The President's Daily Brief - PDB Afternoon Bulletin | December 8th, 2023: Iranian Proxies Hit US Embassy & Backlash Mounts Against Ivy League Leaders

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

In this episode of The PDB Afternoon Bulletin:  Multiple mortars rained down on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Friday, in a sign that Iranian-backed militants are escalating their attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in the region. MIT, Harvard and UPenn are facing national outrage after their presidents struggled to condemn widespread antisemitism on their campuses. As donors pull funds and calls for resignations mount, Congress is now launching an investigation into how these schools deal with the continued harassment of their Jewish communities. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The PDB Afternoon Bulletin.     Email: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's Friday, December 8th. Welcome to the PDB afternoon bulletin. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. Let's get briefed. Multiple rockets rained down on the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad on Friday, in a sign that Iranian-backed militants are escalating their attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in the region. Also, MIT, Harvard, and U.PEN are facing national outrage after their presidents struggled to condemn widespread anti-Semitism on their campuses. As donors pull funds and calls for resignations mount, Congress is now launching an investigation into how these schools deal with the continued harassment of their Jewish communities. But first, our afternoon spotlight.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad came under a barrage of mortar fire on Friday from an unidentified Iranian-backed proxy group operating in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. the region. Now, it was the most aggressive attack yet on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq and Syria, who have been regularly targeted by Iranian-backed militias since the Israel-Hamas conflict began. Now, officials reported minor damage to the compound's infrastructure, but an embassy spokesperson reported that there were no casualties. At least seven 60-millimeter mortar rounds landed outside and inside the U.S. Embassy compound during Friday's early morning attack. Officials said an Iraqi security agency building inside Baghdad's green zone was also damaged by the mortars.

At this time, no group has taken credit for the attack. It was the first time the U.S. Embassy and Baghdad was targeted since the Israel-Hamas War broke out. Now, Iranian-backed proxy groups have carried out 78 attacks on U.S. and co-eurole. forces since October 17th in Iraq and Syria, injuring more than 60 service members. 37 of those attacks have targeted bases in Iraq, while 41 have occurred in Syria. While there was a brief lull in activity during the limited truce between Israel and Hamas, Iranian-back groups have resumed their attacks with a vengeance. On Sunday, a militant group launched multiple rockets at the Ramalian landing zone in Syria, though no injuries

or damaged infrastructure were reported. The U.S. also killed at least five Iranian-backed militia members in a drone strike in Iraq on Sunday after U.S. forces received intelligence that their group was planning to target them with a one-way attack drone. Now, the counter strike there marked the fourth limited response by the Biden administration to attacks by these Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria. Meanwhile, Iranian-backed Hote militants in U.S. Meanwhile, Iranian-backed Hote militants in Yemen have escalated their assaults on U.S. naval and commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea. On Wednesday, a U.S. military official confirmed that a U.S. warship shot down an unmanned aerial drone in the southern Red Sea launched from Houdi-controlled areas of Yemen.

Now, Sheikh Ali Damush, a leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, said in remarks on Friday that attacks throughout the region by Iranian-backed groups are designed to pressure the U.S. into ending its support for Israel's counteroffensive in Gaza. The Biden administration has faced mounting criticism for their handling of these provocations with many Republicans saying that the continued attacks show that the White House's deterrent strategy is not working. Biden has reportedly been reluctant to approve more aggressive response options, fearing such retaliations could spark a wider regional conflict with Iran. Now, there's no doubt that the Pentagon has compiled a very robust target package for the White House to consider when discussing deterrence options in response to the continued Iranian guided provocations.

To date, the counterstrikes by the Biden administration have been limited in scope and scale and have failed if the objective was to deter further drone and missile attacks on U.S. and allied forces and infrastructure. An interesting question here is, if the Iranian regime's purpose in launching almost 80 attacks via their proxies in the past four weeks is to pressure the U.S. into ending or significantly limiting its support for Israel and the Gaza conflict, well, the question is, is that strategy working? There has been a noticeable and significant shift in rhetoric coming from the White House in recent days, with the emphasis less on Israel's right to respond and defend itself from Hamas, and more on the need for Israel to restrain their response and consider a ceasefire. In reality, that shift in narrative within the White House is likely a complex combination of factors,

increasing international pressure to limit the number of Palestinian casualties, fear of an escalating conflict, partly driven by the constant barrage of Iranian-sponsored missile drone attacks and domestic political pressure as Arab American and youth voters protest against White House support for Israel. All right, coming up after the break, the backlash against MIT, Harvard, and UPenn has been swift in the wake of bizarre and slightly unhinged testimony by their leaders earlier this week in Congress. We discussed the fallout, including a new congressional investigation focused on the schools. I'll be right back. Welcome back to the PDB afternoon bulletin. The fallout continues against the presidents of three of America's top universities

