International
Former GOP Republican Presidential Candidate Buys Activist Stake In Left-Wing Outlet
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By JASON COHEN
Former Republican presidential candidate and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy purchased an activist stake in BuzzFeed, according to a May Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Ramaswamy purchased a 7.7% stake consisting of 2.7 million shares between March 14 and May 21 at costs ranging from $1.47 to $2.51 per share, according to the filing. The businessman asserted in the filing that he feels the company’s shares are “undervalued and represent an attractive investment opportunity.”
The New York Times vehemently claims that the noncitizen voting problem is a “false narrative.” If it’s such a non-issue, it’s interesting that they’re so staunchly opposed to a bill that bans it. pic.twitter.com/o40FK6sU05
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) May 22, 2024
Ramaswamy “will seek to engage in a dialogue with the Issuer’s Board of Directors (the “Board”) and/or management about numerous operational and strategic opportunities to maximize shareholder value, including a shift in the Company’s strategy,” according to the filing.
Buzzfeed has been laying off employees since late 2022 as it has struggled with digital advertising, according to The Associated Press. The company closed down its BuzzFeed News in early 2023.
The company also recently reported a loss of $35.7 million in the first quarter of 2024 as advertising revenue plunged 22%, according to the AP.
“It’s an interesting bet,” an individual who is close to Ramaswamy told Mediaite. “Vivek, the anti-woke warrior, buying a material stake in one of America’s most woke media entities would signal to this long time investor that he intends to make it a free speech platform … If he turns it around financially, he would have serious street cred for another conservative political move.”
Ramaswamy in January suspended his presidential campaign and endorsed former President Donald Trump as the 2024 Republican nominee. The businessman also recently visited Trump at the New York courthouse where he is currently on trial.
“The most remarkable part was the one thing you get from being in that courtroom is a sense of the depressing atmosphere, which matches the depressing nature of what’s happening in there. It’s sort of like a concrete poem for the decline of America, actually. You get like a third-world visual, atmospheric courtroom, open wires sticking out, temperature regulation nonexistent, stuffy air a thick scent. And in the same place is happening. It’s not just third-world atmospherics, but a third-world proceeding,” Ramaswamy told the Daily Caller.
Online news outlet The Messenger shut down in January after less than a year of operations; the outlet started out with $50 million in May 2023, but it was hemorrhaging tens of millions of dollars while only taking in about $3 million in revenue last year. The Washington Post planned to eliminate roughly 240 jobs as of December 2023 amid its financial struggles and NPR has similarly been laying off workers since 2022.
BuzzFeed and Ramaswamy did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
armed forces
Top Brass Is On The Run Ahead Of Trump’s Return
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Morgan Murphy
With less than a month to go before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, the top brass are already running for cover. This week the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, pledged to cut approximately a dozen general officers from the U.S. Army.
It is a start.
But given the Army is authorized 219 general officers, cutting just 12 is using a scalpel when a machete is in order. At present, the ratio of officers to enlisted personnel stands at an all-time high. During World War II, we had one general for every 6,000 troops. Today, we have one for every 1,600.
Right now, the United States has 1.3 million active-duty service members according to the Defense Manpower Data Center. Of those, 885 are flag officers (fun fact: you get your own flag when you make general or admiral, hence the term “flag officer” and “flagship”). In the reserve world, the ratio is even worse. There are 925 general and flag officers and a total reserve force of just 760,499 personnel. That is a flag for every 674 enlisted troops.
The hallways at the Pentagon are filled with a constellation of stars and the legions of staffers who support them. I’ve worked in both the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Starting around 2011, the Joint Staff began to surge in scope and power. Though the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is not in the chain of command and simply serves as an advisor to the president, there are a staggering 4,409 people working for the Joint Staff, including 1,400 civilians with an average salary of $196,800 (yes, you read that correctly). The Joint Staff budget for 2025 is estimated by the Department of Defense’s comptroller to be $1.3 billion.
In contrast, the Secretary of Defense — the civilian in charge of running our nation’s military — has a staff of 2,646 civilians and uniformed personnel. The disparity between the two staffs threatens the longstanding American principle of civilian control of the military.
