Monthly Archives: January 2020

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang holds a town hall meeting at Cox-Snow Recital Hall at Central College in Pella, Iowa, on Saturday part of a 17-day bus tour through the state. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang holds a town hall meeting at Cox-Snow Recital Hall at Central College in Pella, Iowa, on Saturday part of a 17-day bus tour through the state.

A flurry of qualifying polls released Sunday has put tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang back on the Democratic debate stage.

Yang is the seventh candidate to qualify for the Feb. 7 debate in Manchester, N.H., which is just four days ahead of the primary there.

The 45-year-old had missed January's debate in Iowa. Prior to that televised tussle, Yang had decried what he called a lack of qualifying surveys and had asked the Democratic National Committee to commission more polling. It did not.

But Yang hit one of the DNC's debate thresholds in four surveys released just on Sunday. He got 7% and 5% in separate national polls, and 5% in two New Hampshire surveys.

To make the New Hampshire debate, candidates must register at 5% or more in four qualifying national or early-state polls released between Dec. 13, 2019, and Feb. 6; or at least 7% in two early-state polls during that period. And they have to get 225,000 unique donors from at least 20 states.

Alternatively, a candidate could make the debate stage by garnering at least one delegate from the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses.

"America has spoken. Voters clearly missed Andrew Yang's presence in the most recent debate and now they are making sure he will be on the debate stage in New Hampshire," his campaign chief Nick Ryan said in a statement.

Already qualified for the debate are: former Vice President Joe Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and billionaire activist Tom Steyer.

Biden led those two national polls released Sunday, while Sanders was tops in those two New Hampshire polls.

The two septuagenarians have increasingly sparred over issues as recent polls have shown them separating a little from the rest of the Democratic field.

Billionaire former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has reached the polling threshold to qualify for the New Hampshire debate, but because he's self-funding his campaign, he's not going to hit the donor requirement.

Bloomberg has already spent more than $250 million on ads since jumping into the race in late November, according to the group Advertising Analytics. His focus is on the delegate-rich states voting on Super Tuesday, March 3.

The Iowa debate featured six white candidates. Yang's inclusion means there will be at least one minority candidate on the Manchester debate stage.

Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who's been a fixture on the New Hampshire campaign trail, has so far hit the polling threshold in two qualifying surveys, but has also not amassed the required number of donors.

But first, ahead of that debate: the Iowa caucuses.

The top Democratic candidates were all scheduled to be in the state Sunday, with now just a week to go before the contests. Among them were the senators who served as jurors in President Trump's impeachment trial all week long and will return to their Senate desks as the trial resumes on Monday.

Link:

Poll Results Put Andrew Yang Back On The Democratic Debate Stage - NPR

House impeachment manager Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) made a stunning admission Sunday, implying that Democrats want President Donald Trump's impeachment to impact the 2020 election.

During an interview on CNN's "State of the Union," host Jake Tapper asked Lofgren why she instructed senators last week to not "surrender to the president's stonewalling" when House Democrats did not pursue subpoenas and force additional witnesses to testify.

"You didn't pursue it in court. You ultimately withdrew the cases and went to the Senate," Tapper noted. "Didn't you surrender to the president's stonewalling, in that sense?"

Lofgren responded, "Well, in that I guess, in that sense, we did, because, if we had waited for three or four years, the election would be over. The issue would be almost moot."

Despite the House waiting to take impeachment action against Richard Nixon until after the 1972 election, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, also one of the Democratic impeachment managers, said last week that "the president's misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won."

The admissions align with what White House Counsel Pat Cipollone told senators on Saturday in the opening statements of the president's defense.

"For all their talk about election interference, they're here to perpetrate the most massive interference in an election in American history," Cipollone charged.

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Democrat House impeachment manager inadvertently admits what impeachment is actually about - TheBlaze

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US Democrats have ruled out a "witness swap" with Republicans in President Donald Trump's impeachment trial.

Lawmakers who are seeking to remove the president from office hope to hear testimony from his former National Security Adviser John Bolton.

But Democrats refused any deal to allow the son of former US Vice-President Joe Biden to be called as a witness.

Mr Trump is accused of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. He strongly denies any wrongdoing.

House Democrats have up to three days to make their case as they present their arguments in the impeachment trial in the Senate. Mr Trump's defence team will have three days after that for a rebuttal.

