TAIPEI: Taiwan defense ministry said on Thursday it was closely watching Chinese military movements after a surge in warplanes joined drills with China’s Shandong aircraft carrier in the Pacific.
The Chinese military exercises coincide with a NATO summit in Washington where a draft communique says China has become a decisive enabler of Russia’s war effort in Ukraine and Beijing continues to pose systemic challenges to Europe and to security.
The Chinese carrier the Shandong passed close to the Philippines on its way to the Pacific exercises, Taiwan’s defense minister said on Wednesday.
In its daily update on Chinese military activity over the past 24 and released on Thursday morning, Taiwan’s defense ministry said it had detected 66 Chinese military aircraft operating around the island.
Of those, 39 passed to the south and southeast of Taiwan, the ministry said, having previously said it had detected 36 aircraft heading to the Western Pacific to carry out drills with the Chinese aircraft carrier the Shandong.
Taiwan’s defense ministry released two pictures, a grainy black and white one of a Chinese J-16 fighter and a color one of a nuclear-capable H-6 bomber, which it said were taken recently, but did not say exactly where or when.
“The military has a detailed grasp of the activities in the seas and waters around the Taiwan Strait, including of the Chinese communists aircraft and ships,” ministry spokesperson Sun Li-fang said in a statement, adding that included those aircraft and ships carrying out drills with the Shandong.
Taiwan’s forces had tracked the two Chinese warplanes photographed, he said.
China’s defense ministry has not responded to requests for comment on the Shandong’s activities.
Taiwan, which China views as its own territory, has complained of repeated Chinese military activity over the past four years as Beijing seeks to pressure the democratically governed island which rejects China’s sovereignty claims.
A spokesperson for the Chinese mission to the European Union said the NATO summit’s draft declaration is full of “belligerent rhetoric,” and the China-related content has provocations, “lies, incitement and smears.”
Ahead of the summit, Taiwan’s foreign ministry told Reuters it “welcomes NATO’s continuous increase in attention to peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region in recent years, and its active strengthening of exchanges and interactions with countries in the Indo-Pacific region.”
Taiwan is not the only hot spot security issue involving China — and Russia — in the region.
Japan’s Self Defense Forces in a statement said it had tracked two Russian frigates on Wednesday passing between two of its islands at the western end of its Okinawa chain close to Taiwan heading southwest toward the Pacific Ocean.
China and the Philippines are locked in a confrontation in the disputed South China Sea and their encounters have grown more tense as Beijing presses its claims to shoals in waters that Manila says are well within its exclusive economic zone.
US allies Australia and Japan have been stepping up their military activities too.
The Philippines Air Force arrived in northern Australia on Wednesday on its first overseas deployment in six decades for combat practice alongside US and Australian fighter jets.
A Japanese navy destroyer also made a rare entry into China’s territorial waters near Taiwan earlier this month without notifying China and sparking “serious concerns” from Beijing, Japanese media outlets reported late on Wednesday.
Taiwan monitors surge in Chinese military activity as Beijing’s carrier exercises in Pacific
https://arab.news/9mfc8
Taiwan monitors surge in Chinese military activity as Beijing’s carrier exercises in Pacific
- The Chinese military exercises coincide with a NATO summit in Washington
- The Chinese carrier the Shandong passed close to the Philippines on its way to the Pacific exercises
US recognizes opposition candidate González as the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election
- Brazil, Colombia and Mexico have called on Venezuela's electoral authority to show the vote tally sheets from Sunday’s election and allow impartial verification
- President Nicolás Maduro's officials had earlier threatened to arrest opposition leaders for calling for mass protests against the election commission's partiality
CARACAS, Venezuela: The stakes grew higher for Venezuela’s electoral authority to show proof backing its decision to declare President Nicolás Maduro the winner of the country’s presidential election after the United States on Thursday recognized opposition candidate Edmundo González as the victor, discrediting the official results of the highly anticipated vote.
The US Department of State announcement followed calls from multiple governments, including close allies of Maduro, for Venezuela’s National Electoral Council to release detailed vote counts, as it has done during previous elections.
