(WASHINGTON) — Senate hopeful Herschel Walker said Tuesday that he now knows the identity of the person alleging that he reimbursed her for the cost of an abortion procedure more than a decade ago, but said he has not spoken to the ex-girlfriend since the news broke and accused her of lying.
“I know nothing about an abortion,” Walker told ABC News anchor Linsey Davis. “I knew it was a lie and I said it was a lie — and I just move on … it’s sad that people say October surprise, but you’re destroying families.”
“This race is too important for me to give up or for me to stop,” he continued. “So, October surprise is not going to faze me.”
The Trump-backed candidate is running for a seat in the U.S. Senate that Republicans consider one of their most promising pickup opportunities in November. But Walker’s campaign has faltered under the weight of reporting about his personal life, including the Daily Beast’s report on the allegation about an ex-girlfriend’s 2009 abortion.
After Walker subsequently called the story a “flat-out lie” and promised to sue The Daily Beast — which he has not yet done — the woman went back to the outlet to say she was the mother of one of Walker’s children.
“I know initially last week you were saying you weren’t even sure who the woman was,” Davis said.
“Which is true,” Walker said.
“But at this point, you now know who she is?” Davis asked.
“Yes, yes,” he said.
“Have you had a conversation with her?” Davis pressed.
“Not at all,” he said. “So, I didn’t know who it was until last week, and I went, ‘Oh’ — and I said, ‘that’s not true.'”
The Daily Beast report, published last Monday, cited documents shared by the unidentified woman: a receipt from an abortion clinic; a bank deposit receipt with an image of a $700 personal check that appeared to be signed by Walker which was sent five days after the alleged abortion; and a “get well” card apparently bearing Walker’s signature.
“If I can just get you to say yes or no,” Davis said. “Did you ever have a conversation with this woman at any time about an abortion?”
“No,” Walker said.
“Did you ever, to your knowledge, give money to pay for the cost of an abortion?”
The outlet later reported that the same unidentified woman had a child by Walker three years after her abortion. The woman then told the New York Times that Walker encouraged to her to have a second abortion, but she refused — a claim Walker also denied.
Walker has acknowledged having four children — three of whom were born out of wedlock. ABC News has not confirmed the reporting in the Daily Beast and the New York Times.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden thinks the United States needs to “re-evaluate” its relationship with Saudi Arabia, especially in light of the decision by the OPEC+ oil cartel to cut production, the White House said Tuesday.
“I think the president’s been very clear that this is a relationship that we need to continue to re-evaluate, that we need to be willing to revisit,” White House spokesman John Kirby said in an interview with CNN. “And certainly in light of the OPEC decision, I think that’s where he is.”
OPEC+, a group of oil-producing countries led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, announced last week it would significantly slash production in order to boost oil prices.
Kirby said Biden “is going to be willing to work with Congress as we think about what the right relationship with Saudi Arabia needs to be going forward.”
Sen. Bob Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Monday called on the U.S. to “immediately freeze all aspects of our cooperation with Saudi Arabia, including any arms sales and security cooperation beyond what is absolutely necessary to defend U.S. personnel and interests.”
Menendez cited Saudi Arabia’s financial support for Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
Biden would be willing to start conversations with Congress “right away,” Kirby said.
The move by OPEC+ could send oil prices higher, which in turn, could raise prices at the gas pump in the United States. Higher gas prices could hurt Biden and Democrats politically heading into this fall’s midterm elections.
Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia in June to, in part, push the kingdom’s leaders to increase production.
(WASHINGTON) — Former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard announced on Tuesday she is leaving the Democratic Party, denouncing it as an “elitist cabal of war mongers,” while calling upon other “common sense independent minded Democrats” to exit with her.
“I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are hostile to people of faith & spirituality, demonize the police & protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders, weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, dragging us ever closer to nuclear war,” Gabbard said on Twitter.
Gabbard represented Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District from 2013 to 2021 as a Democrat, and in 2020 she mounted an unsuccessful bid for the party’s presidential nomination. In in a video posted to Twitter on Tuesday, she claimed that the party she’s exiting stands for the “powerful elite,” not the people.
