Ok, so you don't care. I'll pretend to believe you. Let me ask you something else then.
The Biden administration was obsessed about race and sexuality. And in this case, they blew our highest value prisoner to get somebody out of prison who unquestionably brought drugs into Russia - exceptionally rapidly, while ignoring all other prisoners, including those of high merit and arguably unjustly imprisoned. Yet this person we got out, on the double, just happened to match the exact race and sexuality characteristics that the Biden administration was obsessed with. Do you think this was just a coincidence?
Yes, and there is no reason to believe otherwise that I am aware of.
I provided many quotes showing that Kirk played the race, sexuality, and religion cards frequently. I beleive he did so to provoke rage and engagement, and the evidence seems to support my stance.
Can you provide even a single quote that shows Biden considered her lesbianism, blackness, or other 'controversial' characteristics as the deciding factor here? From where I sit it looks like he just did what his constituency demanded. Kirk on the other hand made unsubstantiated claims about all of the above to drive engagement.
> I'll pretend to believe you. Let me ask you something else then.
I'm only discussing this particular case because you chose it as the most defensible from my long list. Even then, you are struggling to justify the divisive language Kirk chose. Had you chosen the one about black pilots this would be even more open and shut.
Okay, you think it's just a coincidence. I'll again continue to pretend to believe you. Now can you understand why lots of other people believe it is not a coincidence?
And no, this quote is hardly the most defensible. On the contrary it's one of the more outrageous until you realize he's referencing an event that literally happened.
> while ignoring all other prisoners, including those of high merit and arguably unjustly imprisoned.
So this part stuck in my craw, and I looked it up. Almost nothing about the way you have described this situation is accurate.
Biden tried to have Whelan freed as well, but Russia refused due to Whelan being considered a spy while Griner was perceived as only a low level criminal. At the time Biden was quoted saying that Russias reasons were "totally illegitimate" and that the US would "never give up" on trying to have him released.
Further, Griner was only one of several prisoners Biden tried to have released during this first swap. The others were not black lesbians though, so you didn't hear about it.
Biden later lived up to his word, because in 2024 Whelan was released as part of the 2024 Ankarta prisoner exchange, which Biden and Harris negotiated and which was considered to be one of the largest and most complex prisoner exchanges in history. It was NOT Trump, as you claimed earlier.
The entire narrative as you know it was WRONG, and the dichotomy was even more false than you've been led to believe.
Not only do I stand by my earlier statements, I feel even more convinced that Kirk was not just kind of a jerk, he was a full bore jerk. He likely knew Biden was working that deal, and turned it into race baiting hate speech anyhow... and you believed it.
Russia freed Griner because they got Viktor Bout in exchange. He's a polyglot international arms dealers with connections to weapons and smuggling around the world, who was known not only as the "Merchant of Death" but also as "Sanctions Buster". And as mentioned he is now literally serving as a Russian politician. Them giving away some drug addled ball player in exchange, undoubtedly had them laughing their assess off in private. And I don't mean that hyperbolically, it's difficult to imagine a more ridiculous exchange.
Had Biden tried, he could have gotten vastly more for Bout. In terms of thinking about US interests, and not his election campaign, he probably should not have even been releasing Bout anyhow - since that guy is very much the real deal. Thanks for the correction on the timeline! I was probably conflating the story of Whelan with that of Marc Fogel. Though it's funny reading the details of the Ankara exchange exchange as well:
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Freed as part of a prisoner swap between Russia and the West, the opposition figures, Andrei Pivovarov, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin, had mixed feelings about the deal.[63] Kara-Murza stated that article 61 of the Constitution of Russia forbids to deport citizens if they do not approve. None of them did so or was even asked to do so. Yashin added that he is Russian, a Russian politician, and sees himself as a patriot, whose place is in Russia.[63]
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Russia gets to deport activists who don't want to be deported, and that they couldn't otherwise constitutionally deport, and gets back, amongst others, a global FSB assassin.
Again, it's reasonable to debate Bidens decision, or anyone else's. Hell, I might even agree with you that he could have done better with the negotiations. In the end his plan worked, but it's possible a better negotiator could have gotten there more quickly or for less.
It's not reasonable to drum up rage about it through bogoted hate speech, which is what Kirk did. Despite Griner being only one of several prisoners Biden advocated for Kirk rambled about her sexual preferences and skin color then made up a fairy tale about how it was being done at these other prisoners expense. It wasn't.
