RINGSIDE POLITICS – APRIL 27, 2021

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Welcome to another edition of Ringside Politics with Jeff Crouere

Today’s Hot Topics:

1) One day after talking to a TMZ photographer about UFOs and the highly anticipated UAP report that is supposed to be submitted by U.S. intelligence agencies by June 1st, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) told Fox Business he is “not sure they’re gonna come in on time.”

But the clock remains ticking for the Pentagon’s hush-hush program to investigate UFOs and the other intelligence agencies included in the request.

At the Pentagon, it’s called the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), and it has been ordered to prepare a detailed overview of the UFO mystery for submission to Congress.

2) John Kerry, a former secretary of state, said on Monday that he had never discussed covert Israeli airstrikes in Syria with Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, contrary to Mr. Zarif’s claim in a leaked conversation.

Mr. Zarif and Mr. Kerry spoke constantly when the two were negotiating the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The Iranian foreign minister said in the recording, reported by The New York Times on Sunday, that Mr. Kerry had informed him that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria at least 200 times.

The claim sparked a furor on Monday among conservatives who accused Mr. Kerry, who was secretary of state in the Obama administration and now serves as President Biden’s climate envoy, of betraying Israeli secrets.

But in a tweet on Monday evening, Mr. Kerry denied the assertion and pointed to reports long in the public domain about Israeli strikes on Iranian assets in Syria.

3) In a leaked audiotape that offers a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes power struggles of Iranian leaders, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the Revolutionary Guards Corps call the shots, overruling many government decisions and ignoring advice.

In one extraordinary moment on the tape that surfaced Sunday, Mr. Zarif departed from the reverential official line on Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of the Guards’ elite Quds Force, the foreign-facing arm of Iran’s security apparatus, who was killed by the United States in January 2020.

The general, Mr. Zarif said, undermined him at many steps, working with Russia to sabotage the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers and adopting policies toward Syria’s long war that damaged Iran’s interests.

“In the Islamic Republic the military field rules,” Mr. Zarif said in a three-hour taped conversation that was a part of an oral history project documenting the work of the current administration. “I have sacrificed diplomacy for the military field rather than the field servicing diplomacy.”

4) U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday announced a federal investigation of policing practices in the southern U.S. city of Louisville, Kentucky, where officers last year shot and killed Breonna Taylor, a Black emergency technician, during a bungled raid on her home.

The Justice Department’s “pattern or practice” investigation of the Louisville police is the second of a law enforcement agency following the conviction last week of former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin in the death of African American George Floyd while in police custody last year.

Garland announced the Justice Department probe of the Minneapolis police department one day after a jury found Chauvin, who is white, guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

Today’s Guests:

1) Ben Bergquam, National Correspondent, Real America’s Voice News

2) Michelle Hirstius, Author and Commentator; Ringside Politics All-Star

3) Austin Ruse, President of the Center for Family and Human Rights