The electoral body declared Maduro the winner Monday, but the main opposition coalition revealed hours later that it had evidence to the contrary in the form of more than two-thirds of the tally sheets that each electronic voting machine printed after polls closed.
“Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
The US government announcement came amid diplomatic efforts to persuade Maduro to release vote tallies from the election and increasing calls for an independent review of the results, according to officials from Brazil and México.
Government officials from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico have been in constant communication with Maduro’s administration to convince him that he must show the vote tally sheets from Sunday’s election and allow impartial verification, a Brazilian government official told The Associated Press Thursday.
The officials have told Venezuela’s government that showing the data is the only way to dispel any doubt about the results, said the Brazilian official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the diplomatic efforts and requested anonymity.
A Mexican official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity for the same reason, confirmed the three governments have been discussing the issue with Venezuela but did not provide details.
Earlier, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he planned to speak with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, and that his government believes it is important that the electoral tallies be made public.
Later Thursday, the governments of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico issued a joint statement calling on Venezuela’s electoral authorities “to move forward expeditiously and publicly release” detailed voting data, but they did not confirm any backroom diplomatic efforts to persuade Maduro’s government to publish the vote tallies.
“The fundamental principle of popular sovereignty must be respected through impartial verification of the results,” they said in the statement.
On Monday, after the National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner of the election, thousands of opposition supporters took to the streets. The government said it arrested hundreds of protesters and Venezuela-based human rights organization Foro Penal said 11 people were killed. Dozens more were arrested the following day, including a former opposition candidate, Freddy Superlano.
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado — who was barred from running for president — and González addressed a huge rally of their supporters in the capital, Caracas, on Tuesday, but they have not been seen in public since. Later that day, the president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodriguez, called for their arrest, calling them criminals and fascists.
In an op-ed published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal, Machado said she is “hiding, fearing for my life, my freedom, and that of my fellow countrymen.” She reasserted that the opposition has physical evidence that Maduro lost the election and urged the international community to intervene.
“We have voted Mr. Maduro out,” she wrote. “Now it is up to the international community to decide whether to tolerate a demonstrably illegitimate government.”
Government repression over the years has pushed opposition leaders into exile. After the op-ed was published, Machado’s team told the AP that she was “sheltering.” Machado later posted a video on social media calling on supporters to gather Saturday across the country.
The González campaign had no comment on the op-ed.
On Wednesday, Maduro asked Venezuela’s highest court to conduct an audit of the election, but that request drew almost immediate criticism from foreign observers who said the court is too close to the government to produce an independent review.
Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice is closely aligned with Maduro’s government. The court’s justices are nominated by federal officials and ratified by the National Assembly, which is dominated by Maduro sympathizers.
On Thursday, the court accepted Maduro’s request for an audit and ordered him, González and the eight other candidates who participated in the presidential election to appear before the justices Friday.
González and Machado say they obtained more than two-thirds of the tally sheets printed from electronic voting machine after the polls closed. They said the release of the data on those tallies would prove Maduro lost.
Asked why electoral authorities have not released detailed vote counts, Maduro said the National Electoral Council has come under attack, including cyber-attacks, without elaborating.
The presidents of Colombia and Brazil — both close allies of the Venezuelan government — have urged Maduro to release detailed vote counts.
The Brazilian official said the diplomatic efforts are only intended to promote dialogue among Venezuelan stakeholders to negotiate a solution to the disputed election. The official said this would include the release of voting data and allowing independent verification.
López Obrador said Mexico hopes the will of Venezuela’s people will be respected and that there’s no violence. He added that Mexico expects “that the evidence, the electoral results records, be presented.”
Pressure has been building on the president since the election.
The National Electoral Council, which is loyal to Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela, has yet to release any results broken down by voting machine, as it did in past elections. It did, however, report that Maduro received 5.1 million votes, versus more than 4.4 million for González. But Machado, the opposition leader, has said vote tallies show González received roughly 6.2 million votes compared with 2.7 million for Maduro.