Democrats accuse the president of using US military aid as a bargaining chip in an attempt to prod Ukraine into announcing an investigation to discredit his would-be Democratic White House challenger, Mr Biden.

Mr Trump has been touting corruption claims against Mr Biden, whose son Hunter held a lucrative board position with a Ukrainian gas firm while his father was US vice-president and in charge of American-Ukrainian relations.

Attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Mr Trump jokingly warned he might confront Democrats by coming to "sit right in the front row and stare at their corrupt faces".

The impeachment trial could end next week, but Mr Trump's fellow Republicans control the chamber and are unlikely to oust him.

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There was one thing in particular that President Trump said which was kind of like a red rag to a bull.

It's when he said basically: "Well things are going very well, we have all the information, and they [Democrats] have none of it."

Well, if you want a fair trial, then maybe that information should be made available.

We keep using the word "trial", and the words "jurors" and "witnesses" and "evidence", but we must not lose sight that this is a political process.

We saw that clearly last night when the first votes started coming in. In a vote that split completely along party lines, 53 Republicans said "no we should not be able to subpoena the White House for documents", while 47 Democrats said "yes we should".

So we have Donald Trump kind of goading and saying: "Look I've got the information. We know what happened, but we're not going to tell you."

I think this might inflame public opinion. Polls are already indicating that a clear majority believe that evidence should be handed over and witnesses should be called.

Democrats want to call Mr Bolton, who referred to the White House's alleged political pressure on Ukraine as a "drug deal", according to previous witness testimony in the House of Representatives.

But the former national security adviser has said he will not consider testifying unless served with a legal summons known as a subpoena.

Mr Trump's Republican allies have argued Hunter Biden should also be ordered to appear before the impeachment trial.

But Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the top Democrat in the Senate, told reporters during a break in the trial on Wednesday: "That trade is not on the table."

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Joe Biden said on Wednesday in Osage, Iowa, where he is campaigning for the White House that he would not offer himself up in any witness trade.

"We're not going to turn it into a farce or political theatre," Mr Biden said. "I want no part of that."

Defending his son, Mr Biden added: "There's nobody that's indicated there's a single solitary thing he did that was inappropriate or wrong - other than the appearance. It looked bad that he was there."

Mr Biden said last year that if elected president, no-one in his family would hold a job or have a business relationship with a foreign corporation.

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On Wednesday, the lead Democratic prosecutor, California congressman Adam Schiff, criticised President Trump's dealings with Ukraine as "worse than crazy".

"It's repulsive, it's repugnant. It breaks our word. And to do it in the name of these corrupt investigations is also contrary to everything we espouse around the world," he said.

Mr Schiff, who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, urged Republicans to vote to remove Mr Trump from office to "protect our democracy".

He warned that senators would "also undermine our global standing" if they do not oust the president.

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The first day of the trial dragged on till the early hours of Wednesday morning as the senators debated a flurry of incremental motions.

Much of the evidence being laid out is a rehash of testimony already presented exhaustively in the House of Representatives, which voted to impeach Mr Trump last month.

Under arcane rules, senators are forbidden to drink coffee on the chamber floor and are only allowed water and milk.

A number of senators, mostly Republicans, were seen to be absent from the chamber during Mr Schiff's presentation.

Also, several members were spotted dozing during the proceedings.

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Impeachment: Democrats reject witness swap in Trump trial - BBC News

Our full conversation can be heard on the latest episode of the Radio Atlantic podcast.

What follows is a condensed and lightly edited transcript.

Edward-Isaac Dovere: Being a politician is new for you. How has the adjustment been to becoming one?

Lori Lightfoot: I go to places and people say to me, Ive never met a mayor before. Ive never seen a mayor in my neighborhood. And these are not, you know, teenagers or 20-somethings. These are our elders, people who are 60, 70, or older.

Dovere: You grew up in a small town in Ohio, and the injustices you and your family faced there seem to have defined you. What left the greatest impact?

Lightfoot: We were the factory workers. We were the people who clean your houses. But being one of the few black families that lived in my neighborhood forever, that definitely left an indelible mark on me. I grew up at a time when racial discrimination was still very much on the top of the table, not under it. And no question that I was denied opportunities solely on the basis of my race.

