Date: Wednesday, 10 September 2025
3 articles:
U.S. Economy Has Been in Decline Since April 2024 — Biden’s Presidency
&
Biden says U.S. had nukes in Ukraine and he took all of them out.
&
The Intelligence of Reader-Comments at RT News
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/us-economy-has-been-in-decline-since
https://theduran.com/u-s-economy-has-been-in-decline-since-april-2024-bidens
U.S. Economy Has Been in Decline Since April 2024 — Biden’s Presidency
9 September 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
Apparently, the current U.S. recession, as judged by the employment numbers, started in April 2024, when JP Morgan reported that “The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the U.S. economy added 175,000 jobs in April 2024, the slowest jobs gain in six months and below market expectations. The unemployment rate ticked up from 3.8% to 3.9%.”
On 9 September 2015, now after the shock-news-report on 1 August 2025, that the July figures were terrible and that the May and June numbers were actually far worse than had initially been thought, the Financial Times headlined “US hiring growth revised down by 911,000 jobs in year to March. Updated figures from Bureau of Labor Statistics are based on more comprehensive employment data.”, and reported that,
The US added 911,000 fewer jobs than previously thought in the year to March, according to new official statistics that suggest the labour market in the world’s biggest economy is weaker than earlier data showed.
The latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show national employment in the 12 months to March 2025 was far below levels implied by its closely watched monthly jobs reports and suggest the labour market had begun to slow in the latter period of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Tuesday’s revision roughly halves the 1.8mn job growth figure the agency had previously estimated for the period from March 2024 to March 2025, with monthly hiring averaging 75,000 positions less than thought.
The report will be a boost to President Donald Trump, who has argued that his aggressive tariff and immigration policies were not to blame for recent signs of weakness in the labour market.
However, Trump’s argument “that his aggressive tariff and immigration policies were not to blame for recent signs of weakness in the labour market” is extremely weak, because loads of news-reports from around the country have made clear that Trump’s having constantly changed his predictions of what his tariffs would be, has greatly disrupted supply chains, as manufacturers and retailers have needed to replace, and contract with new, suppliers, and thus have locked in contracts that turn out to have been based upon different tariff-percentages than Trump had promised to impose. American — and foreign — firms will thus suffer for years from this. The uncertainty itself, in an international economy that constantly requires long-term commitments (contracts), constitutes a major cost, which will randomly affect the most, the unlucky firms that had relied upon Trump’s promises that he subsequently changed. Having an idiot in the White House did not initiate the downturn that had started under Biden, but it certainly is making the economic slide worse than it would otherwise have been.
Trump is constantly blaming others for problems that he himself has significantly contributed to causing. For example, he blames Biden for the war in Ukraine, though actually it had been started by Obama back in 2014 and was merely continued, first by Trump, and then by Biden, and now yet again by Trump, who still threatens to increase it. He actually has no idea of how stupid he is.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/biden-says-us-had-nukes-in-ukraine
https://theduran.com/biden-says-u-s-had-nukes-in-ukraine-and-he-took-all-of-them-out/
Biden says U.S. had nukes in Ukraine and he took all of them out.
9 September 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
Former U.S. President Joe Biden, in a 17 January 2025 interview with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell that was effectively this President’s Farewell Address to the nation but has been suppressed instead of promoted by that network (and by all of the nation’s press), told him (in this 81 seconds long clip from it):
——
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5RZ7_ROxFk&t=1302s
“The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell - Jan. 16 | Audio Only”
O’DONNELL: WHEN THIS WAR STARTED, THERE WAS A TREMENDOUS TENSION ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF NUCLEAR CONFRONTATION,
21:48
THE POSSIBILITY OF VLADIMIR PUTIN USING NUCLEAR WEAPONS. DID YOU HAVE ANY DIRECT COMMUNICATION
21:55
WITH VLADIMIR PUTIN TO DETER HIM FROM USING NUCLEAR WEAPONS? BIDEN: WELL, I DID.
22:00
WHEN HE STARTED TALKING ABOUT TACTICAL, I THOUGHT THIS GUY WANTS TO USE TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS. NO.
22:06
I DON'T WANNA DO THAT. I DON'T DO THAT. NUCLEAR WEAPONS,
22:11
TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN EUROPE SCARES THE HELL OUT OF EVERYBODY, INCLUDING THE RUSSIANS, INCLUDING THE RUSSIANS.
