Brittney Griner is free and back home in America. Too bad everyone isn’t all that happy with the news.
Top News Today :
On February 17, 2021, WNBA basketball superstar Brittney Griner of the Phoenix Mercury was detained and arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport as she traveled there to play a season of international women’s basketball. Russian authorities said she was carrying a bottle of CBD oil and sentenced her to a 9-year prison term for possession of drugs. Griner served 294 days in a dangerous, rat-infested Russian prison until she was released last Thursday via a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration.
The arrest and imprisonment of Brittney Griner appeared to be a set-up by the Russian government. By detaining a high-profile American and subjecting her to inhumane conditions, Vladimir Putin believed he could not only get revenge against America for their sanctions after his invasion of Ukraine, but possibly get back one of his own Russians being detained in an American prison.
He was right.
The Russians demanded the return of Viktor Bout in exchange for Brittney Griner. Bout is an infamous Russian arms dealer who had been serving a 25-year sentence in the US for conspiring to kill Americans. Because of the notoriously torturous condition of Russian prisons — and particularly the deadly and dangerous prison in Mordovia where Brittney was being held — President Biden pulled the trigger to bring her back home.
The news of Brittney’s release was a modern-day miracle to her wife, Cherelle Griner, who traveled to The White House and personally thanked the president and his administration for having the courage to strike a deal.
“Today, I am just standing here overwhelmed with emotions, but the most important emotion I have right now is just sincere gratitude for President Biden and his entire administration,” Cherelle Griner said.
“Brittney is on her way home where she belongs,” LSU coach Kim Mulkey, who coached Griner at Baylor, told ESPN. “Our prayers remain with her and her family as they recover and heal together.”
However, not everyone was thrilled with the release.
Some Americans voiced their belief that if President Biden was willing to negotiate with the Russians on a prisoner swap, Brittney Griner should not have been at the top of the list.
Paul Whelan, who is a former Marine with citizenship in 4 nations (including the US), was arrested in Russia in 2018 on espionage charges, convicted in 2020, received a 16-year prison sentence, and remains in a Russian prison today. Several prominent members of the Republican Party expressed emphatically that it should have been him on the way home instead of Griner.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called the Griner release a “gift to Vladimir Putin” and added it is “unconscionable” Whelan wasn’t involved.
“It is a bitter pill to swallow that Mr. Whelan remains in custody while we release the ‘Merchant of Death’ Viktor Bout back to Russia,” GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham said.
MAGA Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene said the release of arms dealer Viktor Bout amounts to yet “another reason to impeach Biden.”
“She’s a woman, a POC and LGBTQ. Does anyone in their right mind think that if Brittney was a blonde Chi Omega from SMU that the reaction would have been the same? Of course not.”
– James Carville
Naturally, Donald Trump couldn’t resist weighing in on the prisoner trade, too.
“What kind of a deal is it to swap Brittney Griner, a basketball player who openly hates our country for the man known as ‘The Merchant of Death,’” Trump wrote in a post on his conservative social media website Truth Social. “What a stupid and unpatriotic embarrassment for the USA!” he added.
Interestingly and despite popular belief, President Biden did attempt to get Paul Whelan released along with Brittney Griner — but the Russians had no interest in releasing him under any circumstances.
“The choice wasn’t between getting one American or the other back — the choice before us was one or NONE!
– Anthony Blinkin, US Secretary of State
For those efforts, the Whelan family issued a statement in support of the Griner release.
“I am so glad that Brittney Griner is on her way home,” David Whelan, Paul’s twin brother, said in a statement Thursday. “As the family member of a Russian hostage, I can literally only imagine the joy she will have, being reunited with her loved ones, and in time for the holidays. There is no greater success than for a wrongful detainee to be free and for them to go home. The Biden Administration made the right decision to bring Ms. Griner home, and to make the deal that was possible, rather than waiting for one that wasn’t going to happen.”
More from Paul Whelan’s twin brother David pic.twitter.com/SIsGelOjPV
— Jay O’Brien (@jayobtv) December 8, 2022
So, today, Brittney Griner is home and free. Still, it makes one wonder if the pushback against her release has anything to do with the fact that she is Black and gay.
Hmmm…
OK WASSUP! discusses the Top News Today:
Brittney Griner freedom is not celebrated by all.
New York Times: There was a time when the release of American citizens who had been unjustly imprisoned by a foreign adversary was a moment for bipartisan relief and celebration: the 2018 return of three men from North Korea, secured by President Donald J. Trump, or the 1991 freeing of Terry Anderson, an American journalist, after years of captivity in Lebanon. Those moments felt like sepia-toned artifacts on Friday as Brittney Griner, the women’s basketball star, slipped quietly into a military base in Texas for evaluation following her release from Russia, while a Fox News reporter peppered the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, with pointed questions about an exchange that he said had sent the “Merchant of Death” to Russia for a “professional athlete.” Within hours of Ms. Griner’s release, much of the right wing was in full outrage mode, seizing upon both the man Ms. Griner had been… Read more »