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Wife Supremacy

Monica P. Medina is the new “Special Envoy for Biodiversity and Water Resources,” the State Department recently announced, without noting that Medina is also the wife of Ron Klain, chief of staff to Joe Biden. The Washington Post story, headlined, “In a first, U.S. appoints a diplomat for plants and animals,” also failed to note the Klain connection. This sort of nepotism, coupled with media malpractice, has surrounded Joe Biden for a long time. 

Ambassador Cathy Russell has been a trusted and indispensable advisor to Jill and me for nearly 30 years,” Biden announced last December, as the UN chose Russell to be executive director of UNICEF.  As Biden proclaimed, Russell had served as “Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel. She sat on the Advisory Board of the Biden-Harris Transition Team and served as Vice Chair of the Biden-Harris Campaign.” But there is more to the trusted advisor. 

“During the Obama-Biden administration, Ambassador Russell served for all eight years at the White House and the U.S. Department of State, including as Deputy Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden and the U.S. Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues, where she led efforts to integrate women’s issues into US foreign policy.” 

The Delaware Democrat did not explain that Cathy Russell was the wife of Thomas Donilon, who served as national security advisor during the Obama Administration. Donilon advised Joe Biden for decades and worked to boost Biden’s power in foreign policy. 

“Vice President Joe Biden will take the lead on the administration’s next phase China policy,” explained Steve Clemons in a January 2012 Atlantic report headlined “Biden Gets China.”

The move to put Biden at the top was “orchestrated” by Thomas Donilon, once described by James Mann in Foreign Policy as “Obama’s Gray Man” and seldom mentioned in the press. 

According to Mann, Donilon amassed “enormous internal control” over American foreign policy but “few news outlets” have profiled him.

According to AllGov.com, Donilon worked in the Carter White House and four years later served as campaign coordinator for Walter Mondale. In 1985, the University of Virginia law grad served with the Democratic National Committee and the next year joined the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee but “he remained interested in helping get Democrats elected to the White House.”

In 1988, “Donilon first advised Sen. Joseph Biden” then went on to serve as senior counsel on President Bill Clinton’s 1992 transition team, and chief of staff for secretary of state Warren Christopher. Donilon became assistant secretary of state for public affairs and participated in the expansion of NATO and the relationship between the United States and China. The lawyer’s background showed no scholarly work on the communist regime. 

From 1995 to 2005, Thomas Donilon was chief lobbyist of the Federal National Mortgage Association, better known as Fannie Mae. As CNN reported, Donilon left the company before it imploded and “was forced to pay $400 million to the federal government for misstated earnings during his time there.” Donilon also attempted to interfere with an audit by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight and tried to launch a separate investigation into the OFHEO itself.

In 2010, the selection of “top hustler” Donilon for national security advisor troubled Robert Scheer of the Nation. “Why in the world would President Obama, whose legacy has been sabotaged by a housing crisis that Donilon helped create and conceal, have hired him to run the most sensitive position of public trust in his administration?” In similar style, Robert Gates predicted that Donilon would be a “disaster” as national security advisor. 

In Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of State at War, Gates wrote that Donilon characterized the United States military as “in revolt” and “insubordinate.” The advisor—who had never been in the military—“bridled” when General Stanley A. McChrystal announced a “counterinsurgency” strategy in Afghanistan. As Gates explained, “troops risking their lives need to be told that their goal is to ‘defeat’ those trying to kill them. But such terms were viewed in the White House as borderline insubordinate political statements by generals.”

In a June, 2013, speech to the Asia Society, Donilon said, “I disagree with the premise put forward by some historians and theorists that a rising power and an established power are somehow destined for conflict.” As Donilon saw it, “a deeper U.S.-China military-to-military dialogue is central to addressing many of the sources of insecurity and potential competition between us.”  (emphasis added)

So the “disaster” and “top hustler” Thomas Donilon, who first advised Senator Joe Biden in 1988, is the likely source for Joe Biden’s claim that the Chinese Communists are “not bad folks,” and “not competition for us.” 

In November 2020, CNN reported that Tom Donilon was a “leading contender” for director of the CIA. Donilon reportedly turned down the post but does not lack influence. His wife Cathy Russell was assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, and chief of staff for Jill Biden. Cathy Russell moves on to globalist fame at UNICEF and Monica Medina gets a sweetheart deal.

The U.S. State Department creates a whole new position just for Ron Klain’s wife. The American people have a right to wonder how Monica Medina, 60, will fare as Special Envoy for Water and Biodiversity.

Medina earned a degree in history at Georgetown and her JD at Columbia. Her bio shows no advanced degrees in hydrology, biology, or earth sciences. On the other hand, the attorney is shrink-wrapped in climate superstition. 

“The Green New Deal is a unifying political message that gets back to the basics of creating an economy that works for all people and protects the planet as a result,” Monica Medina wrote back in January of 2019. How the Green New Deal would work, and what it would cost, the envoy did not explain. This “political message” is change you are supposed to believe in, not analyze. 

Questionably qualified, connected, and camouflaged by establishment media, Ron Klain’s wife is the ideal pick for the new state department post. Still, in overall White House influence, Tom Donilon, now chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute, may still hold the advantage. 

During the 2020 campaign, Tom’s brother Mike Donilon served as Biden’s chief strategist, and as the New York Times reported, Biden made Mike Donilon a senior advisor and “defender of the Biden brand.” As NBC News reported last month, “the preparations for 2024 remain centralized among Biden’s core group of senior advisers, including Ron Klain, Steve Ricchetti, Anita Dunn, Mike Donilon and O’Malley Dillon—all of whom currently serve in the White House.” 

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About Lloyd Billingsley

Lloyd Billingsley is the author of Hollywood Party and other books including Bill of Writes and Barack ‘em Up: A Literary Investigation. His journalism has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Spectator (London) and many other publications. Billingsley serves as a policy fellow with the Independent Institute.

Photo: Monica Schipper/Getty Images for WWF International

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