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Thursday 2 January 2020 16:28
Donald Trump has ordered around 750 US soldiers to the Middle East, with as many as 4,000 troops set to be sent to the region in the coming days following the attack on the US embassy in Baghdad.
It comes as the president claimed CNN had “NO CREDIBILITY” and suggested the network’s parent company change its management in his latest tweets. Mr Trump also claimed the investigations that led to his impeachment were “far bigger and more sinister than Watergate!”
Mr Trump’s re-election campaign manager claimed the $46m raised in the last quarter was boosted by a surge of donations in the wake of impeachment. It has also emerged the president is expected to attend this year’s Davos summit, despite skipping last year’s gathering.
Is Twitter the new frontline?
Say goodbye to ‘créme brulé’
Our write-up on the latest Democratic candidate to drop out of the 2020 race.
Some analysis on what Trump’s perspective on North Korea may mean.
Mike Pompeo pulls Ukraine trip
The secretary of state has reportedly delayed a scheduled trip to Ukraine, where he was expected to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky – the man at the centre of impeachment claims.
A State Department spokeswoman told CNN said “the visit to Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Cyprus due to the need for the Secretary to be in Washington, DC, to continue monitoring the ongoing situation in Iraq and ensure the safety and security of Americans in the Middle East”.
“Secretary Pompeo’s trip will be rescheduled in the near future and he looks forward to the visit at that time,” she added.
Trump discusses Libya with Erdogan
Donald Trump discussed the situation in Libya with his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan in a phone call on Thursday, Turkey’s presidency said less than an hour after Ankara passed a bill allowing troop deployment to Tripoli.
Trump and Erdogan “stressed the importance of diplomacy in resolving regional issues,” the Turkish president’s office said.
The situation in Syria was also addressed on the call, it added.
Former Obama official: Trump to blame for embassy attack
A former senior official State Department during the Obama has said Donald Trump’s foreign policy is to blame for the attack on the US embassy in Baghdad.
Wendy Sherman, a former undersecretary for political affairs, said the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal had led to a “combustible moment”.
In an op-ed for USA Today, she wrote: “It is President Donald Trump’s failed policy toward Iran that has brought us to this combustible moment.”
She added: “Even as the United States was confronting Iran over its nuclear program and malign behavior elsewhere, we maintained an uneasy coexistence in Iraq, where Tehran holds considerable sway.”
Conservatives seek immediate purge of voters in Wisconsin
The leader of a conservative law firm will ask a judge to find the Wisconsin Elections Commission in contempt and fine its members $2,000 a day until it immediately purges more than 200,000 voters from the rolls.
A judge last month ordered the purge of voters who may have moved and didn’t respond within 30 days to notification sent by the elections commission in October. The bipartisan commission has deadlocked twice on attempts by Republicans to do the purge immediately while an appeal to the court order is pending.
Rick Esenberg, leader of the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty that brought the lawsuit, said the commission must purge the voters now. In December the judge ruled that the commission was breaking state law by not removing voters who did not respond to the October mailing asking that they confirm their address.
“Court orders are not suggestions,” Esenberg said on WISN-AM. “They are not rendered inoperative by the fact that you filed an appeal.”
The affected voters come more heavily from Democratic areas of Wisconsin, a key state in the 2020 presidential election.
Castro promises to ‘keep fighting for an America where everyone counts’
Democrat Julian Castro has now shared that video – announcing the end of his campaign to be president – on Twitter.
The former housing secretary said he was “so proud of everything we’ve accomplished together and vowed to “keep fighting for an America where everyone counts”.
Julian Castro quits Democratic race for presidency
The only Latino candidate left in the Democratic primary race has announced he is ending his bid for the presidency.
Castro revealed he was backing out in a four-minute video aimed at his supporters. “I’ve determined that it simply isn’t our time,” he said.
“Today it’s with a heavy heart, and profound gratitude, that I will suspend my campaign for president.”
Trump claims probes into his presidency ‘more sinister than Watergate’
More tweets from the president – this time attacking the “witch hunt,” which he claims is “sputtering badly”.
Trump said “a lot of very good people were taken down by a small group of Dirty (Filthy) Cops, politicians, government officials, and an investigation that was illegally started & that SPIED on my campaign.”
More usual and intriguing is his suggestion that if there had been similar investigations into a Democratic president or candidate “everybody involved would long ago be in jail for treason”.
He suggested the probes into his presidency were “far bigger and more sinister than Watergate!”
Trump suggests fundraising numbers show backlash against impeachment
Donald Trump has responded to his fundraising numbers by railing against his impeachment in the House – quoting a pundit who claimed the Democrats have “shot themselves in the foot”.
The president’s campaign team earlier announced it had raised $46m in the fourth quarter.
Trump quoted The New York Post’s op-ed editor Sohrab Ahmari as stating that the Democrats had “set up a process they know is not going to lead to the president’s removal” which was also “alienating independents”.
He also tweeted: “Their partisan Witch Hunt is hurting our Country do badly, & only bringing more division than ever!”
Pelosi and McConnell still at odds over impeachment trial
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remains at loggerheads with the Senate’s Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over the terms of impeachment trial.
The Republican leading has shown “no signs of shifting” from his position that a vote on calling witnesses should come after the impeachment case is argued by House managers and Trump’s counsel, according to Bloomberg. McConnell is expected to argue the case for a more limited trial on Friday.
Historically, the president has been allowed to have defence lawyers call witnesses and request documents in impeachment trials in the Senate. House members act as the prosecutors; the senators as jurors; the chief justice of the United States presides.