“If you can no longer stomach the direction that the so called woke Democratic Party ideologues are taking our country. I invite you to join me,” she said.
Gabbard paired her announcement with the launch of a podcast series on YouTube called “The Tulsi Gabbard Show.” The first upload is a 28-minute episode titled “Why I’m leaving the Democratic Party,” where she details her entrance into the Democratic party as a young person, “inspired by Democrats who stood up against the war in Vietnam” and those who stood up for plantation workers in Hawaii.
Chief among the reasons her 20-year stint as a member of the Democratic Party will be cut short, she said, is her fear that “President Biden and Democratic Party elites have pushed us to the precipice of nuclear war, risking starting World War III and destroying the world as we know it.”
Gabbard said that her entrance into the 2020 presidential cycle was also because of imminent “nuclear holocaust.”
“I ran for president in 2020 because I knew that this is where we were headed. All the signs were there. I raised this issue every single day during the campaign and on the national debate stage for those of you who may have come to a town hall or who were watching, I’m sure you noticed, but the politicians and the media completely ignored it,” she said.
In her announcement and throughout the episode, Gabbard touted a number of traditionally conservative talking points, repeating right-wing rhetoric like “wokeness” and “elites,” and harkening back to phrasing top GOP leaders have regularly circulated.
She accused Democrats for turning American democracy into “a banana republic” — a term widely imparted by Republican leaders, especially to characterize the FBI’s search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in August.
“The raid of MAL is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves. Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote after the raid.
Gabbard has long been a Fox News contributor — she even guest-hosted Tucker Carlson Tonight in August, following the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago.
“Now, whatever your views are on Donald Trump, there’s no denying that the unprecedented raid on his Palm Beach home earlier this week has set our country on a dangerous new course, and there’s no turning back,” she said on the show.
Gabbard did not announce her next steps, or if she’d consider jumping to the Republican Party.
(WASHINGTON) — Former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard announced on Tuesday she is leaving the Democratic Party.
“I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are hostile to people of faith & spirituality, demonize the police & protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders, weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, dragging us ever closer to nuclear war,” Gabbard said on Twitter.
Gabbard mounted an unsuccessful run for president in 2020.
(WASHINGTON) — In the final month before the midterm elections, much of the attention will focus on high-profile races to choose governors, senators, representatives and more.
But another debate has been heating up further down the ballot among the officials charged with safeguarding states’ money. Some Republican state treasurers are now arguing that “woke capitalism” is a threat, and they’re taking action to push back against it.
“Woke capitalism” is a derogatory reference to ESG, or environmental and social governance, a financial strategy where companies and investors prioritize investments that they believe will create a positive benefit to society in the long-term, often by addressing climate change or issues like diversity or racial inequality.
Advocacy groups and investors have for years lobbied the financial industry to divest from fossil fuels, and the increased attention on racial injustice and environmental issues has led scores of younger investors to look for more socially conscious ways to manage their money.
The U.N. climate panel has said that in order to keep warming temperatures down as much as possible, the world needs to stop building new fossil fuel infrastructure as quickly as possible — and that any new infrastructure could become a financial liability if fossil fuels are replaced by renewable energy in the coming years.
Banks have responded to such factors both by offering funds that they claim only include environmentally friendly industries and by pledging to prioritize finance for industries that have made steps to address their contribution to climate change.
But Republican critics of the ESG strategy insist it unfairly puts a finger on the scale of the market in a way that benefits Democratic priorities.
Some GOP officials are now arguing that this type of investing creates a disadvantage for industries like coal, oil and natural gas and that banks are giving in to left-wing lobbying when they adopt these policies. Texas and West Virginia have taken legislative steps to curb ESG, adopting laws that say their governments will no longer work with banks that don’t support the industries in their states.
“The environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) movement has produced an opaque and perverse system in which some financial companies no longer make decisions in the best interest of their shareholders or their clients, but instead use their financial clout to push a social and political agenda shrouded in secrecy,” Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar contended in an August announcement that Texas wouldn’t do business with 10 financial firms that, Hegar said, “boycott” the oil and gas industries.
