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NBC and MSNBC have been on a crusade during the Christmas season to smear and slam the United States at every opportunity because of the Trump administration’s new direction in dealing with the inept United Nations. During Tuesday’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, fill-in host Ayman Mohyeldin and former Obama-era Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Evelyn Farkas were worried that the U.S. negotiated spending cut was politically motivated and that the administration’s attitude towards the U.N. could harm the U.N. mission of preventing “global war.”
After introducing Farkas, Mohyeldin downplayed the U.N.’s wastefulness by describing it as a “somewhat a bloated bureaucracy.” And he fretted the cut was somehow in retaliation for the vote condemning the U.S. for rightfully declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel.
“But when you juxtapose this with the ambassador's threats, as some people have called them, to member states of the U.N. ahead of the vote,” he said. “It's hard not to look at this and say this is a politically motivated decision to slash the budget for countries not standing with the United States.”
But that’s not accurate, seeing as reports say: “The United States was seeking a $250 million cut to the U.N. budget for 2018-19, on top of $200 million in savings already proposed by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres…” So, it wasn’t a unilateral decision by the U.S. but one worked out with the head of the international body. And according to an unnamed diplomat whining to Agence France-Presse, the U.S. and the European Union are always looking for budget cuts.
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