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven crude reserves and once boasted Latin America’s most advanced economy, but it entered into free fall after Maduro took the helm in 2013. Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation that soared past 130,000 percent led to social unrest and mass emigration.
More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have left the country since 2014, the largest exodus in Latin America’s recent history.
‘Black and proud’: Kamala Harris has never shied away from racial identity
- Kamala's mother, who emigrated from India to pursue a doctorate in nutrition and endocrinology, raised her with emphasis on both her India and Black heritage
- As a child, she was bused to a newly desegregated elementary school in a wealthier white neighborhood and attended a Black church on Sundays
WASHINGTON: Former president Donald Trump, who has a long history of making incendiary comments about race, has stepped up his attacks on his 2024 White House rival Kamala Harris by claiming she “happened to turn Black” for political advantage.
But the reality is that the vice president, the product of a mixed race marriage between Jamaican and Indian immigrants, embraced her Blackness long before embarking on a career in public service.
Harris was born in Oakland, California, in 1964, to Afro-Jamaican Donald Harris, who came to the United States to study economics, and Shyamala Gopalan, who emigrated from India at 19 to pursue her doctorate in nutrition and endocrinology.
They met at the University of California, Berkeley, a hub of student activism, while participating in the civil rights movement — and sometimes even taking a toddler Kamala along to marches.
Donald Harris remains a professor emeritus at Stanford University, while Gopalan, who helped advance breast cancer research, passed away in 2009.
After the couple divorced, Gopalan raised Kamala and her younger sister Maya, instilling pride in their South Asian roots. She took them on trips to India and often expressed affection or frustration in Tamil, Kamala wrote in her 2019 book, “The Truths We Hold.”
But Gopalan also understood she was raising two Black daughters.
“She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as Black girls, and she was determined to ensure we grew into confident, proud Black women,” Harris wrote.
As a child, Harris was bused to a newly desegregated elementary school in a wealthier white neighborhood and attended a Black church on Sundays.
“I’m Black, and I’m proud of being Black, and I was born Black, I will die Black,” Harris told The Breakfast Club radio show in 2019.
But she’s continued to lean into her Indian heritage too, appearing in a 2019 video where she and actress Mindy Kaling, also of Indian descent, bonded over making dosas.
“She’s embraced her Blackness and her Indian heritage as well,” said Kerry Haynie, chair of political science at Duke University, adding that Trump’s “race-baiting” attacks were aimed at galvanizing his own base.
When it came time for college, Harris chose Howard University, a historically Black institution in the US capital, following in the footsteps of her hero Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice on the US Supreme Court.
She attended protests against apartheid in South Africa and joined the storied Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, founded to support Black women. Today, its 360,000 members include leading figures in politics, the arts, science and more.
“It’s a powerful signal of alignment with Black Americans,” said Christopher Clark, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
After Howard, Harris enrolled at UC Hastings College of the Law, where she was elected president of the Black Law Students Association.
As she progressed through her career — elected San Francisco district attorney in 2003 and California’s attorney general in 2010 — she was consistently identified as Black or African American in media reports.
Some went so far as to dub her the “female Obama” after Barack Obama, who was elected the nation’s first Black president in 2008.
Their biographies have parallels: both are biracial, with Obama’s father a Kenyan economist and his mother a white American.
Critics questioned the authenticity of his African American experience, and Trump may be using a similar tactic to try to discredit Harris, suggested Clark.
However, being Black in America has always been a “very broad umbrella” due to the legacy of slavery, wrote Teresa Wiltz in a Politico op-ed, encompassing “myriad iterations of skin color and hair texture and life experiences.”
The most important Black political figures in US history have often been of mixed race, from abolitionist Frederick Douglass to activist-philosopher Angela Davis, Wiltz noted.
If Harris identifies as Black, “we can — and should — take her word for it,” she said.
