President Biden called NBC journalist Lester Holt a "wise guy" Thursday when the veteran TV anchor pointed out that Biden erroneously said high inflation would be temporary and that instead it surged to a new 40-year high. Holt said during the president's first TV interview of 2022:

"I think it was back in July, you said inflation was going to be temporary. I think a lot of Americans are wondering what your definition of temporary is."

"Well, you're being a wise guy with me a little bit," Biden said. "And I understand, that's your job."

The federal Consumer Price Index found overall consumer costs up 7.5 percent in January versus one year earlier — dashing White House predictions that the figure would begin to fall.

Biden in December claimed that the prior month's 6.8 percent annual inflation rate was likely the "peak." He said in July that inflation was "temporary" when it was around 5 percent.

Inflation segment begins at 6:00:

Ukraine was on Tuesday under pressure to bow to Russian demands to change its constitution after Emmanuel Macron signalled the West would back the move as a path to avert war.

Mr Macron said on Tuesday that he had secured agreement from both Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to implement the Minsk II peace agreement, which is deeply unpopular in Ukraine, following meetings in Moscow and Kyiv.

It came after Mr Putin demanded Ukraine implement the agreement, saying: "Like it or not, my beauty, you have to put up with it." The president was using a Russian idiom for telling children to do something they do not want to. The Kremlin dismissed speculation Mr Putin was quoting an obscene rock song that also uses the phrase.

During a portion of an interview with NBC aired on Thursday's edition of NBC Nightly News, President Joe Biden dismissed the accounts in an Army report that the administration wasn't prepared for the withdrawal from Afghanistan but denied he was told that administration officials were prepared and knew it was time to leave.

Host Lester Holt asked:

"I have to draw your attention to that Army report, an investigative report that's come out about the lead-up to the withdrawal from Afghanistan. It interviewed many military officials and officers who said the administration ignored the handwriting on the wall, another described trying to get folks in the embassy ready to evacuate and encountering people who were in — essentially in denial of the situation. Does any of that ring true to you?"

Biden responded, "No, no. That's not what I was told."

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attempted to justify COVID-19 mandates by saying the restrictions were a way of preventing future restrictions. Yes, really.

During a parliamentary debate, Liberal MP Joel Lightbound slammed his own party for not presenting a "roadmap" out of restrictions. He also accused the government of weaponizing the restrictions to "wedge and stigmatize" those who are refusing to comply with the mandates. He said:

"What a lot of the anxiety and frustration in the population lies with the fact that some people... are afraid that certain measures are being normalized and that these measures shouldn't be normalized, that they should be extraordinary and limited in time.

"I think that would go a long way in alleviating some of the frustration, and some of the division in our society and some of the polarization. That's essential going forward."

Trudeau responded by essentially saying people needed to comply with the mandates, particularly vaccine passports, to prevent future mandates.

The Department of Homeland Security's latest terrorism threat bulletin includes a warning against "the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions."

The bulletin, issued Monday and in effect until at least June 7, blamed an

"online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis-, dis- and mal-information introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors.

"These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence. Mass casualty attacks and other acts of targeted violence conducted by lone offenders and small groups acting in furtherance of ideological beliefs and/or personal grievances pose an ongoing threat to the nation."

U.S. military officials said Thursday there could have been more civilian casualties than initially thought in the special operations forces raid that killed the top Islamic State leader in Syria last week, but believe any deaths were not at the hands of American forces.

Laying out a chronology of the raid, officials also said that they cannot be certain that Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi detonated the bomb that killed him and his family at his home in sleepy village of Atmeh near the Turkish border.

But they said it was set off by him or someone else on the third floor of the building where he lived. Previously the Pentagon and President Joe Biden had said al-Qurayshi blew up himself, his wife and two children. The military officials said Thursday they believe that is the most likely scenario but have no evidence to back that up.


