The subject under discussion is anti-American tattooed WNBA player Brittney Griner. 

After enough pressure from his black nationalist caucus, the Biden administration decided to set national interest and national security on fire to extricate her from Russian custody at all cost.

Blinken said Washington would like a response from Moscow. Russia has for years expressed interest in the release of Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer once labeled the “Merchant of Death,” who was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2012 on charges that he schemed to illegally sell millions of dollars in weapons.

Bout had been linked to supplying arms to Hezbollah and other Islamic terror groups. Not to mention assorted Marxists.

In the opening statements of his trial the prosecution alleged that Bout had agreed to deliver 100 surface-to-air missiles, 20,000 high-powered rifles and 10m rounds of ammunition to rebels in Colombia in 2008.

They told the jury that Bout had been told the weapons would be used to target US pilots working with Colombian officials.

Prosecutors say Bout replied: “We have the same enemy.”

As I mentioned, “And Biden isn’t even responding to a Russian offer, in the same style as his Iran negotiations, he’s just initiating the offer, all but encouraging the Russians to do demand more.”

Unsurprisingly, they’re doing just that.

Russian government officials requested that a former colonel from the country’s domestic spy agency who was convicted of murder in Germany last year be included in the US’ proposed swap of a notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout for Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, multiple sources familiar with the discussions told CNN.

The Russians communicated the request to the US earlier this month through an informal backchannel used by the spy agency, known as the FSB, that they wanted Vadim Krasikov released, the sources said. Krasikov was convicted in December of murdering a former Chechen fighter, Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili, in Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison.

The request was seen as problematic for several reasons, the sources told CNN, among them that Krasikov remains in German custody. As such, and because the request was not communicated formally but rather through the FSB backchannel, the US government did not view it as a legitimate counter to the US’ offer which was first revealed by CNN on Wednesday.

But underscoring how determined the Biden administration has been to get Griner and Whelan back to the US, US officials did make quiet inquiries to the Germans about whether they might be willing to include Krasikov in the trade, a senior German government source told CNN

The above paragraph is utterly insane.

Biden offered Bout, which alone was unacceptable, but he didn’t do so within the context of a negotiation, and the Russians obviously treated it as the opening bid. Now that they know Biden will give them anything, they’re seeing how high they can go. And the Biden administration’s response is to tell CNN that the request is “problematic” but that they’re working on fulfilling it.

No functional adult can be this bad at negotiating. Certainly top government officials can’t be this bad. This isn’t accidentally bad, I have to believe that this is bad on purpose.

Meanwhile, when Putin says, “jump”, Biden asks, “how high.”