Germany’s ‘deal with the devil’ in Russia prisoner swap
- Germany received 12 of the freed prisoners, including Russian dissidents and some German nationals
- Germany has had to pay a particularly high price, setting free a man who committed murder in broad daylight in the center of Berlin
BERLIN: Germany’s release of a convicted murderer in order to facilitate the biggest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War has garnered praise from Washington but stirred controversy at home.
Those freed in the deal include US journalist Evan Gershkovich, several high-profile Russian opposition figures and five German nationals who were being held in Russia and Belarus.
But of the countries who released Russian prisoners in return, Germany has had to pay a particularly high price, setting free a man who committed murder in broad daylight in the center of Berlin.
Russian citizen Vadim Krasikov had been serving a life sentence for the brazen assassination of a former Chechen rebel commander in the German capital in 2019, a case which shocked the country.
In his press conference celebrating the exchange, US President Joe Biden acknowledged that he “particularly” owed “a great sense of gratitude to Chancellor” Olaf Scholz.
The deal “required me to get some significant concessions from Germany, which they originally concluded they could not do because of the person in question,” Biden said.
But speaking later, Scholz acknowledged the decision to release Krasikov, who was convicted in December 2021, had been “difficult.”
After a “moving” meeting with some of the prisoners on their arrival Cologne airport, Scholz however insisted the swap was “the right decision, and if you had any doubts, you will lose them after talking to those who are now free.”
“Many of the prisoners feared for their health and even their lives,” he added.
Germany is receiving 12 of the freed prisoners, including Russian dissidents and some German nationals.
German TV channel NTV reported that there had been rows between Scholz’s office and the justice ministry over Krasikov’s case.
According to other reports in the German press, the justice ministry eventually ordered prosecutors to suspend Krasikov’s sentence to enable his deportation.
Some in judicial circles reportedly felt this was a case of inappropriate political meddling in the legal process.
The German section of human rights organization Amnesty International condemned the “bitter taste” of the deal and the fact that it had created an equivalence between “a murderer... convicted in a fair trial” and “people who have just exercised their right to free speech.”
It raised the spectre of the exchange “broadening impunity” and emboldening Russian President Vladimir Putin, who previously said Krasikov acted out of “patriotic sentiments” by “eliminating a bandit.”
An opinion piece in Germany’s Bild tabloid said that while the release of rights activists and German citizens in Russia was to be welcomed, “the perverse message given to the Russian people is that Putin is a hero” for “saving murderers.”
However, German officials have insisted the freedom and welfare of the prisoners have been safeguarded by the deal and that Berlin has a duty of care toward the German citizens involved.
Michael Roth, the head of the German’s parliament’s foreign affairs committee and member of Scholz’s Social Democrats, summed up Berlin’s decision on X: “Sometimes for reasons of humanity you have to do a deal with the devil.”
Biden trumpeted the concessions he was able to win from his allies, describing them as “bold and brave decisions” to release prisoners such as Krasikov “who were justifiably being held.”
The Spiegel weekly reported that Thursday’s swap came after “several months” of negotiations between the CIA, Germany’s BND intelligence agency and the Kremlin.
The swap was originally envisioned to include Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison in February, before the focus fell on Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan.
Diplomatic contacts at the highest level were also brought to bear in securing the deal.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters that conversations between Biden and Scholz led up to Vice President Kamala Harris sitting “face-to-face with Chancellor Scholz” to “talk through the elements of this” at the Munich security conference earlier this year.
US tried to get Navalny into Russia swap — but then he died
- Navalny was pronounced dead at a notoriously brutal Russian Arctic prison in February
WASHINGTON: Amid celebrations at getting a slew of US citizens and Kremlin opponents out of Russian prisons, the White House had one public regret Thursday: failure to get out an even bigger name — Alexei Navalny.
“We had been working with our partners on a deal that would have included Alexei Navalny and, unfortunately, he died,” US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan revealed.
In the White House’s plans, the last truly high-profile political opponent of President Vladimir Putin should have been included in the historic swap that saw 16 people — including three US citizens and a US resident — freed in return for 10 Russians chosen by the Kremlin, including two minors.