A July study from researchers at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the Federal Reserve of St. Louis found the Texas law cost taxpayers in some parts of the state an additional $300 to $500 million in additional fees and interest from switching municipal bond accounts to smaller banks that were acceptable under the new legislation.
The study’s authors said that their finding was specific to the Texas law and it’s unclear how such a restriction would play out in other states, but critics of the laws are concerned that similar extra costs could hurt public pension funds for people like teachers.
Democrats and climate advocates have accused these Republican treasurers of politicizing the way they manage taxpayer money in their states. In a recent statement through the nonprofit For the Long Term, 13 Democratic state treasurers and the New York City comptroller said states that adopt anti-ESG policies are trying to block progress. (Eleven total state treasurers are up for reelection in November.)
Oregon’s Democratic State Treasurer Tobias Read, who signed the letter, told ABC News he finds the debate “maddening.”
“Your job as a state treasurer is to look out for the interest of the beneficiaries. In Oregon’s case, it’s hundreds of thousands of people, and these are people whose livelihood depends on the pension — that’s what allows them to buy groceries and pay the electric bill and make rent,” Read said. “And if you can’t separate your own personal politics from your obligation to serve those people, I think you shouldn’t be treasurer.”
Republicans argue that banks have already been politicized and that it’s only fair that they push back against what they see as activist investing, in which like-minded shareholders organize to pressure companies to incorporate their values.
South Carolina State Treasurer Curtis Loftis, a Republican, said that while he doesn’t see himself as completely aligned with GOP groups on this issue, he thinks the best way to push back on companies that he sees attacking Republican values is to pull money away from their businesses.
“It’s been cast in other media places that we are on his political rampage to stop ESG. We’re just pushing back on ‘hey, I thought you were gonna leave us alone.’ I mean, that’s just how we look at things. So what I want to do is I want South Carolina to be left alone,” Loftis said of how he viewed companies who make ESG investments. “And they’re not going to just leave us alone, so it’s got to be a national thing.”
The debate isn’t just a state issue. Former President Donald Trump weighed in at a conservative event last week, saying “woke” banks should be penalized “very severely.”
“The big banks like Chase and like Bank of America … They’ve gone woke and they should be penalized very severely for it. The banks have let the community down,” Trump said at a “Hispanic Leadership Conference” hosted by the America First Policy Institute in Miami.
Other high-profile Republicans like former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have joined in and at least one leading Republican in Congress has signaled that it could become a federal legislative issue if his party takes control after the election.
“If banks don’t cease and desist from weighing in on social and cultural issues, don’t be shocked if Republicans, once back in power nationally, pressure banks to pursue their goals,” retiring Sen. Pat Toomey, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a recent hearing.
“I would oppose such efforts, just as I oppose similar efforts by liberals,” Toomey said then. “But once the precedent is set, the potential for future abuse is limitless.”
(CLEVELAND) — After weeks of back and forth negotiating on the time, the hosts and the venue, Ohio Senate nominees Rep. Tim Ryan and J.D. Vance faced off on Monday for their first debate. A second showdown is scheduled a week later.
Ryan and Vance, the Democratic and Republican candidates vying for retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s seat, argued their case on stage hosted by Fox 8 News in Cleveland.
FiveThirtyEight’s polling average shows Ryan and Vance in a close race. The winner could determine the balance of power in the Senate, which is currently split 50-50.
The candidates clashed over the issue of abortion, with Ryan claiming that Vance called those getting pregnant from rape an “inconvenience,” which Vance pushed back on, saying he has never uttered those words.
“I am pro-life. I’ve always been pro-life, and I grew up in a poor family and a poor community. I saw a lot of young women have abortions when I was growing up,” Vance said, adding that, in regard to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s proposed national abortion ban, “some minimum national standard is totally fine with me.”
Ryan added that he would support codifying Roe v. Wade.
Regarding the issue of the 10-year-old Ohio girl who got pregnant and traveled to Indiana for an abortion, Vance said he has always believed in “reasonable exceptions” and that anybody saying otherwise is “misrepresenting” his view.
“I’ve said repeatedly on the record that the [10-year-old Ohio] girl should be able to get an abortion, if she and her family so choose to do,” he said.