following a disastrous congressional hearing where the academic leaders struggled to condemn proliferating anti-Semitism on their campuses. In the wake of the widely mocked hearing, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced Thursday that their opening an investigation into MIT, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania to probe their handling of harassment against Jewish students. As we covered yesterday on the PDB, the presidents of MIT, Harvard, and UPenn, caused widespread outrage when they were asked a basic question regarding whether calls for the genocide of Jews violated their respective codes of conduct on bullying and harassment. Now, instead of answering with a simple and obvious yes, the three presidents equivocated on the context of the situation,

arguing it would only violate their codes if the calls for genocide turned into conduct. They took their view that it really depended on the context. Now, they seemed at times bemused that the Congressional Committee would dare question their positions, and at times they seemed condescending, acting as if the committee made. members just weren't clever enough to understand the nuances of their sophisticated academic answers to the question, and again, the question being does calling for the genocide of Jews constitute bullying and harassment? As an aside, the New York Times, the very next day, ran a headline implying that the Republican-led committee had tried to pin down the university presidents and

put them on the defensive, as if they had been thrown a trick question. The Times basically took the same position as the university presidents, at least initially. It was to them all about context and complexity. By demanding a simple yes or no answer, well, the rubs on the committee were just trying to corner the elite super-sophisticated university leaders. Let me just repeat the question again that the presidents were faced with. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your university's code of conduct on bullying and harassment. Unless I'm missing something, it's not a trick question.

It shouldn't demand any pondering or conversation about context, particularly from university folks who have spent the past several years teaching our children that words are violence, they're creating safe spaces for their feelings, and rewriting or banishing words and pronouns in order to keep anyone from feeling angst or discomfort. Well, it didn't take long for their video testimony to go, as the kids say, viral. As a result, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, slammed U-Pen President Elizabeth McGill on Wednesday, calling her testimony, quote, absolutely shameful, and asked the U-Pen Board

of Trustees to hold her accountable. The board quickly arranged a meeting on Thursday to discuss the fallout, and while a spokesman for U-Pen said they had no plans for, quote, imminent leadership change, reports suggest the board's chair, Scott Bulk, will meet with McGill to discuss her future at the institution in the coming days. Now, the board of U-Pens-Warton Business School came to a faster conclusion, calling on Thursday for the school to remove McGill from her post. That followed a report that Ross Stevens, founder and CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, withdrew a $100 million donation to UPenn over McGill's testimony.

In a damage control video released Wednesday, McGill clarified that she actually does understand that calling for the genocide of Jews is, quote, evil, plain, and simple. Now, whether she understood that fact during her testimony or just figured it out after the backlash, well, we're just glad she cleared it up. She explained that her moral failures at Tuesday's hearing were because she was preoccupied with university policies regarding free speech and was, quote, not focused on, but should have been the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate, end quote.

If you think that sounds, like a cover-your-ass response, created after McGill met with her team and university communications personnel, and the gaggle probably included school lawyers and members of the team responsible for alumni donations, well, there's a chance you'd be right. Now, Harvard President Claudine Gay, well, she took a different tact when she addressed the controversy in a statement on Wednesday, blaming the backlash on people's confusion over what she was trying to say. Yeah, that's it. The folks listening just weren't smart enough to understand her. She said, quote, there are some who have confused a right-to-free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students. She added the calls for genocide are

vile and have no place at Harvard, an obvious point that she was apparently unable to make at the hearing just a day earlier. Meanwhile, MIT President Sally Cornbloth has been relatively silent amid the backlash, although a spokesman for the school said Thursday that MIT, quote, rejects anti-Semitism in all its forms and will cooperate with the Congressional Committee's investigation. Cornbluth is undoubtedly hoping that the backlash over their lack of moral clarity will focus on McGill and Gay, and she'll be able to sidestep the spotlight. Republican Representative Virginia Fox, the committee chairwoman, warned academic institutions across the country that they should also expect investigations, saying, quote, their litany of similar failures has not gone unnoticed. It's worth observing that prior to this moment, that progressive, who delighted in policing speech on campus, shaming or disciplining students who failed to properly

waive the woke banner of justice, are now complaining that the criticism of the university presidents could infringe on free speech on campuses across the country. It's highly likely that they won't see the irony in the situation. All right, finally, one last story for today's bulletin. It seems that you can't keep a good dictator down. Russian president, Vladimir Putin announced earlier today during an awards ceremony that he would run for another term as president. How about that? The next elections are what passes elections in Russia, are in mid-March this coming year. Now, Putin has served four terms as president since 2000. If he wins in March, and really what are the odds of that not happening, then he'll continue as president at least until

2030. Putin's only 71 years old, which by U.S. political standards makes him a toddler. The only Russian leader to serve longer than Putin at this point is that old scallywag Joseph Stalin. He was in charge for 29 years, longer if you count his time as general secretary of the Communist Party. Putin would need to run again in 2030 in order to surpass Stalin and claim the title of Russia's top tyrant. And that, my friends, is the PDB afternoon bulletin for Friday 8 December. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at PDB at thefirsttv.com. I'm Mike Baker. I'll be back on Monday. Until then, stay informed. Stay safe. Stay cool.

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