Saudis host peace summit on Ukraine, with Kremlin not on the invite list

U.S. officials hope gathering will rally support for Ukraine-driven deal to end war

Guy Taylor reporting for Washington Times

Saudi Arabia is hosting an unusual gathering of top security officials from some 30 nations, including the United States, for a Ukraine-led summit this weekend to discuss potential pathways toward negotiations to end Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory.

The catch is Russia isn’t invited to the gathering. Analysts say talks are likely to anchor around Ukrainian and U.S. efforts to persuade key nonaligned countries from the so-called Global South to publicly back Kyiv’s position on peace talks.

China, which has offered rhetorical support for the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin and has unsuccessfully pushed its peace initiative in recent months, is among the countries sending representatives to the Saudi city of Jeddah. India, another major power that has hedged its bets in the nearly 18-month-old war, said Wednesday that it would attend.

Regional experts say Saudi Arabia is using the meeting to underscore its rising status as a global diplomatic broker. The gathering will mark the second time in as many months that various nations have discussed a 10-point peace plan that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy put forward late last year.

The Zelenskyy government held a meeting in June in Copenhagen, Denmark, that received limited media attention.

Officials say discussions in Jeddah on Saturday and Sunday will focus again on Kyiv’s specific “peace formula.” In similar fashion to the Copenhagen gathering, nations that have waffled over the past year on open support for Ukraine are slated to attend.

“This meeting will be about wooing this group of ambivalent nations,” said Donald Jensen, a former U.S. diplomat and member of the Russia and Strategic Stability project at the United States Institute of Peace.

“I suspect that NATO and the West want to lobby this group to support Ukraine,” he said in an interview, noting that “the West does not want negotiations to occur on Russian terms.”

Officials from European Union nations and NATO supporters of Ukraine are heading to Jeddah, along with delegations from Egypt, Chile and several African nations that have had close relations with Russia. Nations from the Group of 20 industrial and emerging-market nations, including India, Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey and Japan, also will participate in the talks.

The event comes at a moment of uncertainty over the future of a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has made incremental gains against dug-in Russian forces along a 600-mile front line stretching across the nation’s east and south.

U.S. and NATO officials have publicly defended the counteroffensive, which has moved at a much slower rate than Kyiv and its supporters had hoped.

Watching from the sidelines

Russian officials say they will closely monitor the summit in Saudi Arabia. They said it was Ukraine that made it clear that representatives from Moscow would not be welcome.

“Of course, Russia will follow this meeting,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “We need to understand what goals are set and what will be discussed. Any attempt to promote a peaceful settlement deserves a positive evaluation.”

Mr. Peskov restated Moscow’s position that it saw no grounds for peace talks with Kyiv. Mr. Putin launched the war in February 2022 in hopes of a quick capitulation of the Zelenskyy government, but he now finds himself bogged down in trench warfare trying to preserve modest Russian territorial gains in eastern Ukraine.

“The Kyiv regime does not want and cannot want peace as long as it is used exclusively as a tool in the war of the collective West with Russia,” Mr. Peskov said on a call with reporters, according to the Reuters news agency.

The comments fit with past Russian statements in response to separate peace initiatives, including one put forward by the Chinese in March and another by the Vatican in May. While Mr. Putin has more recently expressed guarded openness toward an African initiative, he has blamed Ukraine for undermining the diplomatic track while the Kremlin has shown no sign of willingness to give back Ukrainian territory occupied by Russian forces.

Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs magazine, told the Russian publication Izvestia this week that he expected little practical impact from the Saudi gathering, but the symbolism could boost Kyiv’s leverage.

“If we are talking about political signals, they will of course be sent; that’s perfectly natural,” Mr. Lukyanov said. “Ukraine, as one of the main organizers of the summit, is trying to show that Russia allegedly lacks serious international support, especially from a number of countries outside of the Western bloc.”

The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, said in a statement this week that “the Ukrainian Peace Formula contains 10 fundamental points” and “should be taken as a basis, because the war is taking place on our land.”

Ukrainian officials have said their plan includes the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the withdrawal of Russian troops, the release of all prisoners, a tribunal for those responsible for the aggression and security guarantees for Ukraine — effectively a complete repudiation of Russia’s stated war goals.

The Biden administration, which is sending National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to the Saudi summit, has openly favored a gradual increase of U.S. and NATO military aid for Ukraine over the prospect of pushing for a cease-fire or peace negotiations. U.S. officials have repeatedly said they would support a final peace deal only if it is acceptable to the Zelenskyy government.

