Establishment media figures again leaked information from an off-the-record meeting with President Donald Trump on Tuesday prior to his State of the Union address.

Citing "multiple people in the room" at the White House, the New York Times noted that the president ridiculed possible presidential challengers in 2020 as well as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

"Schumer can be a nasty son of a bitch," Trump said, according to the report.

Over 10 EU countries have recognised Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the country's interim president. Radio Sputnik has discussed the latest developments with James Fetzer, Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Science at the University of Minnesota, Duluth Campus.

Sputnik: The major European countries have now recognised Guaidó as Venezuela's interim president. What is your reaction to hearing this?

James Fetzer: Well, this is very embarrassing, in my opinion. The election in Venezuela was actually his re-election. He is enormously popular in Venezuela. He won by like 68 percent to 20 percent for his nearest competitors.

International observers, including Jimmy Carter, declared the election to be exceptionally fair and transparent. Jimmy has even said [it has] the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.

That means there is no legitimate basis for contesting the election of Maduro. And when it comes to the European Union, they are acting as lackeys of the United States, sad to say.

This is a pathetic example of the failure of those once-great states to exercise independent judgement, in fact, a vast majority of the world's population, including China, Russia, India, Mexico, Turkey, South Africa and quite a few other states have spoken out in Maduro's support. In my judgement, Maduro clearly deserves the support of the world and it is acutely disappointing to find these EU countries taking the opposite stand.

When Tulsi Gabbard announced her plans to run in the 2020 presidential election, I predicted that it would disrupt war propaganda narratives and force a much-needed conversation about US interventionism, but I didn't realize that it would happen so quickly, so ubiquitously, and so explosively. Gabbard officially began her campaign for president a mere three days ago, and already she's become the front line upon which the debate about US warmongering is happening. Even if you oppose Gabbard's run for the presidency, this should be self-evident to you by now.

This dynamic became more apparent than ever today in Gabbard's appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe, hosted by spouses Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. It should here be noted since we're talking about war propaganda that in 2009 Scarborough turned down an easy run for the US Senate because he decided that he could have more influence on public policy as the host of Morning Joe than he could as one of 100 US senators, which tells you everything you need to know about why I focus more on US mass media propaganda than I do on US politics. It should also be noted that Brzezinski is the daughter of the late Carter administration cold warrior Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose influential ideas about US world domination, arming extremist factions to advance US interests, and hawkish agendas against Russia continue to infect US foreign policy to this day. Mika is part of a political dynasty, with both brothers being US political insiders as well.

So if you've ever wondered how outlets like MSNBC keep everyone on message and fully in alignment with the US war machine's agendas, there's a good insight into how. Combine that with the way they stock their punditry lineup with US intelligence community insiders and fire any pundit who refuses to toe the military-industrial complex line, and it's not hard to see how they've developed such a tight echo chamber of hostility toward any resistance to US interventionism. Which explains what we're about to discuss next.

We know the pull of the Israeli lobby is strong in D.C. We also know that Donald Trump's foreign policy has centered around Israel's security.

But what we didn't know for certain was just how far Trump is led around by the whatever AIPAC wants. Until Sunday morning.

However Trump's invoking Iranian influence as a rationale for staying further contradicts his prior December statement that the defeat of ISIS was "the only reason" he was in Syria in the first place.

MARGARET BRENNAN:How many troops are still in Syria? When are they coming home?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: 2,000 troops.

MARGARET BRENNAN: When are they coming home?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They're starting to, as we gain the remainder, the final remainder of the caliphate of the area, they'll be going to our base in Iraq, and ultimately some will be coming home. But we're going to be there and we're going to be staying-

MARGARET BRENNAN: So that's a matter of months?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We have to protect Israel. We have to protect other things that we have. But we're- yeah, they'll be coming back in a matter of time. Look, we're protecting the world. We're spending more money than anybody's ever spent in history, by a lot. We spent, over the last five years, close to 50 billion dollars a year in Afghanistan. That's more than most countries spend for everything including education, medical, and everything else, other than a few countries. - CBS "Face the Nation" Feb.3 interview transcript

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D - HI) is a perfect case study with what is wrong with American politics. She represents fairly standard Democratic party positions on issues like gay rights, gun control, health care and redistributive tax policy.

But on the crucial issue of foreign policy she's a dissenter. And, from what I can figure out, this dissention comes from a principled position.

And that makes her persona non grata in the current political climate of partisanship.

If there has been one thing that Donald Trump has been useful for it is exposing who the real enemies of peace in the world are. He is useless to stop them, but at least he has been such a lightning rod that he's outed what truly animates Washington, London, Berlin, Brussels and Paris. We have him to thank for that.