22:18
AND SO WHAT I, I MADE IT CLEAR TO HIM, LOOK,
22:23
HE SAID TO ME THAT WHAT HE WANTED WAS HE WANTED TO MAKE SURE THAT THERE WERE NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN EUROPE,
22:30
I MEAN, IN, UH, IN UKRAINE, THAT, UH, THERE WAS, THEY WEREN'T A MEMBER OF NATO,
22:36
AND, UH, THAT, UH, THEY WOULD NOT BE, UH, UH, AND HE,
22:41
HE STARTED OFF ONE OF THE CONVERSATIONS BY SAYING, I KNOW YOU CAN TAKE ME OUT TOMORROW. I KNOW YOU CAN TAKE THEM OUT TOMORROW FROM UKRAINE.
22:48
YOU CAN STRIKE MOSCOW. YOU CAN STRIKE. I SAID, THAT'S NOT A PROBLEM. WE'VE ALREADY TAKEN THE NUCLEAR WEAPONS OUT.
22:55
SO I TOOK THEM ALL OUT. THERE'S NONE THERE. WE'RE NOT GOING TO PUT YOU BACK IN, AND THEY'RE NOT GOING TO BECOME PART OF NATO UNTIL THEY CHANGE THEIR SYSTEM
23:02
SIGNIFICANTLY.
23:03
——
O’Donnell had no follow-up question to that. Not “When did we put our nuclear weapons into Ukraine?” Not “How did you take them out of Ukraine?” Not “Why were America’s nuclear weapons in Ukraine?” Not “Were our nukes positioned at Ukraine’s nearest border to The Kremlin, a mere 300 miles from it?” The total interview was 50 minutes, and that 81-second clip in it was less than half-way through the interview.
Perhaps a reporter ought to ask Trump whether he has put those weapons back into Ukraine, or intends to.
The only ‘news’-medium that picked up on this 81 seconds (or anything else in the interview) was the USAID-funded, NED-funded, Netherlands-Government-funded, Poynter Institute funded, U.S. Embassy-funded, “Vox Ukraine” (Voice of Ukraine), which did a “VoxCheck Team” “Fakes VoxCheck” on it, headlined “FALSE: The U.S. gave Ukraine nuclear weapons but took them back after threats from Russia”:
Verification within Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program
Russian Telegram channels are spreading a clip from a supposed interview with former U.S. President Joe Biden on MSNBC. In it, he allegedly admits that during Zelenskyi’s presidency, the U.S. brought tactical nuclear weapons to Ukraine but removed them after nuclear threats from Russia.
However, this is false. Biden was referring to weapons that were removed from Ukraine as part of nuclear disarmament in the 1990s. …
Biden did not state that the U.S. had given Ukraine nuclear weapons. He only said that nuclear weapons had been removed from Ukraine, without specifying when or what kind. Most likely, he was referring to the outcomes of nuclear disarmament resulting from a series of agreements in the 1990s. …
However, that’s not what Biden said. He said “We’ve already taken the nuclear weapons out. So I took them out.” He didn’t say that they had been Soviet nuclear weapons, which the Ukrainians had removed from Ukraine and delivered to Russia during 1994-96 in accord with the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Biden hadn’t had anything to do with that event.
Furthermore: this wasn’t “a supposed interview,” but a real one. Furthermore, it’s also false for “Vox Ukraine” to say “Biden did not state that the U.S. had given Ukraine nuclear weapons.” Biden said the opposite: “We’ve already taken the nuclear weapons out. So I took them out.” Not that the Ukrainians and Russians did (take out the former Soviet weapons, during 1994-96). The liar in this is the U.S. empire and its “Vox Ukraine.” Perhaps Biden too had lied when he said “We’ve already taken the nuclear weapons out. So I took them out.” His propagandist, Lawrence O’Donnell, obviously had no desire to find out about that possible lie, so droped the matter there. And nobody except the U.S. empire lying-machine brought it up, and when they did, it was only in order to present to Ukrainians to quell Web-chatter about this, amongst them, by saying that this was only a “a supposed interview,” and by lying about what Biden said in it.
MSNBC also issued on the day of the interview, 17 January 2025, another youtube of it, this for their general audience,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEBmJ-aAmBo
“Biden shares 'serious concern' for U.S. democracy in Oval Office interview with Lawrence O'Donnell”
1,107,771 views Jan 17, 2025 #MSNBC #OvalOffice #Biden
MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell joins Pres. Joe Biden in the Oval Office to discuss the Israel-Hamas cease-fire agreement, the Biden presidency, his warning about an oligarchy taking shape in America, and much more.
The currently 7,556 Comments to it there are worshipful of both Biden and O’Donnell, and I didn’t see in any of them any mention of this 81-second clip from it. Because O’Donnell didn’t want to probe Biden about that, no one apparently even noticed it.
So, we don’t know whether Biden lied there — he routinely lies, just like all recent U.S. Presidents. But the matter there was an extremely important historical matter, and so it OUGHT to be probed. If anyone in the U.S. empire cares to pursue it.
