchange with Bartiromo, Trump did not criticize Putin personally.

Trump had criticized the invasion already, condemning it at a recent speech at the CPAC conservative conference. In a series of public statements Trump has blamed the Biden administration for the crisis.

Trump claimed that he could have prevented the war if he were still in office, though has given no specifics on how. Ukrainian and Russian delegations began ceasefire talks in Belarus this week, but no agreements were reached.

Trump's relations with Russia and Ukraine were a source of enduring controversy during his presidency.

Russia launched a widespread campaign to help secure Trump's election in 2016, according to US intelligence agencies and multiple independent reports.

Amid unsubstantiated rumors Trump had been entrapped by Russian intelligence, Robert Mueller, a special counsel appointed by the Justice Department, in a 2019 report did not find evidence that Trump's campaign had deliberately conspired with Russia.

Later that year Trump was impeached for the first time for pressuring Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to produce dirt on Joe Biden, and cancelling military aid to Ukraine to force Zelensky's hand. He was acquitted after a Senate trial.

Zelensky has been widely praised for his courage and leadership during Russia's attack, and in Wednesday's interview Trump said he had been "very impressed by him" and defended the phone call with Zelensky that resulted in the impeachment.>