The President's Daily Brief - April 22nd, 2024: Foreign Aid Fury, Airstrike Aftermath, & Surprise Sanctions

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

In this episode of The President's Daily Brief: Kicking off with the passage of the contentious $95 billion foreign aid legislation by the US House of Representatives, its components, and the immediate, heated response from Russia. We break down the new details about Israel's precise airstrike in Iran, an operation executed with surgical accuracy by the Israeli Air Force. In an unprecedented move the White House is getting ready to reveal new sanctions, not on Iran...but on Israeli Defense Forces. In our 'Back of the Brief' segment, over 1,000 US troops in Niger face desperate conditions, disconnected from vital support systems. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. Email: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's Monday, 22 April. Welcome to the President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. Let's get briefed. We'll kick things off today in Washington, D.C., where the U.S. House of Representatives has passed the long-delayed, long-blocked, long-debated, long-stalled $95 billion foreign aid legislation. We'll take a look at what's in the bill, as well as the furious reaction from Russian officials. Now, here's a pro tip. If Putin's furious, well, you're doing something right. Later in the show, new information is emerging about Israel's precision strike in Iran carried out last week by the Israeli Air Force. We'll have the latest details. Plus, in an unprecedented move, the White House is getting ready to reveal new sanctions, not on Iran, but on the Israeli defense forces. In today's back of the brief, we'll turn our attention to the African-Nove. nation of Niger, where over 1,000 U.S. troops are reportedly stranded, unable to get support,

medicine, resources, mail, or other items from the Pentagon. But first, today's PDB spotlight. After months of delay, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Saturday to approve $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. In four separate votes, the House passed legislation that includes $60 billion for Kiev, $26 billion for Israel, and humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza, and $8 billion for the Indo-Pacific region. The legislation is now headed to the Senate, which is expected to vote on it sometime this week. All indications are that it will pass without much of a problem, and after that, it will head to Biden's desk where the president has already said that he'll sign. Of course, the most controversial

the votes was for the aid to Kyiv. In the end, the vote was 311 to 112 in favor of Ukrainian aid, with a majority of Republicans voting against it and won voting present. Voting present, instead of yay or nay. Now that's taking a stand. Despite the opposition from many Republicans, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson received some political cover from former President Trump, who said in a truth social post that everyone agrees that Ukraine's survival and strength is important to the United States. He also chided Europe for not doing enough to assist the embattled nation. But Trump's comments weren't enough to sue the frustration of the Bill's Republican opponents, especially those on the GOP's hard right flank. Speaking to Maria Botaromo of Fox business,

Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green declared that Mike Johnson, Speakership is over, adding, quote, he needs to do the right thing and resign to allow us to move forward in a controlled process, end quote. She also accused Johnson of being a, quote, traitor to the entire country and threatened to bring her motion to vacate the speakership to the floor if Johnson refuses to step aside voluntarily. Green added, hey, my job isn't to govern, it's to sow chaos, raise my profile, and get a sweet TV and book deal after this Congress gig is up. Okay, that was fair enough. A fake quote.

The bill's passage also met with Fury from Moscow. Hey, look at that. They've got something in common with Marjorie Taylor Green. Apparently, they all want Ukraine to lose. Shortly after the aid was passed, a number of Russian officials lashed out at the U.S. Dmitri Medvedev, the former Russian president, current deputy chairman of Russia's security counsel, and the Russian official voted most likely to say something crazy, called the new aide Rousseophobic, saying that it,

would only serve to increase the number of victims of this war. In a post-to-tube telegram, he also expressed his wish that the United States would, quote, plunge into a new civil war as quickly as possible, end quote, I knew it. You can always count on Medvedev to say something inflammatory. He's the Marjorie Taylor Green of the Kremlin. Moscow's reaction was a stark contrast to that of the Ukrainian governments, which is obviously thrilled about the aid package. Writing on X, President Zelenskyy said, to the United States House of Representatives, both parties, and personally to Speaker Mike Johnson, for the decision that keeps history on the right track. He said the bill, quote, will keep the war

from expanding, save thousands and thousands of lives, and help both of our nations become stronger. Now, I get it. There are folks who argued against the Ukraine aid saying that the money should be spent in the U.S. on America's problems. And some argued that no money should go to Ukraine until the U.S. southern border is secured. Now, once again, more than one thing can be true at the same time. Money does need to be prioritized for border security and for U.S. infrastructure improvements, for law and order, for veteran services and a variety of other needs.

It can also be true that the U.S. needs to support Ukraine's fight against Putin. Whether they can drive Putin completely out of Ukraine is debatable. But if not, and the endgame is a negotiated settlement, that the Ukrainian people can accept, then they need to negotiate from a position of strength. Putin needs to feel the cost and pain of his invasion in order to drive him to the table to agree to a settled end to this conflict.

Without U.S. support, Putin understands that he will eventually win, which is why he and his sock puppet Medvedev are furious about the aid passage in Congress. All right, coming up after the break, we examine the latest details available on Israel's precision strike in Iran, executed by the Israeli Air Force just last week. Also ahead, the White House announces new sanctions on the horizon, but in a surprising twist,

they're targeting the Israeli defense forces. I'll be right back. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right, so I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a scorpion. full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice.

Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. Welcome back. We're learning more details about Israel's retaliatory strike on Iranian soil this past Friday. As we've been reporting, the strike appears to have been, well, frankly, much tamer than many people might have expected, especially considering the magnitude of Iran's drone and missile attack. However, it's becoming increasingly clear that the messages Iran and Israel were sending with their respective strikes were very different. While Iran wanted the world to witness a scale of its attack, in particular the sheer number of weapons it was able to launch,

Israel appears to have been sending a message about effectiveness and efficiency. According to a report in the New York Times, the attack took out a key part of a Russian-made air defense system on an S-300. anti-aircraft system. Satellite imagery analyzed by the Times show damage to the radar of an S-300 system at the 8th Shikari Air Base in Isfahan. Israel's choice of targets was not random. That particular air defense system that they hit is used to provide air cover to the Natanzan's nuclear facility, which is widely believed to be the center of Iran's clandestined nuclear program. Reports on the Israeli media claimed that the strike was carried out using a single advanced air-to-surface missile dubbed the rampage. The 15-foot missile can travel at supersonic speed, making it nearly

impossible to detect and intercept using standard air defense systems. The missile was reportedly fired from a warplane far from Israeli or Iranian airspace and went completely undetected by Iran's defensive systems. Now officially, Israel has been silent on the strike, but speaking to Israel's Channel 12 news, retired general Israel Ziv, a former IDF operations chief, said that the attack was not intended to cause major destruction, but to send a very clear message to Iran and demonstrate the wide, quote, technological gap between the two countries. In short, Israel's message was essentially, we're not going to hit your nuclear facilities this time, but if and when we do, there's nothing you can do to stop us. Meanwhile, Iran,

Chinese officials have been, well, frankly, just as mum about last week's strike as Israel has. They've largely been sticking to their original story that their air defense systems shot down three drones. In a telling moment, Iran's foreign minister, who was at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Friday, was asked by a journalist if he had any comment on Israel's attack, to which a member of his entourage answered, quote, what attack? All right. Let's turn our attention back to Washington, D.C., and that foreign aid package that passed through the House on Saturday. Tucked away in that legislation was a little surprise for President Biden, namely new sanctions on Iran's oil sector. As we've reported here on the

PDB, President Biden has been hesitant to place new sanctions on Iran's oil industry for fear of upsetting the global market, raising gas prices at the pump during election season, and angering China, a key buyer of Iranian oil. Instead, last week, his administration, levied sanctions against Iran's drone manufacturers, its steel industry, and an automaker, not exactly aggressive and decisive action against the regime. However, according to Bloomberg, the recently approved bill in the House introduces wider-ranging punitive measures against Iran, extending sanctions to international ports and shipping entities that deliberately handle Iranian crude and defy the current sanctions imposed by

the United States. Additionally, the legislation intends to escalate the so-called secondary sanctions, now encompassing all dealings between Chinese banks and the blacklisted Iranian financial institutions involved in purchasing crude oil and its byproducts. Analysts believe that the new sanctions could add as much as $8.40 to the price of a barrel of crude. But before you get excited, it's worth noting that the legislation includes what's referred to as presidential waiver authority, meaning that President Biden could opt to suspend the new sanctions if he sees fit. Now, sticking to the theme of sanctions, the White House is reportedly about to take

an unprecedented step by levying sanctions against members of the Israeli defense forces. According to Astoria Axios, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is expected to announce sanctions against the IDF's Netsahe Yohuda Battalion for human rights violations in the West Bank. Now, if you're unfamiliar with Netze Yehuda, it's a unit that's specifically tailored to the needs of ultra-Orthodox men who serve in the IDF. The battalion allows these soldiers to maintain their religious lifestyle while serving in the military. Its membership is known for including a number of radical settlers. Over the years, the battalion has been accused of numerous human rights violations, mostly involving incidents of violence against Palestinian civilians, all of which

those incidents occurred before the October 7th Hamas attack. Now, this would be the first time in history that the U.S. imposed sanctions on an Israeli military unit and would ban the infantry battalion from receiving any kind of U.S. military assistance or training. In opposed to X, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke out about the coming sanctions, writing, quote, at a time when our soldiers are fighting the monsters of terror, the intention to impose sanctions on a unit in the IDF is the height of absurdity. and a moral low, end quote.

But, having said that, it will play well with the hard left and progressives in President Biden's party who are upset about continued U.S. support for Israel. Coming up in today's back of the brief, we spotlight the difficult situation in Niger, where more than a thousand American troops find themselves marooned, cut off from essential supplies. I'll be right back.

In today's back of the brief, I wanted to follow up on a story we brought you last month about the African nation of Niger and its government's efforts to evict the U.S. military. To bring you up to speed, back in March, Niger's military junta announced that they were ending what's known as the Status of Forces Agreement. That agreement has allowed U.S. personnel to be deployed in the country since 2012. Since that report back in March, it appears that the situation on the ground for U.S. troops has deteriorated significantly. According to our report prepared by Florida Congressman Matt Gates, more than 1,000 troops stationed in the country are effectively

being held hostage there, not just by Niger's military junta, but by a Biden administration that, according to Gates, doesn't seem to care. The report draws on interviews with soldiers currently deployed in Niger who sought assistance from Representative Gates' office after their requests for support from the Departments of Defense and State were denied. According to Gates' report, The situation on the ground has become dire over the past month. Soldiers have been unable to receive necessary medical supplies, blood to replenish the base's blood bank, equipment repair supplies, and other routine material, including mail, from the Pentagon.

Some of the men on the base are reportedly even running low on life-saving medication. Moreover, Gates is accusing administration officials of covering up the mess to avoid embarrassment, warning that if the situation is left unresolved, it could turn into another Benghazi. Thankfully, it looks like the White House is finally beginning to move on the issue. According to defense officials, discussions have begun between the U.S. and Niger for an orderly withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country, although no timeline for the removal has been given. And that, my friends, is the President's Daily Brief from Monday, 22 April.

If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at P.E. Pdb at thefirstTV.com. And to listen to the show, add-free, become a premium member of the president's daily brief by visiting pdb premium.com. I'm Mike Baker. I'll be back later today with the PDB afternoon bulletin. Until then, stay informed. Stay safe.

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