Gathering support

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller suggested that the Jeddah gathering is an effort to persuade as wide a slate of nations as possible to align against Russia’s invasion.

“It’s important that countries around the world hear directly from Ukraineabout the horrors that have been unleashed on their country — about the attacks on civilians, about the attacks on schools, on hospitals, on apartment buildings and civilian infrastructure — that they hear about just how Russia has violated their territorial integrity, violated their sovereignty,” Mr. Miller told reporters.

“If at some point Russia is willing to engage in meaningful diplomacy, I will not speak on behalf of … the president of Ukraine, but he has made clear in the past that he’d be willing to engage with them on such matters.”

Although some in the national security community say the U.S. administration lacks a clear strategy for the war’s endgame, many analysts credit President Biden for rallying international support to counter Russia’s military aggression.

“Biden has done a good job on supporting Ukraine,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank. He said the White House should continue to hold the line.

“I would encourage the administration and others to avoid applying pressure to Ukraine to make any concessions when Ukraine is experiencing the equivalent of a home invasion,” Mr. Bowman said in an interview. “When your neighbor is [being invaded] by a thug, you don’t say to your neighbor, ‘You really should make some concessions.’ No, you pass a baseball bat to your neighbor to try to help them beat back the invader because if you don’t, your home might be next.”

Mr. Bowman said it could be easy to take a cynical view of the Jeddah summit, given that Russia will not be attending and there are questions with regard to the extent to which China will be participating.

“But if one studies diplomatic history, there are lots of meetings to facilitate meetings,” he said. “And in the end, this summit might be that. … The main benefit might be setting conditions for something that might follow later and might be more productive.”

Mr. Jensen was more circumspect.

“At this point, you have three peace plans. The Chinese one that went nowhere, the Vatican one that went nowhere and now this, which I expect to go nowhere,” Mr. Jensen said.

“What are we going to negotiate about?” he asked, asserting that what’s really at play is “an international diplomatic contest and battle for hearts and minds about staying behind Ukraine and not acquiescing to Russian terms.”

“The Russians don’t see negotiations as an end,” he said. “They see them as a tool for advancing their geopolitical interest, and that’s where you have to be very careful.”

X22, On the Fringe, and more- August 4

 

Two Sets of Laws for Two Americas ~ VDH

Leftwing Democrats are systematically dismantling 

the constitutional foundations of the U.S.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

Two sets of laws now operate in an increasingly unrecognizable America.

Consider the matter of unlawfully removing and storing classified papers.

Donald Trump may go to prison for removing contested White House files to his home.

So far Joe Biden seems exempt from just such legal jeopardy.

But as a senator and Vice President with no right, as does a president, to declassify files, Biden removed and, as a private citizen kept for years classified files in unsecure locations.

Biden’s team strangely revealed the unlawful removals after years of silence.

It did so because the Biden administration found itself in the untenable position of prosecuting the former president for “crimes” that the current president committed as well—albeit far earlier and longer.

Impeachable phone calls?

Donald Trump was impeached by a Democratic House for delaying foreign aid until the Ukrainian government guaranteed that Hunter Biden and his family were no longer engaged in corrupt influence peddling in Kyiv.

In addition, the Left charged that Trump was targeting Joe Biden, his possible 2020 rival.

Yet Biden, with impunity, bragged that he had fired a Ukrainian prosecutor looking into his own son’s schemes by promising to cancel outright American foreign aid.

And the Biden administration’s Justice Department is now targeting Trump, currently the frontrunning challenger to Biden in 2024.

Election denialism?

Trump was indicted by Special Counsel Jack Smith, in part for supposedly conspiratorially “unlawfully discounting legitimate votes.”

Will Smith then also indict Stacey Abrams? For years Abrams falsely claimed that she was the real governor of Georgia. She toured the country in hopes of “discounting” the state vote count.

Or maybe Smith was referring to the conspiracist and former president Jimmy Carter.

He alleged that Trump in 2016 “lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.”

Will Smith charge Hillary Clinton?

She serially libeled Trump as an “illegitimate” president.

Clinton hatched the Russian collusion hoax, and bragged she joined the “Resistance” to continue her attacks on an elected president.

Or maybe Smith meant the Hollywood crowd.

Lots of actors cut commercials after the 2016 election—begging viewers to pressure the electors to ignore their constitutional duties to honor their states’ popular vote and instead swing their ballots to Hillary Clinton?

