The President's Daily Brief - PDB Afternoon Bulletin | May 3rd, 2024: Ukraine Escalation Sparks Russian Threats & Iranian Scholarships For American Radicals

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

In this episode of The PDB Afternoon Bulletin:    The specter of a wider conflict in Europe is once again rearing its ugly head, as Russia lashes out at the U.K. and France over their posture regarding the war in Ukraine. Amid the anti-Israel upheaval consuming American college campuses, officials in Iran are offering pro-Palestinian students and faculty from the U.S. and Europe scholarships to universities in the Islamic nation. 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 PDB Afternoon Bulletin.  Email: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the PDB afternoon bulletin. Okay, to be fair, it's the time. It's more like the BDB late afternoon bulletin, thanks to some travel delays, possibly even the late afternoon early evening bulletin. But anyway, I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. Let's get briefed. First, the threat of escalation in Eastern Europe continues to build as Russia hits out at France and the UK over their advocacy for an expanded role in the Ukraine conflict.

Now, is it just me or does the world seem a bit testier? lately. Also, amid the anti-Israel upheaval, consuming American college campuses, officials in Iran are offering pro-Palestinian students and faculty from the U.S. and Europe scholarships to universities in the Islamic nation. Well, that's quite the offer. Now, I haven't checked out the course catalogs for Tehran University yet, so I don't know if they offer majors in DEI or gender studies or social justice, but I'll bet their tailgate parties before games are classic. Now, good luck, kids. Don't forget to write. Oh, and take the outside activists with you. First up, our afternoon spotlight. The specter of a wider conflict in Europe is once again rearing its ugly head, as Russia

lashes out at the UK and France over their posture regarding the war in Ukraine. In an interview with the Economist, published on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron said that he would consider sending French troops to the front lines of Ukraine if leaders in Kiev requested such assistance. It's like Macron is having roid rage all of a sudden. His T-levels have really shot up for some reason. He added that if Russian forces were to break through Ukraine's frontline defenses in the east, NATO leaders should seriously reconsider their role in the war, and that's according to a CBS news. report. Macron told the economist, quote, I'm not ruling anything out because we are facing someone who is not ruling anything out. If the Russians penetrate the front lines, if there is a Ukrainian

request, which is not the case today, we should legitimately ask ourselves the question about sending forces, end quote. Macron argued that Putin represents an existential threat to Europe and to pretend otherwise is naive. He added, quote, if Russia wins in Ukraine, we will no longer have security in Europe. Who can pretend that Russia would stop there? End quote. Now, okay, on one level he's not wrong. You can't trust Putin, and he's been clear Putin has in the past about his ambition to reconstitute some version of the defunct Soviet Union. But these comments from Macron, well, probably better said in private with other NATO leaders rather than posturing in public. The remarks came less than a week after Macron said he has open to using France's nuclear warheads

as part of a unified European nuclear deterrent against Russia. Macron has adopted an aggressive posture towards Russia in recent months as they continue to wage their brutal campaign in Ukraine. Back in March, the French president even went so far as to say that NATO should not rule out deploying troops to fight on the ground in Ukraine, and alarming fellow members of the alliance, many of whom walked those comments back. Officials with the Putin regime were quick to hit back, admonishing Macron for continuing to discuss the possibility of France's direct involvement on the ground in Ukraine. A spokesman for the Kremlin said, quote, this statement is very important

and very dangerous. This is a very dangerous trend, end quote. Now, France wasn't the only European power to provoke the ire of Russian leaders this week. British Foreign Secretary, David Cameron said Friday that Ukraine has every right to strike targets inside Russia using British supplied weapons. Cameron said, quote, Ukraine has that right. Just as you Russia is striking inside Ukraine, you can quite understand why Ukraine feels the need to make sure it's defending itself, end quote. Now the remarks stand in contrast to efforts from U.S. officials who have reportedly been urging leaders in Kiev to halt their strikes on oil refineries inside Russia. fearing the campaign could cause the war to significantly escalate, or could cause a rise in

prices at the gas pump in an election year. Oh, that was churlish of me. The Kremlin issued a fiery rebuke to Cameron, calling his remarks an admission that the West was waging a, quote, hybrid war against Russia. They also called it a, quote, dangerous tendency toward escalation in official statements from Western leaders. A spokesman for the Kremlin added, quote, this is a direct escalation of tension around the Ukrainian conflict, which would potentially pose a threat to European security. Cameron made his statements while on a visit to Kiev, where he pledged the UK would provide roughly $3 billion a year in aid to Ukraine for as long as necessary. The problem with these public comments now, from Macron and Cameron, is that they give Putin what he wants,

