Putin & Bannon Get on Trump’s Bad Side

Former Governor of Alabama Robert Bentley resigned on Monday after an ethics report concluded he used state resources to hide an affair. And yep, that’s exactly what this good ol’ boy did. The ethics committee was greatly abetted by information provided by his former wife. But don’t count ol’ Bobby Bentley out just yet!

Southern governors have proven to have more political lives than cats. Just ask Bill Clinton or Mark Sanford, the former South Carolina governor who mysteriously disappeared while “hiking the Appalachian trail.” Unfortunately for him, that stretch of land doesn’t reach all the way down to South America, where Marky Mark Sanford admitted he had escaped to with his Argentine lover. In an epic PR scandal, he lost his governorship, but he’s now a Congressman representing South Carolina’s first district. Awww, bless his dear little heart!

Putin is No Longer Trump’s BFF after Russia Vetoes a UN Resolution Condemning Syria’s Chemical Attack: Trump, the entertainer-in-chief, has pulled a 180 on Putin and spearheading this reversal has been Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Trump came into office claiming that he could strike a deal with Vlad the Putin, but now relations with Russia are the worse they’ve been since George W. Bush realized that peering into Putin’s soul was like staring into a dark abyss.

Putin did the one thing that diplomats absolutely can’t stand. He threatened to cancel a meeting and also made an ambassador wait for him. No, this isn’t a scene from Mean Girls, this is what’s going on in the halls of the Kremlin. The real-life version of Risk the board game played out in the UN as Russia vetoed a UN resolution (China abstained) that would have condemned last week’s chemical attack in Syria and required that Assad cooperate with an investigation into the attack. Russia has now vetoed 8 UN resolutions on Syria throughout the course of its civil war. Oh, and surprise, Trump says NATO is no longer obsolete. Ahh…normalcy via unpredictability.

Bannon’s Rapid Descent from Chief of Everything to Walking the Plank: Steve Bannon has been the object of extreme interest since Trump’s election (with a cover on Time magazine to show for it). Many thought of Bannon as the architect behind Trump’s rise, and the popular press even characterized him as the puppet master to Trump’s Pinocchio. But the past 48 hours have completely shattered that illusion. Bannon now appears to be fighting to hold onto his position after Trump spoke to the New York Post this week and downplayed Bannon’s role in helping him win the presidency.

Bannon is being blamed for poor policy, priorities, and process decisions, ranging from the travel ban to the epic collapse of the Trumpcare bill. But it seems Bannon’s point of overreach occurred when he resorted to grade school name calling with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. Kushner quickly went and told Trump daddy that the big Breitbart bully was being mean to him. Bannon must have forgotten that Trump Inc. is a family business and that Trump isn’t a die-hard ideologue like him. Bannon also forgot that no political figure has ever survived facing the ire of the first lady (just ask those who went up against Nancy Reagan). And make no mistake, the first lady in this administration is Ivanka Trump. We are confident that Bannon will not survive in the administration past July 4th. And that he won’t go quietly into that good night. Lights, camera, and please pass the popcorn!

Boko Haram in Nigeria Using Children as Suicide Bombers: Three years after 276 Nigerian girls were kidnapped by the terrorist group Boko Haram, another threat to the country’s children is their use by the organization as suicide bombers. So far this year, 27 children have died after detonating bombs strapped to their bodies that they are then forced to carry into markets, checkpoints, and other public places. The whereabouts of most of the 276 Chibok girls remain unknown, although 21 of the girls were released last year. According to Amnesty International’s country director for Nigeria, abductions of children in the Lake Chad region have not ceased: “These appalling abductions and other attacks, some of which constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, are carried out by Boko Haram on an almost daily basis.”

Rioting in Venezuela Continues: A 13-year-old boy is among four people killed over the past week as protests continued in Venezuela. Brayan Principal died in the western city of Barquisimeto after being shot in the stomach during a night of violent confrontations. More than 100 have been arrested and dozens injured in the past week, as thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest President Nicolas Maduro’s policies. Opposition members say Maduro’s government is taking aim at the country’s democratic institutions and inching toward authoritarianism. Riot police have used tear gas and water cannons against demonstrators in the capital city of Caracas.

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