Gabbard is the next generation of US politician but I fear she is too little, too late. Much like Rand Paul in the GOP. She understands, as a veteran of our foreign adventurism, that the game of geopolitics is built on fundamentally flawed premises. And that the best way to win that game is not to play.

The leader of the illegally declared "independent" Kosovo said on Tuesday that Serbia's traditional supporter Russia pledged to support reconciliation between Belgrade and Pristina, removing a possible obstacle in the stalled talks.

President Hashim Thaci revealed that he spoke with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in November at the first meeting between the two sides, on the fringes of the centennial celebrations marking the end of the First World War.

"I asked him very directly: what would Russia's reaction be if Kosovo and Serbia came to an agreement? Their response was that it will support it," Thaci told the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

A politician can run a flawless campaign, say all the right things from a place of authenticity, hold wildly popular positions and an impeccable public record, but if they say things which upset the powerful, the narrative can be reshaped to paint them as crazy, incompetent, unelectable, treasonous, or all of the above, keeping them out of office forever.

An investigative journalist can spend months breaking a story that severely incriminates extremely powerful people. They can get all the facts right, source everything perfectly, report clearly and concisely, and get full exposure in a mainstream news outlet. But extremely powerful people can use their influence over the political/media class to quickly shift the narrative in the wake of that breaking news story to almost completely nullify its impact by making it seem insignificant.

A leak outlet can create a new and innovative drop box to protect the anonymity of leakers, opening up the possibility of bringing transparency and accountability to power. It can take the utmost care and implement the most exacting standards in confirming the authenticity of documents and protecting the identities of their sources, and it can get true bombshell documents that expose appalling amounts of corruption and malfeasance. But extremely powerful people can shift the narrative around that outlet, and soon millions of people will believe it's a Kremlin operation and its founder is a smelly Nazi rapist who abuses his cat.

We've seen all these things happen. We live in a world in which you can tell the truth at all times, make no mistakes, get very lucky, and be fully supported, but if you do anything to upset those in power, the narrative can be shifted around you to kill your ability to do any good.

Representatives of the Taliban met with other Afghan delegates in Moscow to discuss the prospects of peace and the removal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan. Among those present was the first US-backed president Hamid Karzai.

The Taliban were represented by Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, a former mujahideen fighter who has led the movement's office in Qatar since 2012. Several members of the Afghan diaspora in Russia, as well as former government officials from Afghanistan, also attended. The government of President Ashraf Ghani is boycotting the talks, however, having rejected the Taliban's key condition for peace: that all foreign troops have to leave Afghanistan.

Though Russia considers the Taliban a terrorist organization, Stanikzai was optimistic that the talks would go a long way to change Moscow's mind.

Russia has been listed as one of the main threats to Lithuanian security in the country's National Threat Assessment report, prepared by the State Security Department and the Ministry of National Defense's Second Investigation Department, released on Tuesday.

"In 2018, Russia continued its general military training, including in the neighboring Kaliningrad Oblast of Lithuania. In the short term, it intends to deploy additional offensive elements as well as air defense and aviation capabilities," the report says.

According to the report, the Russian security services "very actively recruit" the Lithuanians, allegedly manipulating the common Soviet past.

The report's authors also labeled Russia the main threat in cyberspace.

"Russia's intelligence and security services pose a major threat to the Lithuanian cyber domain: they conduct intelligence gathering, disrupt the performance of IT systems and contribute to influencing [...] Russia's cybernetic activity is becoming one of the main tools used to achieve Russian geopolitical goals in not only times of conflict, but also in times of peace," the document continued.

Russian-Lithuanian relations have been increasingly arduous, with Vilnius trying to portray Moscow as an aggressor interested in destabilizing the Baltic region. Moscow has repeatedly stated that Russia has never planned to attack any NATO member state.

An envoy to the US for Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó has said the country's oil reserves would be opened to foreign investors, bolstering suspicions that Washington's support of Guaidó is oil-dependent.

Guaidó's representative in Washington, Carlos Vecchio, told Bloomberg that the opposition leader wanted to increase oil production and scrap current requirements that state-owned oil giant PDVSA must keep a controlling stake in joint ventures. Currently, PDVSA must maintain a 51 percent stake in joint projects.

US President Donald Trump threw his support behind Guaidó in January and called on "illegitimate" Maduro to step down after the opposition leader declared himself interim president.

"We want to go to an open economy, we want to increase oil production," Vecchio said during an interview at Bloomberg's DC office. "The majority of the oil production that we want to increase will be with the private sector."