It was like the gates of hell had opened, and the American people had accidentally wandered in. On Wednesday night, 5/10/2023, at 8:00 PM, the American people watched with disbelief and repugnance as a television network permanently gave up any iota of credibility they had and a traitor showed he was not only still a traitor but somehow even a worse traitor than anyone thought.

The CNN town hall was a disgrace. I think I speak for almost everybody in saying it was a complete failure, a pathetic attempt at garnering ratings and showing the American people the worst side of the media.

The “town hall” began with a horrifying start as donald trump called the American people stupid — or rather all the people who don’t believe the 2020 election was stolen — which means almost everybody.

Trump showing insanity is alive and well within him, babbled on incoherently about cameras, ballot stuffing, and people voting with 7 ballots apiece. At times he sounded like an escaped mental patient, as his word vomit often made no sense and was tinged with eye-popping rage and disdain.

Calling January 6 a “beautiful day,” Trump said he had few regrets about it and that people were there with “love in their hearts.” He also blamed Nancy Pelosi for the terrorist attack.

Trump insisted Mike Pence had been in no danger (I guess he doesn’t know what gallows are used for) and said the day was Pence’s fault anyway because he refused to break the law and override the election results.

Trump proceeded to call a black police officer (a hero who had saved countless lives) a “thug” for killing Ashli Babbitt. Trump went on to defame E. Jean Carroll, asking the audience what kind of woman she was. He also attacked the host, Kaitlin Collins, calling her “nasty.”

Trump also called for Republicans to crash the economy by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. On and on, he went, like a robot that someone had programmed and now couldn’t stop. He lied. He manipulated. He talked and talked and talked, saying little and insulting almost everyone he possibly could.

It was a miserable, dismal, horrifying, pathetic, disgusting event. Even CNN staff were reportedly horrified at the way things went. Numerous articles quoted various CNN employees talking about how awful the night was. CNN should be ashamed of itself. As for ratings?

They might have gotten them. But it’s a huge price to pay for losing one’s soul. CNN will never ever get its reputation back unless or until Chris Licht is fired or resigns. It has now become an American joke, no longer a news network, and the fact that Licht hasn’t already resigned tells one all they need to know.

The post The gates of hell appeared first on Palmer Report.

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China’s foreign minister is expected to visit Australia in July as diplomatic relations between the two trading partners stabilise, the South China Morning Post reported on Friday.

The visit by the minister, Qin Gang, has not been officially announced but would take place in July, the newspaper reported, citing a source “close to the Chinese government”.

An Australian academic, James Laurenceson, director of the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) at the University of Technology Sydney, said he was aware of a July visit but could not confirm a date.

The office of Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, did not respond to a request for comment.

Diplomatic exchanges were frozen in 2020 as China put curbs on a dozen Australian exports after it was angered by an Australian call for an international investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tension has eased since Australia elected a Labor government in May last year although there has been no change in policy on China and a defence shakeup will see it work more closely with security partner the United States.

Wong visited Beijing in December.

“Qin Gang visiting Australia is big news in that he’ll be the highest-profile Chinese official to arrive since the bilateral thaw,” Laurenceson told Reuters.

“A reciprocal visit to Australia by Qin Gang for the 2023 Foreign and Strategic Dialogue is part of the restored normal course of bilateral diplomacy,” he said.

The dialogue is an annual formal meeting between the two nations, whose foreign ministers last met in March on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in New Delhi.

China is Australia’s largest trading partner, with two-way trade in goods worth A$287 billion ($195 billion) in 2022, dominated by iron ore exports that China cannot easily replace.

Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell is meeting his Chinese counterpart in Beijing on Friday. Australia is pushing for the removal of all of China’s trade barriers, which began to ease this year. read more

China’s ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, said in an interview in China’s state-owned Global Times newspaper on Friday that it was a crucial year to stabilise ties.

“At present, the operation of global industrial and supply chains is blocked, and trade and investment activities continue to slump,” he said.

“China-Australia pragmatic cooperation is not only conducive to the stable economic development of the two countries, but also has special significance for China and Australia to cope with global economic challenges.”

Australia was a stable supplier of minerals and energy resources, he said, while China exported cheap industrial and consumer goods to “help Australian consumers reduce living costs and curb inflation”.

Hundreds of migrants from around the world seeking a better life in the United States have instead found themselves trapped in squalid conditions near the Mexican border, tantalizingly close to their destination, and desperate.

On the eve of the expiration of Title 42, the COVID-era provision blocking most asylum-seekers from seeking legal entry into the United States, hundreds of migrants have camped out at the border between Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego.

Some of them have been stuck for nearly a week, hoping to turn themselves in to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, but instead are waiting in the open air, stuck in a legal limbo.

“We are very tired and hungry and I have been here for six days,” said Pham Thanh, 28, of Vietnam, speaking through the bollards of a 30-foot (10-meter) border barrier.