Kirks claim that she received special treatment as a black lesbian cannabis enthusiast was just a straight up lie.
Griner was part of a larger package that included the other prisoners Kirk was concerned with. Kirk knew that fact, and ignored it in favor of devisive rhetoric.
Ultimately Biden got all of them released, and Kirks rhetoric did nothing but give the rightwing bigots and leftwing zealots both more rage fuel along the way.
America is in a bad place, and people fabricating lies like Kirk did are one reason for that.
I don't think your post here is in accordance with the facts. Biden released arguably the single highest value captive we had in order to solely get one of the lowest value that Russia had, and he started this process almost immediately after she was detained. That is indisputably extremely special treatment.
At this point we loop back through. Biden was absolutely obsessed with pandering based on race and deviant sexuality, largely as a means of furthering his own political ambitions which relied heavily on these two demographic, which were expected to (and indeed did) prove critical in the 2024 election. And in this case the completely unprecedented and special treatment he offered was granted to somebody to happened to fill out every checkbox he sought to pander to.
And you want to claim it was, instead, because of her alleged "fame" as a WNBA player. Okay, that's fine - and I can't prove you wrong because outside of private conversations it's not like Biden's going to pull an LBJ and openly rant about strategic racebaiting. But what's not fine is you then claiming that anybody who accepts the most probable explanation is suddenly lying or engaged in divisive rhetoric is, itself a lie. And in fact you'd also be pointing to the overwhelming majority of Americans as only 38% of people approved of this action [1], which is obviously going to be disproportionately made up of heavily partisan Democrats who are not exactly being impartial.
I think I've had enough of this conversation, but I did want to add one more thing before I call it quits: Thank you for taking the time to engage with me. I know there were more fun things you could have spent this time on.
One thing Kirk got right, was that we all need to be more open to engaging with each other in a civil way. He didn't always get it right, but nobody does and he didn't deserve to go out the way he did. I hope that the person responsible faces serious consequences, but more importantly I hope that we all find a way to respectfully disagree with each other and can find the grace to bend enough to meet somewhere in the middle.
I think that our conversation here is further proof that it can be done.
Sure thing, and agreed - I think at this point we're probably just going to go around in circles so there's not much more to say. But it's always great to be able to just wrangle ideas back and forth in a civil fashion, particularly when people see things so very differently.
I think if more people did this, we could get back to being a much more united country, not necessarily in agreement - but simply in acceptance of each of us having our own different takes on things that aren't necessarily wrong - even if they might be largely incompatible with what we personally happen to believe to be true!
> solely get one of the lowest value that Russia had
Again, that is NOT what happened. You have the facts wrong, likely because Kirk and everyone else in right wing media lied to you.
The negotiation was for several prisoners, that happened to include Griner among them. In the end Biden didn't get a great deal, but Griner and another named Sarah Krivanek (who hadn't officially been convicted yet and was just listed as "deported") were released in the first round. More importantly the first round opened the door to the later negotiation that allowed for the release of 26 additional prisoners, including Whelan - who you used as an example of someone that would have been worthwhile earlier. Sometimes negotiations take more than a single round.
It's probably worth noting that Whelan was booted from the military for larceny, and wasn't exactly an upstanding fellow himself, but it's irrelevant to this conversation in the same way that Griners sexuality and race are.
> completely unprecedented and special treatment
I have seen no evidence to support this claim. I have seen evidence to the contrary (IE - Biden negotiated for others at the same time). I'm not sure what else there is to discuss if it's become a matter of "faith" rather than one of evidence.
> the most probable explanation
The most probable explanation is the one supported by the facts, not the inference of Biden's motives based on right-wing talking points. There is no evidence to support the theory that Biden allowed Griner's race or sexual preferences to play a factor in his decision and there IS evidence to the contrary.
EDIT - Also, your statistic is misleading at best. If you do the math only 46% disapproved. So it was an 8% difference. The rest, like me, probably just didn't care.
The Biden administration was obsessed about race and sexuality. And in this case, they blew our highest value prisoner to get somebody out of prison who unquestionably brought drugs into Russia - exceptionally rapidly, while ignoring all other prisoners, including those of high merit and arguably unjustly imprisoned. Yet this person we got out, on the double, just happened to match the exact race and sexuality characteristics that the Biden administration was obsessed with. Do you think this was just a coincidence?