But in February 2024, just as the secret international talks were at a crucial stage, Navalny was pronounced dead at a notoriously brutal Russian Arctic prison, where he was serving a 19-year sentence after exposing Kremlin corruption.
Navalny was a larger-than-life figure whose bravery in confronting Putin, despite the deaths of multiple other Kremlin opponents over the years, amazed Russia watchers around the world.
After surviving an assassination attempt in which he was poisoned with a rare, Soviet-designed nerve agent, and then daring to return from safety in Germany to certain arrest in Russia, Navalny took on an aura of near-invincibility.
His sudden death behind bars shocked the White House team who had been trying to get the other prisoners home.
“The team felt like the wind had been taken out of our sails,” a senior US official told reporters.
When the news broke, national security chief Sullivan said he happened to be with the parents of one of the other key targets in the prisoner swap plan: Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter arrested in Russia in March 2023.
“On the very day that he died, I saw Evan’s parents,” Sullivan said.
“I told them that the president was determined to get this done, even in light of that tragic news, and that we were going to work day and night to get to this day.”
And the plan worked.
On Thursday, the Western-chosen prisoners — including Gershkovich and a veteran Russian human rights campaigner — were flown to Turkiye and then home.
They also included two former aides to Navalny: Lilia Chanysheva, 42, and Ksenia Fadeyeva, 32.
The Russian-chosen prisoners — including a hitman and accused deep-cover spies — were flown to Moscow.
US Vice President Kamala Harris gave Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, a call.
Harris, who is running to replace Biden in November, called “to dicuss the exchange and express her support,” Navalnaya spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on X.
And the Russian opposition figure’s widow urged efforts to get others out continue.
She “called on the international community to facilitate the release of other Russian political prisoners,” Yarmysh said.
Trump is making his 2024 campaign about Harris’ race, whether Republicans want him to or not
NEW YORK: Donald Trump has found tremendous success from the very first moment he stepped onto the presidential stage by stoking racial animus.
Democrats expressed new outrage this week at the former president’s derisive and false charge that Vice President Kamala Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian heritage, only recently “turned Black” for political gain. Some Republicans — even from within Trump’s own campaign — seemed to distance themselves from the comment.
But Trump’s rhetoric this week, and his record on race since he entered politics nearly a decade ago, indicate that divisive attacks on race may emerge as a core GOP argument in the three-month sprint to Election Day — whether his allies want them to or not.
A Trump adviser, granted anonymity Thursday to discuss internal strategy, said the campaign doesn’t need to focus on “identity politics” because the case against Harris is that she is “so liberal it’s dangerous.” The adviser pointed to Harris’ record on the Southern border, crime, the economy and foreign policy.
In a sign that Trump may not be coordinating his message with his own team, the Republican presidential nominee doubled down on the same day with a new attack on Harris’ racial identity. He posted on his social media site a picture of Harris donning traditional Indian attire in a family photo.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican who has endorsed Trump, was among a number of lawmakers on Capitol Hill who said Thursday that the rhetoric around race and identity is not “helpful to anyone” this election cycle.
“People’s skin color doesn’t matter one iota,” Lummis said in an interview.
Trump turned to an old tactic against Harris
It’s been less than two weeks after President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid and endorsed Harris. Trump has had to pivot from campaigning against an 81-year-old white president showing signs of decline to facing a 59-year-old biracial vice president who is drawing much larger crowds and new enthusiasm from Democratic donors.
Trump went to the National Association of Black Journalists convention on Wednesday. In an appearance carried live on cable news and shared widely online, he falsely suggested Harris misled voters about her race.
“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump said Wednesday.
At a Pennsylvania rally hours later, Trump’s team displayed years-old news headlines describing Harris as the “first Indian-American senator” on the big screen in the arena. And Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, told reporters traveling with him that Harris was a “chameleon” who changed her identity when convenient.
Harris attended Howard University, the historically Black institution where she pledged the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, and has often talked throughout her career about being both about being Black and Indian American.