Was that not “insurrectionary?”

Or was Smith thinking of January 2005?

Then 32 Democratic House members and Sen. Barbara Boxer tried to nullify the legally certified vote in Ohio—to thereby elect the loser John Kerry.

How about destroying evidence?

Trump was also indicted for allegedly attempting to erase video material from his own cameras in his own house.

Yet Hillary Clinton with impunity eliminated subpoenaed communication devices and thousands of emails.

Violations of security? Trump was indicted for supposedly loosely talking about classified material to visitors at his home.

So will prosecutor Smith’s indictments also extend to Hillary Clinton? She sent classified documents illegally over her unsecure private server.

FBI Director James Comey memorialized a confidential president conversation.

Then he deliberately leaked what properly was a classified document to the media. It was all part of Comey’s Machiavellian gambit to prompt the appointment of a favorable special prosecutor.

What about subversion of the electoral process?

Donald Trump was indicted for supposedly undermining the election of 2020 by questioning the integrity of the balloting.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign illegally hired two foreign nationals Christopher Steele and Igor Danchenko to compile falsehoods about her opponent Trump.

Clinton hid her payments behind three paywalls.

Her team, along with the FBI, helped leak the counterfeit dossier to the media and high officials to undermine her opponent—and thus subvert the election itself.

Lying and perjury?

Two Trump aides and Trump himself are indicted for supposedly stonewalling federal investigators by claiming either amnesia or ignorance.

That tact is exactly what James Comey did 245 times while under oath before Congress.

What do former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Director of the CIA John Brennan, and former interim FBI Director Andrew McCabe all have in common?

All three admitted they flagrantly lied either under oath to Congress or to federal investigators.

The three were never indicted for their false and perjurious testimonies.

We have now serially devolved from the 2016 election “Russian collusion” hoax, to the 2020 election “Russian disinformation” laptop hoax, and down to the 2024 election weaponized indictments.

Out of pathological hatred or fear of Donald Trump, the Left has crafted one set of laws for themselves, and another for all other Americans.

They smugly believe their own moral superiority grants them such a right to apply laws unequally—or to ignore them altogether.

To retain power at all cost, and to destroy a political rival, leftwing Democrats are systematically dismantling the constitutional foundations of the United States as we once knew them.

An Avowed 'Anti-Trumper' Has a Surprising Moment of Self-Awareness, and Then It All Falls Apart

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

Sometimes I see a piece published that genuinely surprises me. That happened on Thursday morning when I came across David Brooks’ latest at The New York Times.

The self-described “anti-Trumper” has spent years denigrating the Republican Party and its voters, insisting that he and his like-minded cohorts truly know what’s best. Brooks has been one of the more self-righteous examples of that anti-Trump movement, going from someone who once called Scooter Libby’s conviction a “farce” to fawning over the crease in Barack Obama’s pants.

Still, in his latest writing, Brooks managed to have a brief moment of self-awareness, describing how the “elites” in modern culture preach diversity and equity to the downtrodden while setting up systems that ultimately benefit themselves.

The meritocracy isn’t only a system of exclusion; it’s an ethos. During his presidency Barack Obama used the word “smart” in the context of his policies over 900 times. The implication was that anybody who disagreed with his policies (and perhaps didn’t go to Harvard Law) must be stupid.

Over the last decades we’ve taken over whole professions and locked everybody else out. When I began my journalism career in Chicago in the 1980s, there were still some old crusty working-class guys around the newsroom. Now we’re not only a college-dominated profession, we’re an elite-college-dominated profession. Only 0.8 percent of all college students graduate from the super elite 12 schools (the Ivy League colleges, plus Stanford, M.I.T., Duke and the University of Chicago). A 2018 study found that more than 50 percent of the staff writers at the beloved New York Times and The Wall Street Journal attended one of the 29 most elite universities in the nation.

Certainly, Brooks is right about the dynamic at play in the professional world. Journalism today isn’t about eliciting broad viewpoints and on-the-ground experiences in order to give a complete picture to the reader. It’s about repeating the same narrow talking points while living in an overpriced loft in a liberal bastion and complaining about the student debt you racked up from Columbia.

Few journalists today have any connection to the rest of the country and what it’s like. Yet, they are expected to cover it. That shows in their reporting, and it’s one of the reasons journalism as a profession is at its lowest point in modern history. Few people still respect the “fourth estate,” and the wounds are completely self-inflicted.

Brooks continued with some commentary on the culture.