Just look at what happens when civilians in the White House or the Senate dare question the ranks of America’s general class. “Politicizing the military!” critics cry, as if the Commander-in-Chief has no right to question the judgement of generals who botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan, bought into the woke ideology of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) or oversaw over-budget and behind-schedule weapons systems. Introducing accountability to the general class is not politicizing our nation’s military — it is called leadership.
What most Americans don’t understand is that our top brass is already very political. On any given day in our nation’s Capitol, a casual visitor is likely to run into multiple generals and admirals visiting our elected representatives and their staff. Ostensibly, these “briefs” are about various strategic threats and weapons systems — but everyone on the Hill knows our military leaders are also jockeying for their next assignment or promotion. It’s classic politics
The country witnessed this firsthand with now-retired Gen. Mark Milley. Most Americans were put off by what they saw. Milley brazenly played the Washington spin game, bragging in a Senate Armed Services hearing that he had interviewed with Bob Woodward and a host of other Washington, D.C. reporters.
Woodward later admitted in an interview with CNN that he was flabbergasted by Milley, recalling the chairman hadn’t just said “[Trump] is a problem or we can’t trust him,” but took it to the point of saying, “he is a danger to the country. He is the most dangerous person I know.” Woodward said that Milley’s attitude felt like an assignment editor ordering him, “Do something about this.”
Think on that a moment — an active-duty four star general spoke on the record, disparaging the Commander-in-Chief. Not only did it show rank insubordination and a breach of Uniform Code of Military Justice Article 88, but Milley’s actions represented a grave threat against the Constitution and civilian oversight of the military.
How will it play out now that Trump has returned? Old political hands know that what goes around comes around. Milley’s ham-handed political meddling may very well pave the way for a massive reorganization of flag officers similar to Gen. George C. Marshall’s “plucking board” of 1940. Marshall forced 500 colonels into retirement saying, “You give a good leader very little and he will succeed; you give mediocrity a great deal and they will fail.”
Marshall’s efforts to reorient the War Department to a meritocracy proved prescient when the United States entered World War II less than two years later.
Perhaps it’s time for another plucking board to remind the military brass that it is their civilian bosses who sit at the top of the U.S. chain of command.
Morgan Murphy is military thought leader, former press secretary to the Secretary of Defense and national security advisor in the U.S. Senate.
Daily Caller
Former FBI Asst Director Warns Terrorists Are ‘Well Embedded’ In US, Says Alert Should Be ‘Higher’
Chris Swecker on “Anderson Cooper 360” discussing terror threat
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Hailey Gomez
Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker warned Friday on CNN that terrorists are “well embedded” within the United States, stating the threat level should be “higher” following an attack in Germany.
A 50-year-old Saudi doctor allegedly drove his car into a crowded Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany on Friday leaving at least two people dead and nearly 70 injured so far. On “Anderson Cooper 360,” Swecker was asked if he believes there is a potential “threat” to the U.S. as concerns have risen since the “fall of Afghanistan.”
“I think so,” Swecker said. “I mean, we’ve heard FBI Director Chris Wray talk about this in conjunction with the relative ease of getting across the southern border. And, you know, there’s no question that terrorists have come across that border, whether they’re lone terrorists or terrorist cells. And they’re well embedded inside this country.”
WATCH:
“I’ve worked terrorist cases. Hezbollah has always had a presence here. They raise funds here, and they can always be called into action as an active terrorist cell,” Swecker added. “So I think the alert here, especially around Christmas time, is elevated. It probably ought to be higher than what it is right now, because I mentioned that complacency earlier. And I fear that complacency as someone who has a background in this field.”
Concerns over the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the U.S. southern border have raised questions over the vetting process of illegal immigrants entering the country.
On Tuesday United States Border Patrol (USPB) Chief Jason Owens announced in a social post that an unidentified South African national who was “suspected of terror” was arrested in Brooklyn, N.Y. The illegal immigrant had originally been detained in Texas for criminal trespassing but was released due to the “information available at the time.”
In August an estimated 99 individuals on the U.S. terrorist watch list had been released into the country after crossing through the southern border, according to a congressional report. The report found that between fiscal years 2021 and 2023 USBP agents encountered more than 250 illegal migrants on the terrorist watchlist, with nearly 100 of those individuals being later released into the U.S. by the Department of Homeland Security.
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