After all: Biden DID say that U.S. nukes had been in Ukraine, and that he had removed all of them.
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/the-intelligence-of-reader-comments
https://theduran.com/the-intelligence-of-reader-comments-at-rt-news/
The Intelligence of Reader-Comments at RT News
9 September 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
Whereas at U.S.-and-allied websites (sites in the U.S. and its colonies) that allow reader-comments, the comments reflect U.S.-and-allied propaganda (isn’t that a surprise!), the reader-comments at Russia’s RT News tend much more to reflect actual thinking and analysis by the readers.
For example, on September 8th, RT headlined “Orban outlines EU security ‘guarantee’ plan: The Hungarian prime minister says Ukraine should be split into areas controlled by Russia and the West, separated by a buffer zone” and reported:
Partitioning Ukraine into Russian and Western zones of influence is the likely outcome of the conflict and the only reliable guarantee of the EU's security, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said. …
Orban, however, has suggested it is time for the West to acknowledge Russia’s “inevitable” military victory and to begin deciding how Ukraine should be partitioned. … “
The result would be a Russian zone, a demilitarized zone and, eventually, a Western zone…The only question is how many kilometers away from the border of the Russian zone a demilitarized zone should be established,” he stated.
Typical reader-comments were:
ooga booga
9/8/2025 at 3:26 PM
So the US puts Nukes on the western side??? Not happening.
T. Agee Kaye
9/8/2025 at 1:14 PM
Orban is correct. Ukraine, as it presently exists, is a failed state, a mafia state. It is impossible to see how any post-war state will be any better. Only worse. A nation under more outside criminal control. Ukraine must be divided into sectors like those that divided Germany after WWII. The authorities over those sectors should be the surrounding countries. No one farther afield. They will be tasked with restoring a sound economy and representative government, with the option for autonomy or independence in the future.
ooga booga
9/8/2025 at 3:25 PM
No. He is incorrect. the Ukraine will disappear…
kev
9/8/2025 at 3:23 PM
That’s going to bring NATO onto Russia’s borders. NeT!!!!
STEVE FOSTER
9/8/2025 at 2:55 PM
I bet he is hated for being logical and practical. Reminds of East & West Germany though. Man, powerful people really crave power over the well being of humanity. Sadly, it’s always been this way. Like my late great father used to say «We humans are bad monkeys»
Harald
9/8/2025 at 1:11 PM
Orban is realistic while other «leaders» in EU still cling on to dreams
Steffen Jung
9/8/2025 at 3:22 PM
Yes, but too bad Orban loves Netanyahoo and Trump.
If you adore the zionists, like Orban does, it doesn’t matter if your instincts are correct on some things, you must be deranged.
For some reason, Israel’s genocide to eliminate Gazans is the major off-topic subject in the reader-comments. The total number of front-page headlines at RT that day is 75; only 2 relate at all to Israel or Gaza. On the first page of the reader-comments on this particular story are 31 comments, and 4 mention “Hebrew,” Zionist, or “Netanyahoo” (none mention Israel or Jew or Gaza or genocide); so, the only significantly mentioned off-topic subject there, is mentioned (using the terms “Hebrew,” “Zionist,” and “Netanyahoo”) only by13% of the commenters. The only other off-topic comment there, is from someone who starts “Google is now paying $100 to $500 per hour for doing work online work from home …” and this is because RT doesn’t filter out much — not even slime such as that.
By comparison, U.S.-empire ‘news’-sites, almost invariably, provide no opportunity to reader-comment; and the few that do (such as yahoo.com and wsj.com), contain very high percentages of off-topic (and/or factually false — perhaps propaganda-generated —) comments, and so are from enslaved minds (minds that are controlled by others).
As a consequence of the U.S.-empire’s highly propagandized publics, they are heavily proagandized to over-rate their leaders, but are also disappointed with those leaders’ performance (because it doesn’t meet their overly high expectations). For example, right now, on September 8th, the “RCP Average” of recent polls about Trump’s job-performance are 45.5% Approve and 51.6% Disapprove, though Trump’s job-performance thus far into his second term is catastrophic — so much so that he had fired last month the person who reported that the federal jobs-numbers, “new jobs,” were record-bad, and that the prior two months’ had been way overstated and had been likewise atrocious. And as I had documented in that August 2nd news-report, all of this was clearly attributable to Trump’s crazy tariffs and his constant changing of them, which had screwed-up supply-chains and left manufacturers and retailers needing to make contracts with suppliers when there was no clarity of what those tariffs would be. He has set not only foreign economies into tailspins, but America’s perhaps most of all. The first-ever billionaire in the White House is an idiot.
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