Like all elites, we use language and mores as tools to recognize one another and exclude others. Using words like problematic, cisgender, Latinx and intersectional is a sure sign that you’ve got cultural capital coming out of your ears. Meanwhile, members of the less-educated classes have to walk on eggshells, because they never know when we’ve changed the usage rules, so that something that was sayable five years ago now gets you fired.

We also change the moral norms in ways that suit ourselves, never mind the cost to others. For example, there used to be a norm that discouraged people from having children outside of marriage, but that got washed away during our period of cultural dominance, as we eroded norms that seemed judgmental or that might inhibit individual freedom.

I’d note that even in Brooks’ attempt at an olive branch on language, he still manages to encapsulate the problem by referring to others as the “less-educated classes.” Using terms like “cisgender” and “Latinx” isn’t a product of superior intellect and formal training. It’s a project of partisan ideologues trying to force their absurd views on others via the threat of ostracization. Education doesn’t cause someone to believe that a man can become a woman. Politics does. Brooks is correct, though, that normal people are left walking on eggshells, wondering what word has been rendered offensive on any given day.

He’s also right that left-wing elites spent decades eroding social norms and basic morality, only to retreat back into those things while the rest of the world burned as a result of their endeavors. The sexual revolution was one of the most cynical projects in American history. Those who popularized it on an intellectual level ended up going to college, getting married, and living in the suburbs. On the other hand, those they pushed their views on ended up addicted to drugs, pregnant out of wedlock, and left to the devices of a society that no longer cared.

Of course, after writing hundreds of words lamenting the harm caused by the machinations of the elites, Brooks still managed to fall right back into the very mindset he had just finished critiquing.

Are Trump supporters right that the indictments are just a political witch hunt? Of course not. As a card-carrying member of my class, I still basically trust the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice. Trump is a monster in the way we’ve all been saying for years and deserves to go to prison.

In other words, Brooks seemingly believes that various aspects of the system are self-serving and corrupt, but as long as it’s going after Donald Trump, it should still be trusted. It doesn’t even dawn on him that his warnings about the professional class also apply to the political class, to the extent that they aren’t completely overlapped anyway.

That’s a disconnect Brooks won’t try to reconcile because ultimately, despite showing some basic self-awareness, his goal is still the same: To ensure the system benefits him.

Jack Smith’s Jan 6. Indictments Are an Attack on Political Speech

And you don’t have to be a Trump supporter to see it.

David Harsanyi reporting for The Federalist

If recklessly lying to voters were a crime, most everyone in D.C. would be serving life in solitary confinement at Supermax. But in a liberal democracy, as frustrating as it often is, political misconduct is settled by voters and elections, not partisan prosecutors or rioters.

Feel free to campaign and vote against Donald Trump if you like. I’m certainly no fan. If Trump wins in 2024, Congress can impeach and remove him if they choose. But just as there was no special set of rules that could keep Trump in the White House in 2020, there shouldn’t be an exclusive set of rules to keep him out, either.

Yet Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictments over Jan. 6 read like a political oppo document cobbled together by some partisan House staffers who perfunctorily tacked on the last-minute novel legal reasoning.

Though numerous commentators who have an aversion to Trump have pointed out the weakness of the indictments, it’s quite telling how little media-approved historians and legal “experts” even bother defending the underlying legal case. Trump is evil, a threat to “democracy,” and really what else is there to discuss? In the Trump-addled politics of our age, it is virtually impossible for either side to compartmentalize the process and the person if that person happens to be Trump.

In this case, the precedent would criminalize and chill political speech. People keep assuring me the indictments aren’t really about the expression but rather about defrauding the government. Sorry, the entire case is predicated on the things Trump said or believed or didn’t say or didn’t believe. All of it should be protected under the First Amendment. “Spreading lies” — prosecutors leaned on the thesaurus hard, finding about two dozen ways of repeating this fact — or entertaining theories offered by crackpot lawyers, or trying to convince faithless electors to do things that people have been trying to convince faithless electors to do for a long time, are all unethical, not criminal.

Nowhere do the indictments come anywhere in the vicinity of making the case that Trump incited “imminent lawless action” on Jan 6. At least no more than, say, the entire Democratic Party had a hand in inciting the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots — the most destructive in American history. This is a dangerous road to go down.

Yes, Trump’s Mar A-Lago classified documents case is an exercise in the selective use of power for political ends, but it has a basis in law and recent precedent. (Not for Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, but for others.) This, however, isn’t about mere double standards anymore.