Ryan brought up multiple times throughout the debate how he has supported former President Donald Trump’s stances and initiatives, including the former president’s Space Force service branch. Ryan rattled off a list of Democratic lawmakers he has “taken on,” including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Bernie Sanders and President Joe Biden, again stressing that he agreed with Trump on a number of issues including “trade, renegotiating NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement], being firmer on China.”
When asked by a moderator whether Ryan wanted Biden to run in 2024, Ryan said “no” and that he has been “very clear.”
“I like to see a generational change. With Mitch McConnell. Donald Trump. The president. Everybody,” he said.
On the issue of fixing the opioid crisis in the state, Vance slammed Ryan for doing “nothing to stop the flow of fentanyl,” adding that his family members have been impacted by the “terrible addiction crisis.”
When asked by the moderator about his take on Vice President Kamala Harris’ comments that the “southern border is secure,” Ryan said, “Kamala Harris is absolutely wrong on that. It’s not secure. We have a lot of work to do. I’m not here to just get in a fight or just tiptoe the Democratic Party in line.” He also took the opportunity to bring up Vance’s now-shuttered nonprofit, which has been criticized for not helping fix the opioid crisis but rather jump-starting the Trump-backed nominee’s political career.
Vance denounced claims that his nonprofit is a sham, saying, “None of this is true.”
“I put $80,000 of my own money into that nonprofit, and it absolutely did help people,” Vance said, adding that it is “shameful” for Ryan to attack him given that his family has been impacted by the opioid crisis.
Heading into Election Day, Vance has campaigned heavily on the issue of crime in Ohio. ABC News spoke with the “Hillbilly Elegy” author and former investor at a recent event in Perrysburg, Ohio, where he was joined by former President Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
“Let’s declare war on the violent crime on our streets. Let’s let the police go and do their jobs and let’s support them as we do it,” Vance said to supporters at a banquet hall.
He told ABC News afterward, while speaking with reporters, that if elected he would prioritize increasing funding for police.
“We need to probably hire 100,000 additional cops in this country,” he said.
Referring to special legal protections for law enforcement that some Democrats argue are too broad, Vance disagreed and said: “We really have to protect local police officers with qualified immunity.”
ABC News also spoke with Rep. Ryan, most recently at a kick-off event for his statewide bus tour in Warren, Ohio. When asked how he’s prepping before Monday’s debate, Ryan said that he wished the face-off was held sooner.
“We want to get this thing kicked off. But, you know, we’re doing good work,” he said.
He also told ABC News that he can’t “overstate” how important the two debates between him and Vance are going to be because it will show voters what he said is a “contrast” between the two.
“JD has given up on Ohio and I’ve been here fighting like hell for this state, and we’re starting to see some real results. And so that contrast of his extremism versus my pragmatism is going to be very apparent in the next two debates,” Ryan said.
While the party in power often suffers setbacks in midterm races, swing-state Democrats like Ryan have campaigned by seeking to separate themselves from Washington.
He told ABC News that he’s an “independent-minded person,” while Vance has labeled him a “fake moderate.”
In an emailed statement to ABC News, Vance campaign spokesperson Luke Schroeder wrote that “JD is well prepared for the upcoming debates and has found time to prepare between rallies and events. He will have no problem wiping the floor with Tim Ryan.”
Paulina Tam is one of seven ABC News campaign reporters embedded in battleground states across the country. Watch all the twists and turns of covering the midterm elections every Sunday on Hulu’s “Power Trip” with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
(WASHINGTON) — The trial of a Russian national accused of lying to federal investigators about information he contributed to the so-called Steele dossier is set to begin this week, marking a major test for the special counsel investigating the origins of the FBI probe of former President Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia.
Igor Danchenko, a Washington-based think tank analyst, was hired by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele in 2016 to collect information compiled in his now-infamous “dossier,” which included explosive and unproven claims about the former president. In a November 2021 indictment, prosecutors accused Danchenko of misleading FBI agents about his sources of information. Danchenko has pleaded not guilty.
Danchenko’s trial, which begins Tuesday in Alexandria, Virginia, is expected to offer special counsel John Durham an opportunity to justify his years-long probe, which Trump and his allies once hoped would uncover a widespread “deep-state” conspiracy within the bureau.