Some Republicans argued that Trump’s message on race is part of a broader pitch that may appeal to some Black voters.
“We’re focused on policy and how we can actually make waves and changes in the Black community. Economics, education, inflation, lowering costs. That’s what the message is,” said Diante Johnson, president of the Black Conservative Federation, which supports Trump’s efforts to win over more Black voters and hosted him at a gala in February.
Veteran Republican pollster Frank Luntz said he explored the issue during a Wednesday focus group with swing voters almost immediately after Trump’s interview. He found that Harris may be vulnerable to criticism based on her gender, but race-based attacks could hurt Trump among the voters that matter most this fall.
Much has changed, Luntz said, since Trump rose to prominence by questioning the citizenship of Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president.
“Trump seems to think that he can criticize her for how she’s dealt with her race. Well, no one’s listening to that criticism. It simply doesn’t matter,” Luntz said. “If it’s racially driven, it will backfire.”
Eugene Craig, the former vice chair of the Maryland Republican Party, said that Trump “got what he wanted” at the NABJ convention but that the substance of his argument risked being more offensive than appealing.
“The one thing that Black folks will never tolerate is disrespecting Blackness, and that goes for Black Republicans too,” said Craig, who is Black and worked as a staffer for conservative pundit Dan Bongino’s 2012 Senate campaign. He is now supporting Harris.
Trump has a long history of racist attacks
Trump has frequently used race to go after his opponents since he stepped into presidential politics nearly a decade ago.
Trump was perhaps the most famous member of the so-called “birther” movement questioning where Obama was born. He kicked off his first campaign by casting Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and drug traffickers and later questioned whether a US federal judge of Mexican heritage could be fair to him.
While in the White House, Trump defended a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, and suggested that the US stop accepting immigrants from “shithole” countries including Haiti and parts of Africa. In August 2020, he suggested Harris, who was born in California, might not meet the Constitution’s eligibility requirements to be vice president.
And just two weeks after formally entering the 2024 campaign, he dined with notorious white supremacist Nick Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
Trump won in 2016 but lost reelection in 2020 to Biden by close margins in several swing states. He swept the 2024 Republican primary even while facing a raft of criminal charges.
Some Trump critics worried that his racial strategy might resonate with a significant portion of the electorate anyway. Voters will decide in November whether to send a Black woman to the Oval Office for the first time in the nation’s nearly 250-year history.
“I hope Trump’s attacks on Harris are just him flailing about ineffectively. But put together Trump’s shamelessness, his willingness to lie, his demagogic talent, and the issue of race — and a certain amount of liberal complacency that Trump is just foolish — and I’m concerned,” Bill Kristol, a leading conservative anti-Trump voice, posted on social media Thursday.
The Harris campaign thinks there’s little upside for Trump
A Harris adviser described the moment as an opportunity to remind voters of the chaos and division that Trump breeds. But the adviser, granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said it would be a mistake for Democrats to engage with Trump’s attacks on race at the expense of the campaign’s broader focus on key policies.
So long as the campaign does not get distracted, the adviser said, Harris’ team believes there is little political upside for Trump to continue attacking Harris’ racial identity.
Harris told a gathering of a historically Black sorority on Wednesday that Trump’s attack was “the same old show: the divisiveness and the disrespect.”
On the ground in at least one swing state, however, there were signs that Trump’s approach may be resonating — at least among the former president’s white male base.
Jim Abel, a 65-year-old retiree who attended a rally for Vance in Arizona on Wednesday, said he agreed with Trump’s focus on Harris’ racial identity.
“She’s not Black,” Abel said. “I’ve seen her parents. I’ve pictures of her and her family and she’s not Black. She’s looking for the Black vote.”
But several high-profile Republican voices disagreed.
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro posted on X a picture of a road sign with two directions. One led to, “Attack Kamala’s record, lies and radicalism,” while the other, “Is she really black?”
“I dunno guys, I just think that maybe winning the 2024 election might be more important than having this silly and meaningless conversation,” Shapiro wrote.