“President Biden, I’m asking to save us, please,” he said.

Confusion reigns among the migrants – though the expiration of Title 42 once might have offered a better chance for asylum, new rules taking its place will deny asylum to almost all migrants who cross illegally, forcing them to decide whether they have a better shot at life in the U.S. by crossing now or later.

The estimated 400 migrants come from around the world. Reuters spoke to people from Vietnam, Afghanistan and Colombia on Thursday. They are camped out in U.S. territory on a strip of land between two imposing border walls.

The southern wall marks the official U.S.-Mexican border and is relatively easy to traverse. There are some gaps or places where it is easy to climb. The second, northern wall – 30 feet (10 meters) tall in many places – hems them in. Many would like to enter the United States and turn themselves in to seek asylum.

Customs and Border Protection officials did not immediately respond to a Reuters request to explain how they are handling these migrants.

Border Patrol agents have organized them into groups, prioritizing those who arrived first and women traveling with children, according to Reuters witnesses. Each is given a color-coded wrist band – a sort of time stamp to mark their place in line.

The highest priority group is occasionally called away for processing. Agents take pictures of their faces and passports.

“I wasn’t that well informed. I thought that coming here, asking the country for help, we would be received with open arms. I didn’t think we’d be left here for a week, in the cold and rain and with very little food,” said Luisa Fernanda Herrera Sierra, 22, of Colombia.

On the north side of the second wall, helmeted Border Patrol agents zip about on four-wheeled all-terrain vehicles. When they are present, aid groups stand back. But when they leave, aid workers distribute food and water through the bollards in the wall, again prioritizing women with children.

Beyond food and water, another lifeline volunteers provide is the charging of cell phones, so that migrants can communicate with loved ones back home.

Hashmutallah Habibi, 26, of Afghanistan, said he set out for the United States because “we cannot sit at home and wait for good things to happen in our country.”

But he never expected to get stuck at the foot of a dusty ravine, without a shower or clean clothes for six days, with a sick sister.

“I’m just hoping and praying that today they take us in because if they don’t take us then my future and my family future is dark because we escaped from dark place,” Habibi said.

Many of the migrants know they have a difficult road ahead, as many if not most or all have not applied for asylum in another country before arriving here.

Fabian Camilo Hernandez, 26, of Colombia, who is traveling with his wife and 22-month-old baby, said he would not have set out on the journey had he known what was to lie ahead.

“It’s hard to see him crying, not sleeping well,” Hernandez said. “I don’t want to think about what might happen. I just hope they let us in.”

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British defence secretary confirms UK will donate long-range missiles to Ukraine; Zelenskiy says country needs more time to prepare for spring offensive

Britain’s defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has confirmed reports that the UK is donating long-range Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine. Wallace said Ukrainians will have the “best chance to defend themselves”.

The US ambassador to South Africa has accused the country of covertly providing arms to Russia – a charge that drew an angry rebuke from Pretoria. Reuben Brigety told a media briefing that the US believed weapons and ammunition had been loaded on to a Russian freighter that docked at a Cape Town naval base in December. “We are confident that weapons were loaded on to that vessel and I would bet my life on the accuracy of that assertion,” Brigety said, according to a video of the remarks. “The arming of Russia by South Africa … is fundamentally unacceptable.”

A Ukrainian brigade commander fighting in the ruins of Bakhmut said Russian mercenary forces have stepped up shelling and artillery attacks in recent days and were not facing a munitions shortage, despite its chief’s claims to the contrary. Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Thursday that the situation on the flanks near the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut was unfolding in line with the “worst of all expected scenarios”.

Poland’s defence minister, Mariusz Blaszczak, confirmed that the army was aware of a possible missile heading towards the country in December but failed to inform the government. Poland has been on alert for possible spillover of weaponry from the war in neighbouring Ukraine, especially since two people were killed near the border last November by what Warsaw concluded was a misfired Ukrainian air defence missile.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the country needs more time to prepare for a much-anticipated spring counteroffensive, saying: “We can go forward and be successful. But we’d lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time.”

Zelenskiy again denied any Ukrainian responsibility for the drone incident over the Kremlin. Russia has accused Washington and Kyiv of masterminding the attack, which it described as an assassination attempt on Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Putin was not in the Kremlin at the time, and no injuries were caused by the drones.

A Ukrainian drone attacked an oil storage depot in the Russian border region of Bryansk, the local governor has claimed in a post on his Telegram channel on Thursday. There were no casualties after the attack on the facility near the town of Klintsy, owned by Russia’s Rosneft oil company, though one storage tank was partly damaged, the governor, Alexander Bogomaz, said.

Belgorod’s governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, claimed that seven settlements in the Russian region have been left without electricity after Ukrainian shelling over the border.

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