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Biden refers to Harris as ‘VP Trump’ during mistake-filled NATO presser

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News conference held as more Democrats call on Biden to step aside

In his first news conference since his critically panned debate performance two weeks ago, President Joe Biden on Thursday made numerous mistakes while talking for about an hour. He answered questions from 10 hand-picked reporters focused mostly on his fitness for office, but included issues such as the conflicts in Israel and Ukraine.

“I’ve been given a list of people to call on here,” Biden said when the Q&A portion of his news conference began, later mistakenly referring to Vice President Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump.”

News outlets since Biden’s performance in the late June debate against former President Donald Trump have reported that Biden is tightly controlled by White House staff, some saying as efforts to hide the president’s cognitive decline. Because of Biden’s recent gaffes, many Democrats have called on Biden to step aside and allow the party to choose another candidate to run against Trump in November. Biden has been defiant, insisting he will stay in the race.

“I’m not in this for my legacy. I’m in this to complete the job that I started,” Biden said after he was asked whether his refusals to back out of the race might backfire and cost the Democratic Party the Oval Office, as well as down ballot races in Congress. Republicans hold a slight majority in the U.S. House, and Democrats in the Senate. Either or both could flip in November, depending on voter sentiment.

When asked if Harris was ready to become president if Biden did decide to step aside, the president said, “I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president if I think she’s not qualified to be president. Let’s start there.”

Trump quickly mocked Biden for the flub on his Truth Social account.

“Crooked Joe begins his ‘Big Boy’ Press Conference with, ‘I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president, though I think she was not qualified to be president,” Trump posted. “Good job, Joe.”

Biden also lost his train of thought several times during the news conference, ending his answers with “well, anyway” without finishing his response.

When asked if he was capable of performing the job of the presidency for another four years, Biden said he was but, “I’ve just got to pace myself more.”

Earlier in the day, Biden mistakenly called Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “President Putin” during an introduction. Vladimir Putin is president of Russia, which invaded Ukraine more than two years ago.

Biden’s news conference came after he addressed the NATO summit on Thursday, highlighting the U.S.’ commitment to providing aid to Ukraine and the importance of unity among NATO members. Biden hosted the summit and the various world leaders in Washington, D.C. this week.

When asked during the news conference if he would reconsider the U.S. allowing Ukraine to use U.S. weapons in its war with Russia, Biden mistakenly said, ““I’m following the advice of my commander-in-chief.” As president, Biden is commander-in-chief of the U.S. military. He soon followed, “My, the chief of staff of the military, as well as the secretary of defense and our intelligence people.”

NATO is now 75 years old and holds the position as the world’s most powerful and far-reaching deterrence pact.

“The fact that NATO remains the bulwark of global security did not happen by accident,” Biden said at the summit’s opening ceremony Wednesday. “It wasn’t inevitable. Again and again, at critical moments, we chose unity over disunion, progress over retreat, freedom over tyranny and hope over fear. Again and again, we stood behind our shared vision of a peaceful and prosperous Transatlantic community.”

According to the U.S. Defense Department, NATO has provided at least $175 billion to Ukraine, including guns, fighter jets, ammunition and training.

Trump has long been critical of the alliance, highlighting an over-reliance on U.S. monetary aid and defense funding.

Trump’s threats of non-protection over members not paying their dues has many in Europe worried about his commitment to the alliance.

“‘If we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said ‘absolutely not,'” Trump said at a campaign rally in South Carolina, remarking an interaction he had with one supposed member president.

Though a unilateral withdrawal from the alliance is not possible, there has been speculation about plans that would restructure the alliance so as to rely less on U.S. funding and defense platforms.

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New York Times publishes chilling new justification for assisted suicide

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From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

Even happy, healthy lives without major issues can warrant needless ending if they are ‘complete.’

Notorious secular “ethicist” Peter Singer has co-authored an opinion piece in The New York Times positing a chilling new rationale for assisted suicide: the determination that one’s life is simply “complete.”

Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman died in March 2024 at age 90. His cause of death was not disclosed at the time, but a year later, The Wall Street Journal revealed that Kahneman had emailed friends the day before to tell them he was traveling to Switzerland to avail himself of the country’s legal physician-assisted suicide.

“I think Danny wanted, above all, to avoid a long decline, to go out on his terms, to own his own death,” WSJ journalist and longtime friend of the deceased Jason Zweig wrote. “Maybe the principles of good decision-making that he had so long espoused — rely on data, don’t trust most intuitions, view the evidence in the broadest possible perspective — had little to do with his decision.”

On April 14, The New York Times published a guest essay by the infamous Singer, a pro-infanticide Princeton bioethics professor, and philosophy professor Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, who shared that they too knew of Kahneman’s plans and that days before he had told them, “I feel I’ve lived my life well, but it’s a feeling. I’m just reasonably happy with what I’ve done. I would say if there is an objective point of view, then I’m totally irrelevant to it. If you look at the universe and the complexity of the universe, what I do with my day cannot be relevant.”

