A Pentagon Pick, Presidential Meetings, A Pollster Retires, & Paul vs. Tyson

November 18, 2024

Hello, readers – happy Monday! Today, we’ll be talking about a Pentagon pick, Russia & Ukraine, Argentina’s arrests, the meeting between Joe Biden & Xi Jinping, Trump’s energy secretary pick, a pollster retiring, and the Paul/Tyson fight.

Here’s some good news: Over 30 geographic features in California will remove a derogatory term for Native American women by 2025. Also, the U.S. Postal Service announced it will release a stamp in 2025 commemorating Betty White.

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” – Will Rogers

A Confusing Time In Kyiv

(Zelenskyy by Beata Zawrzel via Getty Images)

Things are changing fast in the Russia-Ukraine war. While the situation might have looked bad for Ukraine with the incoming Trump White House, the Biden administration has left Kyiv with a nice little parting gift, and the U.K. has backed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s push for a negotiated end to the conflict in 2025.

Over the weekend, sources within the Biden White House told the press that the president had decided to lift restrictions on U.S. missiles given to Ukraine – American missiles can now be used to conduct long-range strikes into Russian territory, crossing a line in the sand drawn by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Meanwhile, British politicians have widely agreed across party lines that their country should support Zelenskyy’s plan to end the war with a peace deal next year. While Zelenskyy seemed happy to keep up the fight with the help of the Biden administration, he’s sniffed out the fact that the Trump White House won’t be as supportive – instead, he’s appealed to Trump’s reputation as a “deal maker,” saying his negotiation prowess will help the war “end sooner.” European leaders have also shifted their tones on the conflict, with German Chancellor Olaf Schulz making a call to Putin requesting that he come to the negotiating table.

NDAs, Tattoos, & Fox News Hosts, Oh My!

President-elect Trump has chosen military veteran Peter Hegseth to head his incoming Department of Defense, but some new information about the former “Fox & Friends” host has come to light. Hegseth has been accused of sexually assaulting a 30-year-old woman working as a conservative political group staffer at a conference in 2017. When she threatened to sue Hegseth for the assault, he offered her a hush payment of an undisclosed amount – she took the payment and signed an NDA, and Hegseth was able to keep his job as a Fox News host.

The 13-year National Guard vet also has some… interesting tattoos. On his bicep is the phrase Deus Vult – “God Wills It” – a Christian battle cry from the Crusades, and on his chest is the Jerusalem cross, another Christian symbol by Crusaders. When his National Guard higher-ups saw footage of his tattoos, which have also been used by the Proud Boys and other right-wing extremists, they decided to block him from working security at the Biden inauguration. If you combine those tattoos with the viewpoints expressed by Hegseth in “American Crusade,” where he discusses America’s “Judeo-Christian” culture and the need to fight leftists, globalists, and Muslims, you might understand why some people are concerned about the incoming Pentagon chief.

Buenos Arrests In Buenos Aires

(Argentine police by Luciano Gonzalez via Getty Images)

Argentina has agreed to arrest 61 Brazilian citizens hiding within its borders who are wanted in Brazil for participating in a January 6-style attempt to overthrow the country’s 2023 election and reinstate the government of ousted ex-president Jair Bolsonaro.
About 3,000 people were arrested in relation to the riots, and in June, Brazilian authorities estimated that about 50-100 rioters had escaped to Argentina to evade law enforcement. So far, two of those escapees have been handed over to Brazil – both of them face prison sentences.

A Big Deal For Biden

It seems like the Biden admin is turning a new leaf on its way out. On Saturday, U.S. President Joe Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru and they had themselves an agreeable old time. In their last meeting as heads of state, the two leaders agreed to a pact that would ban both countries from using AI to control their nuclear weapons systems and made progress towards the release of two U.S. prisoners being held in China.
Xi told Biden that he hoped that the U.S. and China would do more to “inject more certainty and positive energy into the turbulent world.” Biden agreed, adding that the two countries need to participate in more in-person meetings as they “prevent miscalculations, and they ensure the competition between our two countries will not veer into conflict.” The White House has been trying to secure a nuclear non-proliferation agreement over the past four years.

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Wright To Be Wrong

CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy Chris Wright is President-elect Trump’s pick for energy secretary. Wright is a big fan of oil and gas expansion, especially fracking, and is very much not a big fan of fighting climate change. Wright has never served in government, but the Energy Department is in charge of maintaining the country’s nuclear weapons.
The agency also oversees 17 national research laboratories, approves natural gas exports, ensures environmental cleanup of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex, and promotes scientific and technological research. Next, Trump is expected to name Garfield the cat as head of the Mondays Department.

Selzer Falls Flat

Pollster J. Ann Selzer announced yesterday that she’s retiring from political polling. “Over a year ago I advised the Register I would not renew when my 2024 contract expired with the latest election poll as I transition to other ventures and opportunities,” Selzer wrote in an op-ed for the newspaper.
While Selzer seems to imply that this was always the plan, her polling leading up to the presidential election – which found Harris at 47% and Trump at 44% in Iowa – was ultimately so far off it was almost laughable. According to recent estimates, Trump took Iowa with 56% of the vote.

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65 Million Elder Abuse Viewers

If you were on the internet last week, you probably heard at least a little bit of buzz about Friday’s Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul boxing match. Tyson, 58, is a few decades past his heavyweight prime, while Paul, 27, has inflated his record by choosing to box washed-up MMA fighters.
According to Netflix, which broadcast the fight, the streaming platform saw a whopping “65 million concurrent streams” of the bout, spread across 60 million households. That’s a new high for Netflix and is more than its 2023 NFL Christmas Day broadcast. For context, the 2024 Super Bowl had an average of 123.7 million viewers across multiple platforms.
Unfortunately, the fight wasn’t all that interesting. Tyson threw 97 punches over the 16-minute bout, landing just 18, while Paul threw 278 and landed 78. Paul seemed happy to not engage in much fighting, instead choosing to control the match with his jab and winning via unanimous decision. Will this disappointing fight be the one to convince the general public to stop tuning in to Paul’s matches? Or is the desire to watch him get knocked out on live broadcast just too great? Only time will tell.

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