Beyond that, parameters of the trial are uncertain. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer is pressing for four Trump aides to testify, including Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, and John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser.
But McConnell has thrown cold water on that idea, saying House Democrats should have secured the testimony of Bolton and Mulvaney during their investigation.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has delayed sending over the impeachment articles to the Senate in a bid to pressure McConnell.
Democratic underdog reveals $6 trillion plan
Presidential hopeful Michael Bennet is releasing a $6 trillion plan that he calls “the Real Deal” in an attempt to offer what he says is a more realistic contrast with more liberal contenders for the Democratic nomination.
The US senator from Colorado his proposals would be paid for by repealing much of Donald Trump’s tax cuts, increasing capital gains taxes in what Bennet calls a “smart wealth tax” and heightening IRS enforcement.
Bennet has consistently polled so low in the Democratic primary that he hasn’t made the debate stage since July.
The underdog’s pragmatic approach has failed to gain the support enjoyed by candidates who have proposed sweeping programs like free college and universal health care.
Bennet noted that the estimated $6 trillion cost of his proposals, which also include investments in infrastructure and combating climate change, is only about one-fifth the estimated $30 trillion cost of “Medicare for All,” the centerpiece of Sanders’ campaign and supported by Warren.
“There’s nothing idealistic or progressive about a 10-year losing battle over deeply unpopular policies like Medicare for All,” Bennet said.
Sanders’ campaign ‘fuelled by small dollar donations’
CNN has put Bernie Sanders’ latest impressive quarterly fundraising total – $34.5m – in a bit of context. The
Sanders campaign has raised more than rival Pete Buttigieg for the second quarter in a row, bringing in around $6m more in the third quarter and around $10m more in the fourth quarter.
“This is largely an online operation fuelled by small dollar donations,” says Ryan Nobles on the grassroots effort.
French citizen dies in custody of US immigration officials
A 40-year-old French citizen, a native of Angola, died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in New Mexico, the agency has announced in a statement.
The detainee, who has not yet been identified, died on Sunday at a hospital in Albuquerque while in federal custody.
ICE has not revealed the cause of death or why the person was in hospital.
Joe Biden lands high-profile endorsement ahead of Iowa caucuses
The frontrunner for the Democratic nomination has received Rep. Abby Finkenauer’s endorsement – as she becomes the first member of the Iowa congressional delegation to take sides in the nominating contest.
Finkenauer, a first-term House member from a district Donald Trump won in 2016, will campaign with Biden this weekend, with less than four weeks to go before the 3 February Iowa caucuses that launches the Democrats’ 2020 voting process.
The congresswoman said that the former vice president’s experience, his proposals on infrastructure and other economic matters and his appeal to a wide range of voters make him the ideal Democrat to take on Trump.
“We need somebody at the top who can lead from the White House, someone who’s willing to unite not just Democrats but the country,” Finkenauer said. “There are days where I swear Democrats and Republicans are speaking different languages, and there’s no translator … (Biden) is the translator.”
Sanders claims he will have ‘money to win’ presidency in 2020 after raising more than $34.5m
Bernie Sanders raised more than $34.5m in the last quarter of 2019, his campaign team said on Thursday – the largest three-month haul of any Democrat so far in the contest to take on Donald Trump in November.
The announcement, which brings his total fundraising last year to $96m, appears to confirm Sanders’ position as the leading Democrat fundraiser in the nominating contest.
Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana – who is polling behind Joe Biden, Sanders and Elizabeth Warren – raised $24.7m in the fourth quarter, an increase on previous periods.
Fellow candidate Andrew Yang raised $16.5m in the fourth quarter, his campaign said on Thursday. Some candidates have not yet disclosed their fourth-quarter fundraising numbers.
In an email to supporters on Thursday, Sanders said: “Against (US President Donald) Trump, I believe we will have 50 million individual contributions, at least. And at 27 dollars a piece, that would be more than one billion dollars,” he wrote.
“It’s absolutely obscene and outrageous that an election would cost that much money, but our campaign has proven we will be able to raise more than enough money to win.”
Sanders is polling second in most national opinion polls behind former Vice President Joe Biden.
Trump re-election campaign boasts of ‘unstoppable juggernaut,’ after raising another $46m
Donald Trump’s re-election campaign raised $46m in the fourth quarter of 2019, boosted by a surge of donations in the wake of the Democrats’ impeachment bid, a senior campaign official said on Thursday.
The Trump campaign begins the 2020 re-election year with cash on hand of $102.7m, the official told Reuters.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the campaign felt that Trump’s strong fundraising was a direct result of his decision to keep his campaign apparatus alive after taking office in January 2017.
The $102.7m exceeds the $81.8m Barack Obama’s campaign had when he began his re-election year at the end of 2011, the official said.
“Democrats and the media have been in a sham impeachment frenzy and the president’s campaign only got bigger and stronger with our best fundraising quarter this cycle,” Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, said in a statement.
“The president’s war chest and grassroots army make his re-election campaign an unstoppable juggernaut.”
Republican urges people not to drink and drive days – before being arrested for drunk driving
The GOP’s Brian Kolb was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated – only days after warning against the dangers of driving drunk, noting that “tragedy can be only one bad decision away”.
The top Republican in the New York state assembly, found himself offering a follow-up story of sorts on Wednesday, in the form of a statement admitting to his mistake.
“I fully recognise the severity of the situation and I am profoundly sorry … I made the wrong decision, and it is one I deeply regret.”
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