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• Uzbekistan restores military ties with Russia, buys attack helicopters
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• New US Ambassador to Uzbekistan: You just don't wanna know

'I care' theater

Earlier this week, I noted that the current occupant of the White House was planning to come to Michigan and spend time picketing with the United Auto Workers, who are striking three auto manufacturers.

He joined the group of union picketers at the General Motors plant on Tuesday.

...Biden grabbed a bullhorn and joined striking autoworkers in Michigan on Tuesday, becoming the first sitting president to join a picket line in an extraordinary show of support for workers demanding better wages.

Auto companies were doing well, Mr. Biden told dozens of workers outside a General Motors facility that employs more than 200 people in Belleville, Mich., outside Detroit.

General Motors did its best to ignore the president's visit, saying in a statement: "Our focus is not on politics but continues to be on bargaining in good faith with the U.A.W. leadership to reach an agreement as quickly as possible." The company added that "nobody wins" from a strike.

Biden walked for 12 minutes and spoke for 87 seconds.

The move is also unprecedented.

But sitting presidents, who have to balance the rights of workers with disruptions to the economy, supply chains and other facets of everyday life, have stayed out of the strike fray — until Biden.

Unimpressed, Trump called Biden's visit "nothing more than a PR stunt from Crooked Joe Biden to distract and gaslight the American people from his disastrous Bidenomics policies that have led to so much economic misery across the country."

...Labor historians said they could not recall an instance when a sitting president had joined an ongoing strike, even during the tenures of ardent pro-union presidents such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Theodore Roosevelt invited labor leaders alongside mine operators to the White House amid a historic coal strike in 1902, a decision that was seen at the time as a rare embrace of unions as Roosevelt tried to resolve the dispute.

Biden joins UAW strikers on the picket line in Michigan: "I marched a lot of UAW picket lines when I was a Senator since 1973. But I tell you what, first time I've ever done it as a president."

The irony of this move by Biden is being noted on social media...often.

While there are no reports of Biden slipping, tripping, or falling, some are using the event to inject a little humor into the review of today's episode of "I Care" theater.

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