Assigned in 2019 by then-Attorney General William Barr to pursue allegations of misconduct by the FBI and intelligence community in their Russia investigation, dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane,” Durham has secured indictments against only three individuals, one of whom, Michael Sussmann, was acquitted at trial earlier this year.
In another case, former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith admitted to altering a document used in the application process authorizing continued surveillance against a former Trump campaign aide.
Danchenko is the third defendant and the most politically fraught. As Steele’s primary collector, Danchenko was responsible for sharing the salacious claim that Russian officials may have had a videotape of Trump watching prostitutes in a hotel room during a 2013 trip to Moscow. Trump has vehemently denied the claim and no evidence has surfaced to support the allegation.
Prosecutors accused Danchenko of falsely telling the FBI that he never communicated with an unidentified U.S.-based individual “who was a long-time participant in Democratic Party Politics” about any allegations included in the dossier — whereas the indictment says Danchenko had actually sourced one or more of the allegations to that individual.
The indictment also accused Danchenko of lying to the FBI when he suggested that he had spoken with a Belarusian-born businessman named Sergei Millian, who at the time served as president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce and had obtained information from Millian that then made its way into the dossier.
“Danchenko stated falsely [to the FBI] that, in or about late July 2016, he received an anonymous phone call from an individual who Danchenko believed to be … then president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce” and obtained information about Trump from that man, the indictment says, referring to Millian but not naming him.
In fact, according to the indictment, “Danchenko never received such a phone call or such information from any person he believed to be [Millian] … rather, Danchenko fabricated these facts regarding [Millian].”
The indictment goes on to claim that Danchenko “never spoke to” Millian at all, which would support Millian’s longstanding contention that he was not the source — knowing or unwitting — of any material in the dossier. Millian has called any suggestions that he was a source “a blatant lie.”
Ahead of his trial, Danchenko and his legal team sought to have their case dismissed and nearly succeeded. Danchenko’s lawyers have insisted that Danchenko presented information to the FBI in accordance with what he believed was true and questioned the framing and interpretation of agents’ questions during interviews with Danchenko.
U.S. Judge Anthony Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia ultimately ruled that the trial should move forward but characterized his decision as “an extremely close call.” Last week, Trenga ruled that prosecutors should avoid reference to the most salacious allegations in Steele’s dossier in presenting their case to jurors.
Steele, who has largely remained silent since his dossier became public in January 2017, told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview last year that he was “interested to see what [Durham] publishes and what he says about us and others,” but did not fear any personal legal exposure.
“Do you think he’s coming for you?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“I don’t think so, no,” Steele replied.
“Are you worried you’ll be indicted?” Stephanopoulos added.
“No,” Steele said.
Durham’s failure to expose allegations of widespread politicization within the FBI has drawn the ire of Trump and his supporters, who at various stages of the probe expressed hope that the special counsel would validate their claims of a “deep state” conspiracy.
“The public is waiting ‘with bated breath’ for the Durham Report, which should reveal corruption at a level never seen before in our country,” Trump wrote in August on Truth Social, his social media platform.
To Trump and his supporters’ apparent chagrin, however, Danchenko’s trial may be one of the final acts of Durham’s tenure as special counsel. The New York Times reported last month that a grand jury empaneled by Durham had expired and that his office hoped to complete a final report by the end of the year.
(CLEVELAND) — After weeks of back and forth negotiating on the time, the hosts and the venue, Ohio Senate nominees Rep. Tim Ryan and J.D. Vance will be facing off on Monday for their first debate. A second showdown is scheduled a week later.
Ryan and Vance, the Democratic and Republican candidates vying for retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s seat, will be arguing their case on stage hosted by Fox 8 News in Cleveland.
Monday’s hour-long debate at the Fox 8 studios starts at 7 p.m. ET and will be moderated by two reporters, one from the Fox affiliate and the other from the local NBC affiliate.
The debate can be watched on all Nexstar Media Television stations and respective streaming channels in Ohio.
FiveThirtyEight’s polling average shows Ryan and Vance in a close race. The winner could determine the balance of power in the Senate, which is currently split 50-50.