They also said it's possible that others — perhaps additional wives he had — could have been with him and killed in that blast. They said "multiple bodies" were thrown from the building and buried in the rubble, and while they know al-Qurayshi and his family died, they can't rule out the possibility that other bodies were hidden in the collapse and not seen by the troops.

Speaking to a small group of reporters, two senior military officials involved in the planning or execution of the operation provided the most details to date on the Feb. 2 raid, pushing back against claims by residents and other activist groups that the U.S. operation killed as many as 13 people, including civilians. They spoke on condition of anonymity as a condition for providing the briefing.

Ontario's premier declared a state of emergency Friday in response to ongoing blockades in Ottawa and Windsor, Ont., warning of "severe" consequences for protesters who don't leave.


Doug Ford said he will enact orders making it "crystal clear" that it is illegal and punishable to block and impede the movement of goods, people and services along critical infrastructure, including international border crossings, 400-series highways, airports, ports, bridges and railways.


Fines for non-compliance will be up to $100,000 and up to a year imprisonment.

The announcement comes as a protest against COVID-19 measures has immobilized Ottawa's downtown core for nearly two weeks while another on the Windsor side of the Ambassador Bridge has blocked Canada-bound vehicles from using the key border crossing for days.

At the bridge, protesters cleared vehicles from one lane of a street connecting to the bridge on Friday morning, but a few dozen people stood blocking that lane in the afternoon, waving Canadian flags and hoisting anti-vaccine mandate signs.

Windsor police and Ontario Provincial Police were on site and closed all roads that connect to the protest location, allowing people to join the demonstration on foot, but not in their vehicles.

Two Democratic U.S. Senators on Thursday accused the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of collecting Americans' private data without official oversight meant to protect against civil liberties violations.

Democratic Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and Democratic New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich wrote a letter in April 2021 demanding CIA director William J. Burns and the U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines declassify a study into the CIA's secret procedure for gathering data on U.S. citizens, according to a joint press release.

The CIA's Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) commissioned the study to "conduct in-depth examinations" of the data collection process, according to the declassified report.

The PCLOB is an independent agency within the executive branch created to ensure intelligence agencies don't violate Americans' privacy and civil liberties while collecting data during terrorism investigations, explained the study's report.

A visit to Moscow turned into a widely mocked disaster for Britain's gaffe-prone Foreign Secretary

Instead of well-informed diplomatic give-and-take, Western foreign policy towards Russia too often takes the form of ignorant grandstanding and threats. As British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss's trip to Moscow earlier this week has shown, this approach is both unsuccessful and irresponsible.

In Moscow on Thursday for talks with her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, London's top diplomat demanded that Russia withdraw the troops it has allegedly assembled near the Ukrainian border. Lavrov objected. The troops were on Russian territory, in the Rostov and Voronezh provinces, he said. It was not for the UK to tell Russia what to do on its own soil.

Truss was insistent. Russia must withdraw, she repeated. At this point, according to the newspaper Kommersant, Lavrov asked her, "do you recognize Russia's sovereignty over Rostov and Voronezh provinces?" "Great Britain will never recognize Russian sovereignty over those regions," Truss replied instinctively.

Democrats are relaxing the Covid restrictions noose in hopes that after November, they can tighten it all over again.

Now that we're in an election year where Democrats see their political fortunes slipping away in real time, they and their co-conspirators in the media have decided we should all take a quick break from "The Science."

Democrats in New Jersey, New York, California, Oregon, Delaware, Connecticut, Illinois, and Rhode Island in recent days have said to heck with the CDC and are beginning to loosen up their beloved restrictions and mask mandates.

Less than a month ago, the U.S. was averaging more than 800,000 new Covid infections each day, the highest number seen during the entire pandemic, and quadruple the rate of infections that occurred during its peak under President Trump. But because case numbers are finally falling, New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney on Wednesday credited "Democrats' plan to fight COVID," which he said is "working." Therefore, he said, "It's time to give people their lives back."