{"id":1770696,"date":"2022-12-09T13:02:38","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T18:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1770696"},"modified":"2022-12-09T13:02:39","modified_gmt":"2022-12-09T18:02:39","slug":"brittney-griner-had-better-earn-her-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/brittney-griner-had-better-earn-her-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"Brittney Griner Had Better Earn Her Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fbrittney-griner-had-better-earn-her-freedom%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1770696&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Women\u2019s basketball star Brittney Griner was freed from a Russian prison on Thursday after President Joe Biden released one of the planet\u2019s deadliest arms dealers in an exchange. Maybe now the WNBA player, who made a point to boycott the national anthem for an entire season, will stand and show some respect for her country that let a Marine rot while bringing her home. <\/p>\n<p> Griner\u2019s Freedom Was Far from Free <\/p>\n<p>Griner was released in exchange for Soviet military translator-turned-Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, otherwise known as the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/viktor-bout-russia-arms-dealer-merchant-of-death-brittney-griner\/#:~:text=Viktor%20Bout%2C%20a%20convicted%20arms,imprisoned%20in%20Russia%20since%20February.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Merchant of Death<\/a>.\u201d Michael Braun, the former chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, called Bout \u201cone of the most dangerous men on the face of the Earth\u201d in a 2010 \u201c60 Minutes\u201d interview.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe is a shadow facilitator,\u201d Braun said. \u201cHe is arming not only designated terrorist groups, insurgent groups, but he\u2019s also arming very powerful drug-trafficking cartels around the globe.\u201d<\/p>\n[embedded content]\n<p>Now the Pentagon is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2022\/12\/08\/pentagon-arms-trafficking-griner-bout-00073034\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">concerned <\/a>Bout will begin arming warlords again, according to a senior defense official who spoke to Politico. That\u2019s the man this administration released to secure the freedom of a women\u2019s basketball Olympic gold medalist who checks all the right identity-politics boxes as a black lesbian celebrity.<\/p>\n<p>However, Paul Whelan, an American Marine serving a 16-year Russian prison sentence on espionage charges, remains in their custody. Whelan was arrested while on vacation in Moscow four years ago and was convicted in a 2020 trial that was condemned by U.S. officials as unfair. Griner had been serving a nine-year prison sentence after her conviction on drug charges in August. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cSadly, for totally illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul\u2019s case different than Brittney\u2019s,\u201d President Biden <a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/administration\/3767108-why-the-us-was-able-to-bring-home-brittney-griner-but-not-paul-whelan\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">said<\/a> on Thursday. \u201cAnd while we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul\u2019s release, we are not giving up. We will never give up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But after two years in office, President Biden didn\u2019t appear to make any effort at securing his release, despite Whelan being incarcerated the entire time. In contrast, the White House stepped into high gear when Griner was first <a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/US\/timeline-brittney-griners-detention-russia-us-vows-secure\/story?id=87925739\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">arrested <\/a>in February for carrying vape cartridges containing hashish oil, which is illegal in Russia.<\/p>\n<p>The Biden administration prioritized the black basketball player convicted on drug charges over the white male Marine. Biden claimed American officials were offered either Griner or nobody, but the White House also had another option: Bout for both. If Vladimir Putin rejected the offer, Biden should have left the table. The White House capitulated to Putin instead. <\/p>\n<p> A Debt to Repay <\/p>\n<p>Griner landed at San Antonio\u2019s Kelly Field Air Force Base in Houston on Thursday morning. Good for her and her family. But she also lands with a debt to pay.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Two years ago, as riots over \u201csystemic racism\u201d reached a fever pitch in the summer of 2020, erupting in the <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2020\/09\/16\/george-floyd-riot-damage-could-cost-insurance-companies-upwards-of-2-billion\/\">worst <\/a>outbreak of civil unrest in recent memory, Griner demanded the WNBA take an axe to the national anthem.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI honestly feel we should not play the national<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marine veteran Paul Whelan was left to rot in a Russian prison while WNBA star Brittney Griner was released.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":494,"featured_media":1897987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[6887,7323,6919,4439,6849],"class_list":["post-1770696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-brittney","tag-earn","tag-federalist","tag-freedom","tag-griner"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1770696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1897987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1770696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1770696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1770696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}