Heading into Election Day, Vance has campaigned heavily on the issue of crime in Ohio. ABC News spoke with the “Hillbilly Elegy” author and former investor at a recent event in Perrysburg, Ohio, where he was joined by former President Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
“Let’s declare war on the violent crime on our streets. Let’s let the police go and do their jobs and let’s support them as we do it,” Vance said to supporters at a banquet hall.
He told ABC News afterward, while speaking with reporters, that if elected he would prioritize increasing funding for police.
“We need to probably hire 100,000 additional cops in this country,” he said.
Referring to special legal protections for law enforcement that some Democrats argue are too broad, Vance disagreed and said: “We really have to protect local police officers with qualified immunity.”
ABC News also spoke with Rep. Ryan, most recently at a kick-off event for his statewide bus tour in Warren, Ohio. When asked how he’s prepping before Monday’s debate, Ryan said that he wished the face-off was held sooner.
“We want to get this thing kicked off. But, you know, we’re doing good work,” he said.
He also told ABC News that he can’t “overstate” how important the two debates between him and Vance are going to be because it will show voters what he said is a “contrast” between the two.
“JD has given up on Ohio and I’ve been here fighting like hell for this state, and we’re starting to see some real results. And so that contrast of his extremism versus my pragmatism is going to be very apparent in the next two debates,” Ryan said.
While the party in power often suffers setbacks in midterm races, swing-state Democrats like Ryan have campaigned by seeking to separate themselves from Washington.
He told ABC News that he’s an “independent-minded person,” while Vance has labeled him a “fake moderate.”
In an emailed statement to ABC News, Vance campaign spokesperson Luke Schroeder wrote that “JD is well prepared for the upcoming debates and has found time to prepare between rallies and events. He will have no problem wiping the floor with Tim Ryan.”
Paulina Tam is one of seven ABC News campaign reporters embedded in battleground states across the country. Watch all the twists and turns of covering the midterm elections every Sunday on Hulu’s “Power Trip” with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
(WASHINGTON) — Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy on Sunday called for a change in Washington’s ties to Saudi Arabia after the country and other members of the OPEC+ alliance decided to significantly cut production later this year in a move that will likely drive up the slumping cost of crude oil.
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Murphy added to the growing number of Democrats arguing that the U.S. should, as he put it, “rethink” the relationship with the Gulf kingdom in light of the announced 2-million-barrel-per-day cut in oil production as well as Riyadh’s human rights record.
The forthcoming restrictions by OPEC+, which will begin in November, come after President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia this summer seeking, in part, to lower domestic gas prices before the midterms.
But OPEC+ said the cuts announced last week were necessary to help support the international price for oil. The global market has been roiled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and other forces.
“We are here to stay as a moderating force, to bring about stability,” a Saudi minister said Wednesday. The cuts, the minister insisted, were not about “belligerence.”
Biden told ABC News on Thursday he was unhappy with the move. And while he maintained that the trip was not essentially for oil. … It is a disappointment and it says that there are problems.”
On CNN on Sunday, Murphy said that “it’s clear that we didn’t get as much as we needed to.”
“We wanted to know that when the chips were down, when there was a global crisis, that the Saudis would choose us instead of Russia. Well — they didn’t. They chose Russia. They chose to back up the Russians, drive up oil prices, which could have the potential to fracture our Ukraine coalition. And there’s got to be consequences for that,” Murphy said.
“We sell massive amounts of arms to the Saudis. I think we need to rethink those sales,” he said. “I think we need to lift the exemption that we have given this OPEC+ cartel from U.S. price-fixing liability. I think we need to look at our troop presence in the middle East and Saudi Arabia,” he said. “For years we have looked the other way as Saudi Arabia has chopped up journalists, has engaged in massive political repression.”
Beyond rethinking the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia, Murphy also focused on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto ruler, whom Biden met with in July in negotiations that drew scrutiny given that U.S. intelligence has assessed bin Salman approved the killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
The prince has continued to claim he was not involved, though Biden said he raised the issue at their meeting this summer.
Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancée, sharply criticized Biden’s “heartbreaking” decision to travel to Saudi Arabia. While running for president in 2019, Biden said he would make the country a “pariah.”
