After teasing the idea of commuting former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's prison sentence, President Trump has pulled the trigger.
Last summer, Trump said he was thinking "very strongly" about commuting Blagojevich's prison sentence, saying the former governor has "been in jail for seven years over a phone call where nothing happens — over a phone call which he shouldn't have said what he said, but it was braggadocio you would say." Six months later, Trump confirmed Tuesday he has commuted Blagojevich's sentence. This followed a report from The New York Times that he had done so.
"I did commute his sentence," Trump told reporters. "So he'll be able to go back home with his family after serving eight years in jail. That was a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence, in my opinion."
Blagojevich was convicted on corruption charges and sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2011 after trying to essentially sell former President Obama's Senate seat. He had been recorded saying of the seat, "I've got this thing, and it's f--ing golden. I'm just not giving it up for f--ing nothing." Trump said last year that there "have been many politicians — I'm not one of them, by the way — that have said a lot worse over the telephone." Blagojevich was also convicted over shakedown attempts involving a racetrack and a children's hospital as prosecutors cited a "pattern of racketeering activity" in office, NBC News reports.
Shortly after his comments last August, CNN reported that Trump seemed to have "backed off" the idea of commuting Blagojevich's sentence after receiving pushback from Illinois Republicans. But since then, he evidently came back around to the idea. Trump said Tuesday that Blagojevich "seemed like a very nice person" when he appeared "for a short while on The Apprentice," where Trump fired him after complaining that his "Harry Potter facts were not accurate." Brendan Morrow
Marty Golingan, a producer at One America News Network, a right-wing cable news channel often noted for its affinity for former President Donald Trump, told The New York Times he was worried his work may have helped inspire the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
At one point during the incident, Golingan said he caught sight of someone in the mob holding a flag with OAN's logo. "I was like, OK, that's not good. That's what happens when people listen to us," he told the Times, referring to OAN's coverage of the 2020 presidential election, which often gave credence to Trump's unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud and Democratic conspiracies.
Golingan said that many of his colleagues, including himself, disagreed with the coverage. "The majority of people did not believe the voter fraud claims being run on the air," he told the Times.
Indeed, the Times interviewed 18 current and former OAN employees, 16 of whom said the channel has "broadcast reports that they considered misleading, inaccurate, or untrue." But Allysia Britton, a former producer and one of more than a dozen employees to leave OAN in the wake of the riot, explained that while "many people have raised concerns ... when people speak up about anything, you will get in trouble." Read more at The New York Times. Tim O'Donnell
Speculation continues to swirl about renowned actor and proud Texan Matthew McConaughey entering politics in his home state. There's no telling if that will actually happen, but that didn't stop The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler from teaming up to get a sense of how voters feel about the possibility of McConaughey challenging Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) for his job next year.
The poll, released Sunday, is a bit of mixed bag for McConaughey. Among all voters, he actually held a 12-point advantage over Abbott, so in a head-to-head race, it seems like the idea is at least viable. Where the actor runs into some trouble is in the primaries. It's not entirely clear under what banner McConaughey, who has suggested he's "more of a moderate," would run, the Morning News writes. Only 30 percent of Republicans said they'd vote for him, compared to 56 percent who would back Abbott. Those numbers might help in the general election, but he'd be toast if he challenged Abbott within in his own party.
The more likely scenario is that McConaughey would run as a Democrat — 66 percent of Democratic voters said they'd back him over Abbott, who received just 8 percent support from the opposing party. Still, McConaughey wouldn't be a shoe-in. The poll also revealed that 51 percent of Texas Democratic primary voters prefer a progressive candidate, while just 25 percent are hoping for a centrist, which is seemingly the mold McConaughey fits.
The poll was conducted between April 6-13 among 1,126 registered Texas voters. The margin of error is 2.92 percentage points. Read the full results here and read more about a potential McConaughey run at The Week. Tim O'Donnell
It's rare that China and the United States are on the same page these days, but it appears the two powers made some progress when it comes to addressing climate change this past week.
In a joint statement on Sunday, Washington and Beijing announced they have agreed to cooperate with each other and other countries to "tackle the climate crisis." They will keep discussing "concrete actions in the 2020s to reduce emissions aimed at keeping the Paris Agreement-aligned temperature limits within reach."
Prior to the release of the statement, John Kerry, the Biden administration's climate envoy, traveled to Shanghai last week to meet with his Beijing counterpart, Xie Zhenhua. Kerry said Sunday that his discussions were productive, noting that "this is the first time China has joined in" calling climate change a "crisis." He also expressed optimism about the Chinese delegation saying the issue must be met with "urgency" and the fact that they talked about "enhancing" their emissions reduction goals. The language, at least, is "strong," Kerry said.
Li Shuo, the senior climate adviser for Greenpeace, said the joint statement "is as positive as the politics would allow," given that before its release the message of cooperation between the two countries was not one "we could assume."
President Biden will host a virtual climate change summit this week, with many world leaders expected to attend. Chinese President Xi Jinping has not formally confirmed his participation, but people familiar with the matter said he'll be there, The Wall Street Journal reports. Read more at The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. Tim O'Donnell
Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny could die "in a matter of days," his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote on Facebook on Saturday, NPR reports.
Navalny, who nearly died after a poisoning he has blamed on Russian President Vladimir Putin last August, is currently being held in a notorious penal colony outside of Moscow, where he is three weeks into a hunger strike. His physician Yaroslav Ashikhmin said test results Navalny's family shared with him showed he was at increased risk of cardiac arrest because of elevated potassium levels, and that his kidneys were deteriorating. "Our patient could die at any moment," Ashikhmin said in a translated Facebook post, per NPR.
The Kremlin has prevented Navalny's personal doctors from seeing him and insists he's receiving adequate care. Andrei Kelin, Russia's ambassador to the United Kingdom, told BBC on Sunday that Navalny "will not be allowed to die in prison" and suggested the Kremlin critic was merely trying to "attract attention."
Meanwhile, on Sunday, Navalny's allies put out an urgent call for his supporters to take to the streets en masse across Russia on Wednesday. Before the reports of Navalny's worsening condition, his team was determined to wait until 500,000 people had signed up to join the demonstration before announcing a date, but they've decided they can no longer wait for what they're calling "the final battle between good and neutrality." A "massive police crackdown" is expected in response, CNN's Bianna Golodryga reports. Read more at NPR. Tim O'Donnell