and in a sense what he needs, and that's an outside boogeyman. By the way, boogeyman is spelled with a Y, B-O-O-O-G-E-Y, not B-O-O-G-I-E, which, of course, would imply a man who boogies, sort of like, I'm your boogeyman by K-C-in-the- Sunshine Band. But I digress. The point being, these type of comments allow Putin to sell his narrative to the Russian public that he's in his own existential fight against the West, that NATO is somehow the aggressor, and Putin is just, valiantly defending the motherland. McCrown, and to a lesser degree, Cameron, are unnecessarily feeding into that false narrative. Coming up after the break, Iran is offering scholarships to anti-Israel protesters and faculty in America who have been expelled during the anti-Semitic protests currently gripping the U.S.

Now, can you imagine that call back to Mom and Dad? Hey, look, I know I've been expelled, but don't worry, I'm transferring. 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 Scorpio 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 to the afternoon bulletin. American radicals who claim they're tired of living under unbearable oppression in the U.S. are being given an out by none other than Iran, which is offering scholarships to students expelled during the anti-Israel protests. Given the protesters' apparent affinity for the Palestinian flag in Hamas, not to mention

their hatred of Israel, this could be just the academic opportunity they've been hoping for, and it's just the latest move by Iran to try to turn the key. chaos in America into a propaganda victory. Mohamed Muzeni, the head of an Iranian university in the southern region of Fars, extended the offer earlier this week, claiming that Iranian institutions wanted to show their solidarity with the anti-Israel protesters in America and Europe. Apparently, missing the irony of his statements, and to be fair, the Iranian regime isn't known for its ironic humor, he accused the U.S. of engaging in repressive tactics in their

response to campus demonstrations and of weaponizing violence as part of an autocratic crackdown. Moleseni said, quote, they exert a lot of violence in order to contain this raging movement and have even threatened to expel the students from universities and hinder their employment in the future. And such autocratic methods, he said, show the decline of global arrogance. He added, I'm a complete tool and nothing but a douche mouthpiece for the repressive and despotic Iranian regime, end quote. Okay, somewhere in there there's a fake quote. I'll leave it to you to suss it out. He said any student or faculty member expelled from American or European universities would be welcome at his university and said other academic institutions in Iran are likely prepared to take on Western students as well.

Iranian state media has reportedly been carrying live coverage of the protests in America, particularly the chaos at UCLA, where anti-Israel activists, counter-protesters, and police clashed in violent confrontations this week. So, the low-information actual students on campuses are now not only useful idiots for the outside activists and the groups organizing and funding the protests, they're doing double duty as useful idiots for the Iranian regime. Well done. You all get an A in being stuages. Leaders of the Islamic regime have been relishing the discord in America, eagerly weighing in on the protests and using it as an opportunity to denounce Israel and the West. Just last week, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, tweeted his support for pro-Palestinian

American protesters, along with a picture of demonstrators waving Hezbollah's flag in the streets of New York City. The following day, Iran's foreign minister treated his disgust at the supposed suppression and violent treatment of anti-Israel protesters by U.S. law enforcement, and that followed a similar condemnation earlier in the week from a senior Hamas official. Now, you'd think that the support that their protests are getting from the world's number one sponsor of terrorism might serve as a wake-up call for the actual students involved. However, the anti-Israel protests continue to wreck havoc on campuses across America. As of early Friday morning, more than 200 people were arrested on UCLA's campus,

where police have finally cleared out most of the protesters' encampment. And by the way, did you see all the trash and litter that the protesters left dumped around their encampment? Apparently, they're not climate activists. Elsewhere on the West Coast, police arrested some 30 protesters at Portland State University who had taken over and barricaded themselves inside a school library. Now, the good news is that the library books were never in danger of being touched. In New York City, police arrested 13 protesters at NYU and 43 at the new school, as they removed illegal encampments Friday morning.

Meanwhile, officials at the University of Pennsylvania asked city officials in Philadelphia for help on Friday, saying protests at their school have escalated beyond their control, And that's shocking since the feckless UPenn administrators spent days trying to negotiate and find common ground with the protesters. All told, more than 2,000 people have now been arrested at pro-Palestinian protests across the country. Statistics thus far seem to indicate that half or more of the total arrested have no affiliation with universities. And that, my friends, is the PDB afternoon bulletin for Friday, 3 May. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at PDB at thefirsttv.com. And remember, if you want to listen to the show ad-free, be sure to check out our premium membership at pdbpremium.com.

I'm Mike Baker. I'll be back on Monday. Until then, stay informed. Stay safe. Stay cool.