Murphy’s comments on Sunday follow similar calls from other Democrats last week for some kind of punishment after the oil production cut. A trio of House Democrats introduced a bill to remove the U.S. military presence from Saudi Arabia.
“Many argued that we had to ‘repair’ our relationship with our Gulf partners to win their cooperation in stabilizing global energy markets following Russia’s invasion, and President Biden made every effort to do so, going so far as to meet the Saudi Crown Prince personally in Riyadh, despite his role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi,” Reps. Sean Casten of Illinois, Tom Malinowski of New Jersey and Pennsylvania’s Susan Wild said in a joint statement last week.
“It is time for the United States to resume acting like the superpower in our relationship with our client states in the Gulf. They have made a choice and should live with the consequences. Our troops and military equipment are needed elsewhere,” the trio said.
The White House, while disagreeing with the production cuts, is remaining tight-lipped about how it plans to respond to OPEC+, which is unofficially led by Riyadh.
“We will be assessing and consulting closely with Congress around a range of issues on the back end of this,” Brian Deese, a top economic adviser to Biden, told reporters on Thursday. “And beyond that, I don’t want to get ahead of potential announcements by the administration.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden’s warning last week that Vladimir Putin was “not joking” about possibly using nuclear weapons was “concerning” and counterproductive to bringing an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, retired Adm. Mike Mullen said Sunday.
Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, was asked in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” to assess the nuclear risk from Russia after Putin said he would use “all available means” to protect what he called his country’s territorial integrity.
“President Biden’s language — we’re about at the top of the language scale, if you will. And I think we need to back off that a little bit and do everything we possibly can to try to get to the table to resolve this thing,” Mullen told “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz.
Mullen was referring to what Biden said on Thursday when he warned that for the “first time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have the direct threat of the use of a nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path that they are going.”
“I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily [use] a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon,” Biden said then.
The White House has since clarified that the president was not acting on new intelligence of looming danger but was trying to underline the stakes given the current conflict in Ukraine, where Ukrainian forces have recaptured ground in the country’s contested eastern and southern regions and have pushed back Russian troops.
On “This Week,” Raddatz pressed Mullen on his proposed resolution: “How do you see him [Putin] saving face if he doesn’t come to the table? If Ukraine can’t figure anything out?”
Diplomacy and international pressure on both Ukraine and Russia would ultimately be key, Mullen argued.
“It’s got to end and usually there are negotiations associated with that,” he said. “The sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned.”
Putin is “pretty well cornered and boxed in,” Mullen said. And potential use of tactical nuclear weapons could cause problems for Russia’s president at home: “The winds all blow back onto Russia, so he would have to, in a way, contaminate his own country.”
Forecasting a possible strike, Mullen said Putin “could pick a symbolic target. He could pick [Ukraine President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy’s hometown, for instance.”
Raddatz opened Mullen’s interview Sunday by having him respond to John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, who also went one-on-one with Raddatz on Sunday.
Kirby said that the Biden administration’s strategy against nuclear threats from North Korea was both to ensure the U.S. can “defend our national security interests” and to pursue direct talks with Kim Jong Un’s regime to denuclearize the region.
“Do you see any strategy differences? Do you see anything that’s going to work?” Raddatz asked Mullen in light of Kirby’s comments.
“I believe for some time that the path to any resolution of this has got to go through Beijing — pressure brought on by Xi Jinping, with respect to dealing with Kim Jong Un,” Mullen said, referring to China’s leader. “I’m fine with us negotiating directly, if that’s what Kim Jong Un wants to do.”
“Is denuclearization really realistic at this point?” Raddatz asked.
“I think sometimes we lose perspective on how devastating these weapons are. And I think we need to do everything we possibly can to the extreme to make sure that that still is a possibility,” Mullen said. “And I’m just not willing to admit that it isn’t yet. I know it’s difficult.”
Raddatz cited Mullen’s view in 2017 that North Korea had increased the possibility of nuclear war to a historic high. “How about now?” she asked.
“I think in the end it comes down to will he [Kim] ever use it? And I just don’t know the answer to that,” Mullen said. But he was concerned: “I think it’s more possible than it was five years ago.”
