Democratic presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard slammed MSNBC - and mainstream media in general - for dredging up her meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad every time she goes on TV, calling the endless repetition "propaganda."

"Every time I come back on MSNBC you guys talk to me about [Assad]," Gabbard said, clearly exasperated but not losing her composure. "It sounds to me like these are talking points that Kamala Harris and her campaign are feeding you, because she's refusing to address the questions that were posed to her," she continued as the host stammered and tried to interject.

Marveling that "every single time for three years" she's appeared on television she has been confronted with the dreaded 'Assad visit,' Gabbard finally shut down the hyperverbal host.

"This is where the propaganda comes in."

Gabbard isn't exaggerating - it's hard to find a clip of her from the last three years that hasn't included some self-righteous pundit insisting she condemn Assad for "gassing his own people" or "gassing children." While Assad is largely supported by the people of Syria, at least outside the areas controlled by US-backed militant groups, Gabbard has been wary of saying anything nice about one of the US' favorite bogeymen. Even so, she is routinely attacked as an "Assad apologist" by Western media.

The Hawaii congresswoman has explained herself hoarse that she met with Assad in the hope of working out a path to peace in the country. She has also made it clear that the Syrians she met with were united in their pleas for the US to stop funding the so-called "moderate rebels" that have laid waste to much of the country. Yet in Groundhog Day-like fashion, every time Gabbard appears in front of a TV camera, the host insists she denounce Assad and will not stop needling her until she does.

CNN's Anderson Cooper pushed her for nearly two and a half minutes to affirm that Assad was "a murderer and a torturer" during an interview following the Democratic primary debate on Wednesday, and rival Democratic candidate Kamala Harris has been pushing the Assad-apologist line heavily after taking a verbal beating from Gabbard on the debate stage over her abysmal record as California attorney general.

• U.S.: "So, who was responsible for these poisonings?"
• UK: "Russia."
• U.S.: "So has there been a trial or anything like that?"
• UK: "Nope, we just know."
• U.S.: "So no evidence, or anything like that?"
• UK: "We are highly confident it was Russia."
• U.S.: "Good enough for us! Sanctions it is."

The new sanctions will see the US opposing loans and any other assistance to Russia from international financial organizations, while also banning American banks from lending money to the country. Ironically, Trump made his move a day after what he called a "short, but good" phone call with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

The Skripal affair wasn't the real reason for the new sanctions as "everything [the US does] in relation to Russia should be put in the context of the growing campaigning in the run-up to the election" in America in 2020, Ryabkov pointed out.

It's most unfortunate that the rest of what has been called the US-Russian partnership some years ago is now being sacrificed because of the demands of some, who simply use relations with Russia as a tool in domestic US infighting.

The deputy FM said that Russia had long-since "adapted" itself to US sanctions and even managed to make parts of its economy, including agriculture, more effective because of them.

In order to further minimize the negative effect of the restrictions, Moscow is "first and foremost going away from the US financial system and departing from the dollar as a universal number one means of payment in the world."

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China and ROK are therefore both victims of separate trade wars that might even possibly be connected to an uncertain degree. It puts them in the same position vis-a-vis their relationships with the U.S. and Japan respectively, and creates the conditions for both of them to possibly work closely together from here on out.

[...]

In addition, the rest of the world is now seeing that economic warfare isn't "natural," but is driven by political motives, whether ambitions of global leadership in the U.S.' case or avoiding its ethical post-war responsibilities in Japan's.

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