When, in 2000, the Supreme Court finally stopped Al Gore’s conspiracy to overturn the outcome of the presidential election, no serious person contemplated throwing him or his lackeys in prison. Since that time, Democrats haven’t only been lying about elections, they have tried to stop the certification of every national election, as well.

When they fail, people like Adam Schiff will use a DNC political oppo document to concoct a conspiracy, illegally leaking classified documents — in carefully curated snippets to mislead the country — to overturn the will of the American voter. This effort also resulted in expensive investigations that defrauded the American people.

The point isn’t that we should imprison Gore — or Stacey Abrams or Hillary Clinton or Ron Klain or John Kerry or Bennie Thompson or Barbara Lee or Maxine Waters or Raúl Grijalva or James Clyburn or Ed Markey or Nancy Pelosi, or many others who have tried in various ways to challenge election results in the past. It’s to say that Trump’s actions laid out in the indictments aren’t crimes, either.

Obviously, Democrats don’t believe precedents will apply to them in the future. And considering the way our federal institutions are run these days, they’re probably right. Has a single notable Democrat shown any hesitancy about prosecuting the leading opposing presidential candidate over speech crimes? I haven’t seen one. Increasingly, the contemporary political left has stopped viewing our institutions as tools of stability, law, or neutrality. Rather, they see them as tools for enacting political ends. And when those institutions fail to do so, they are useless and corrupt. Just look at what they’re doing to the Supreme Court right now.

Perhaps Smith doesn’t really expect Trump to end up in prison over any of these indictments. As his foray into the partisan prosecution of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, overturned 8-0 by the Supreme Court, this case is grounded on a “boundless” reading of statute. The law isn’t the point. The point is likely to make Jan. 6 — and hysterical claims about American democracy’s near demise — the centerpiece of the 2024 election.

Granted, allowing Joe Biden’s record to be the central issue of that 2024 campaign is potentially disastrous for Democrats. These indictments, however, create a deterioration of law that Americans will have to live with long after the next presidential election.

🤣 Al Sharpton Asks “Can You Imagine if Madison or Jefferson Tried to Overthrow the Government?”

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

Oh, my goodness, this is side-splitting funny.  No one has ever accused Al Sharpton of extreme intellectualism, but this one even beats his epic “resist we much, we must and we will much, about that be committed” monologue.  {Direct Rumble Link}

During an MSNBC pundit round panel, the ever smart Al Sharpton has thunk up just the right metaphor for the moment, as he turns deliberately to his fellow panelists and declares, “can you imagine our reading that James Madison or Thomas Jefferson tried to overthrow the government?”

lolol… And he’s looking so pleased with himself. The funniest part is no one on the panel had the nerve to say, “um, Al, they did”!   Oh, it’s too funny… WATCH:

Lord, thank you.  Give them exactly these tongues.  I needed that giggle today and just can’t stop laughing.

Is America Headed for Civil War?

posted by Becky Noble at RedStateVIP

As we get older, we always begin to sound like our parents and talk about how different America was when we were growing up. It seems to be an inevitability. No one really likes change that we did not initiate ourselves, and perhaps it is a reminder of our own mortality. But in 2023, it is not just a case of walking into an old man bar and listening to the old guys talk about what used to be on a particular corner, or how things used to be. It is much more ominous and, quite frankly, scary. In this age of government censorship and sitting presidents indicting their chief political rival, there is no shortage of people saying that the political mood of the nation is like nothing they have ever seen.

Derrick Evans is a former member of the West Virginia House of Representatives and is currently running for Congress. On Wednesday, he tweeted a question that perhaps many Americans have pondered to themselves, “Do you think we are already in the early stages of a civil war?” Wow. A pretty loaded question, but maybe a pretty complex one. It certainly depends on what side of the political aisle you come down on as to how you might answer it. But Evans may be more equipped and may have earned the right to ask it more than most. Evans was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He was arrested and charged with one count of civil disorder and served three months in prison.

Again, a pretty volatile question. The ingredients for any civil war don’t happen overnight, and that would also be the case here. Many conservatives might argue that the groundwork was laid in 2008, when then-candidate Barack Obama famously (or infamously) announced that “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” What did he mean by that? Chances are, we never would have gotten a straight answer. Since then, polls have shown that many Americans think that Barack Obama, who had a golden opportunity to bring all Americans together, did just the opposite and made race relations much worse. The left and the media took every opportunity to brand anyone that criticized or disagreed with Obama a racist. Perhaps this was the first step.