“I have believed since I was a teenager that the miseries and indignities of the last years of life are superfluous, and I am acting on that belief,” Kahneman reportedly said. “I am still active, enjoying many things in life (except the daily news) and will die a happy man. But my kidneys are on their last legs, the frequency of mental lapses is increasing, and I am 90 years old. It is time to go.”

Singer and de Lazari-Radek argued that this was an eminently reasonable conclusion. “(I)f, after careful reflection, you decide that your life is complete and remain firmly of that view for some time, you are the best judge of what is good for you,” they wrote. “This is especially clear in the case of people who are at an age at which they cannot hope for improvement in their quality of life.”

“(I)f we are to live well to the end, we need to be able to freely discuss when a life is complete, without shame or taboo,” the authors added. “Such a discussion may help people to know what they really want. We may regret their decisions, but we should respect their choices and allow them to end their lives with dignity.”

Pro-lifers have long warned that the euthanasia movement devalues life and preys on the ill and distraught by making serious medical issues (even non-terminal ones) into grounds to end one’s life. But Singer and de Lazari-Radek’s essay marks a new extreme beyond that point by asserting that even happy, healthy lives without major issues can warrant needless ending.

“Instead of seeing every human life as having inherent value and dignity, Singer sees life as transactional: something you are allowed to keep by being happy, able-bodied, and productive — and something to be taken away if you are not,” Cassy Cooke wrote at Live Action News.

Support is available to talk those struggling with suicidal thoughts out of ending their lives. The Suicide & Crisis Lifeline can be reached by calling or texting 988.

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‘Great Reset’ champion Klaus Schwab resigns from WEF

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By Jonathon Van Maren

Schwab’s World Economic Forum became a globalist hub for population control, radical climate agenda, and transhuman ideology under his decades-long leadership.

Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum and the face of the NGO’s elitist annual get-together in Davos, Switzerland, has resigned as chair of WEF. 

Over the decades, but especially over the past several years, the WEF’s Davos annual symposium has become a lightning rod for conservative criticism due to the agendas being pushed there by the elites. As the Associated Press noted: 

Widely regarded as a cheerleader for globalization, the WEF’s Davos gathering has in recent years drawn criticism from opponents on both left and right as an elitist talking shop detached from lives of ordinary people. 

While WEF itself had no formal power, the annual Davos meeting brought together many of the world’s wealthiest and most influential figures, contributing to Schwab’s personal worth and influence.

Schwab’s resignation on April 20 was announced by the Geneva-based WEF on April 21, but did not indicate why the 88-year-old was resigning. “Following my recent announcement, and as I enter my 88th year, I have decided to step down from the position of Chair and as a member of the Board of Trustees, with immediate effect,” Schwab said in a brief statement. He gave no indication of what he plans to do next. 

Schwab founded the World Economic Forum – originally the European Management Forum – in 1971, and its initial mission was to assist European business leaders in competing with American business and to learn from U.S. models and innovation. However, the mission soon expanded to the development of a global economic agenda.  

Schwab detailed his own agenda in several books, including The Fourth Industrial Revolution (2016), in which he described the rise of a new industrial era in which technologies such artificial intelligence, gene editing, and advanced robotics would blur the lines between the digital, physical, and biological worlds. Schwab wrote: 

We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. We do not yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive, involving all stakeholders of the global polity, from the public and private sectors to academia and civil society …

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, finally, will change not only what we do but also who we are. It will affect our identity and all the issues associated with it: our sense of privacy, our notions of ownership, our consumption patterns, the time we devote to work and leisure, and how we develop our careers, cultivate our skills, meet people, and nurture relationships. It is already changing our health and leading to a “quantified” self, and sooner than we think it may lead to human augmentation.

How? Microchips implanted into humans, for one. Schwab was a tech optimist who appeared to heartily welcome transhumanism; in a 2016 interview with France 24 discussing his book, he stated:  

And then you have the microchip, which will be implanted, probably within the next ten years, first to open your car, your home, or to do your passport, your payments, and then it will be in your body to monitor your health.

In 2020, mere months into the pandemic, Schwab published COVID-19: The Great Reset, in which he detailed his view of the opportunity presented by the growing global crisis. According to Schwab, the crisis was an opportunity for a global reset that included “stakeholder capitalism,” in which corporations could integrate social and environmental goals into their operations, especially working toward “net-zero emissions” and a massive transition to green energy, and “harnessing” the Fourth Industrial Revolution, including artificial intelligence and automation. 

Much of Schwab’s personal wealth came from running the World Economic Forum; as chairman, he earned an annual salary of 1 million Swiss francs (approximately $1 million USD), and the WEF was supported financially through membership fees from over 1,000 companies worldwide as well as significant contributions from organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Vice Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe is now serving as interim chairman until his replacement has been selected. 

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Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National PostNational ReviewFirst Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton SpectatorReformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture WarSeeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of AbortionPatriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life MovementPrairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

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