The presidency of Donald Trump is arguably one of the most significant in American history for many reasons. Trump delivered on many conservative principles when it came to things like the economy, foreign relations, crime, and immigration. But the demonization of Trump has gone way beyond just him being the target. We have gone from simple dislike of Trump to a rabid obsession to destroy anyone and anything remotely associated, not just with Trump, but his supporters, and conservative ideals in general.

But for all the things the left assured us Donald Trump would do, Joe Biden has done all that and then some. His administration and Biden himself are among the most corrupt American leaders in our history. We have never seen government overreach and all-out attempts to erase Americans’ freedom of speech and expression, in addition to other constitutional rights, like this before. And it has divided Americans like no other time since, well, before the Civil War. Americans are languishing in jail because they went to the Capitol to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Many Americans feel they are being forced to comply with social and secular issues like gay pride, transgenderism, and climate change. The pandemic brought us mandatory lockdowns, vaccines, and censorship of vital information, all initiated by the government. They see the rights of fringe groups, often those that comprise less than one percent of the population, being placed above their own rights. They see, more and more, a government that has nothing but disdain and hatred for them and views them as the enemy that must be squashed.

Replies to Derrick Evan’s tweet were brutally realistic and had a twinge of fear to them. One response was, “No, but we may see states begin to question federal authority.” That is a possibility and, it might be argued, is the next step. Other responses went something like this, “It’s definitely brewing,” “Something’s about to give,” and “Every indicator is there.” Another said they believe that the 2024 election may speed up the possibility, and still another described the current state of divided Americans as “a cold civil war.”

Whether cold or hot, human nature tells us that you can only push people so far, and then they begin to push back. In what form that comes in is at present unknown. One response to Evans may have put it best, “I pray that’s not the case, but history is the teacher.”

WATCH: CBS News Takes Fangirling of Jack Smith to Absurd Heights in Latest Round of ‘Walls Are Closing In'

Sister Toldjah reporting for RedState 

Regardless of what one thinks regarding the indictments against former President Donald Trump, one thing that there should be universal agreement on regarding the latest developments is that mainstream “news” outlets should not be using the occasion to cheerlead for one side or the other.

As RedState readers understand all too well, though, so-called reporters have demonstrated over the last six years or so that when it comes to the 2024 GOP presidential candidate, they consider objectivism to be a purely optional thing – with very few choosing that option.

Case in point, how CBS News covered the story of the third indictment of Trump, which revolves around an alleged plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Trump has pled not guilty.

Norah O’Donnell, who is the anchor and managing editor for CBS Evening News, was live on air Thursday for a “special report” on the indictment. During one segment, she mentioned how both Trump and the special counsel in the case, Jack Smith, were in the courtroom during the arraignment.

But take a look/listen at the tone, tenor, and remarks made by O’Donnell regarding Smith. Instead of telling us what type of prosecutor he allegedly is, O’Donnell took the fangirling to absurd levels by pointing out how he supposedly is a man of “grit and determination” because he’s competed in a lot of triathlons including one he participated in 10 weeks after being struck by a truck:

“Also in the courtroom is the special counsel, Jack Smith, and I want to spend a moment on Jack Smith because he is essentially who Donald Trump is up against in multiple of these indictments. The two, of course, the classified documents and the January 6 one. And they’re sitting across from each other inside this courtroom. Jack Smith is someone who has run [in] over and competed in over 100 triathlons. He was reportedly at one point hit when he was on his bike by a truck and 10 weeks later, he ran another triathlon. This is a man of a lot of grit and a lot of determination. And even what we have seen in these indictments is just a sliver of what they know and his prosecutorial team knows. Right? “

Robert Costa, who is CBS News’ chief campaign/election correspondent, gushed accordingly.

“His aggressive approach to his personal health and exercise correlates to how he approaches his persecution and his strategy,” Costa proclaimed. “We’ve talked a lot about how the former President is under pressure, but Jack Smith is also under pressure today.”

Watch:

The bizarre yet predictable back and forth was reminiscent of how CNN reacted to Smith being spotted in mid-July standing in line to buy a Subway sandwich.

They literally suggested that he was doing it to “send a message” to Trump:

So, according to our intellectual betters in the press, Jack Smith is going to be successful in his prosecution of Trump because he stands in line for lunch at a blue-collar food establishment like a normal guy and runs in triathlons.

By these standards, I guess this means the walls really are closing in or something. Or so they want you to think, anyway.