The expectations for me were so low. But thats not how I viewed my life. And its certainly not how my parents, and particularly my mother, viewed my life. The other thing that definitely shaped my experience as a child is watching my father struggle. My father was deaf my entire growing-up years. And seeing how difficult it was for him to be part of just that conversation, be part of a community, and knowing his experience, particularly in the workplace, being denied opportunities because of his disability, being treated differently and worse because he couldnt hearthat had a profound effect on me.

Dovere: We are living through a moment when people are reconsidering what government does, what it should do, whether they can trust the government. Should people distrust the government, based on what youve seen?

Lightfoot: I certainly understand why people feel that way in the crosscurrents that have been blowing for some timethat I think are very much responsible for the election of Donald Trump. I get it. I get why people have lost confidence not only just in government, but in the governance of people. Its important for us to understand that loss of confidence in public servants and public service, but all the more urgent for us to regain that trust. Our democracy depends upon participation. And as more and more people opt out and feel like government is irrelevant to their lives, that makes the challenges that we have to face and the problems that we have to solve We have way too many people in public life who feel like theyve won the lottery and that their primary mission is to make sure that they have a lot of pecuniary gain at the publics expense.

Dovere: President Trump has often taken shots at Chicago. If you could show him the city on a tour, where would you take him?

More:

What Chicagos Mayor Really Thinks About the Democratic Field - The Atlantic

Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican, on Sunday said he doesnt plan to vote to call witnesses in President Trumps impeachment trial and that theres no sense in prolonging the case.

The House Democrats have had lots of witnesses. We heard from them over and over and over again this week, Mr. Cotton said on CBSs Face the Nation. We dont need to prolong whats already taken five months of the American peoples time.

The House Democrats have not proven their case against Donald Trump we dont need to prolong this matter, he said.

I dont want to forecast the way other senators may vote, but I would just say the last five days have kind of been a microcosm of the last five months, Mr. Cotton said.

Mr. Trumps defense team is expected to make their case in more detail starting on Monday after they spent several hours on Saturday starting to lay things out.

His team says House Democrats case omitted key exculpatory details and that Democrats are looking to essentially overturn the 2016 U.S. presidential election results and influence the 2020 election.

House Democrats had made their case last week over the course of nearly 24 hours. Theyre accusing Mr. Trump of improperly leveraging military aid to Ukraine to try to get the country to open up politically beneficial investigations, and then obstructing Congresss investigation into the conduct.

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Tom Cotton: Democrats haven't proven impeachment case, don't need to 'prolong' things - Washington Times

Democrats in Virginia are trying to take away your guns, yet their public statements make it clear they know next to nothing about firearms or the Second Amendment.

Case in point: Virginia Delegate Mark Levine, who represents areas of liberal Northern Virginia, spoke at a town hall on Saturday and when asked to define assault weapon, launched into a six-minute speech that provided nothing but misinformation. He begins by reiterating the Democrat talking point that the 1994 assault weapons ban reduced gun crimes. It didnt by any real margin, as the guns banned werent typically used in gun crimes to begin with. The Department of Justice produced two studies on the ban to measure its effectiveness and concluded in both that it had little to no effect.

Levine then mimics someone holding a rifle used for hunting and claims mass shooters dont want to use weapons like that because someone could hit the rifle butt against their head deer dont do this, elk dont do this, but humans trying to save their lives do this.

He then mimicked what he claimed mass shooters like to use. His body language suggested he was using a fully automatic weapon (he twisted at the hips like he was in some old gangster movie). Fully automatic weapons are not used in mass shootings because theyve been banned since 1986. Democrats and their media allies like to claim semi-automatic is virtually the same as fully automatic, but theyre not. A fully automatic weapon means it reloads and fires repeatedly with one trigger pull. Semi-automatic weapons fire one round per trigger pull.

Next, Levine claims the Dayton, Ohio, shooter was able to shoot some 75 rounds in less than 30 seconds, shooting 40-odd people while the police were right there. The gunman actually fired 41 rounds in that time frame (shooting 75 rounds in less than 30 seconds is impossible for a semi-automatic weapon). Even still, the gunmen was only able to shoot that many because he illegally modified his weapon (meaning he didnt care about gun laws to begin with).

Levine continues on this way, getting every single point about guns wrong and trying to suggest that a pistol grip is a feature of weapons of war. The bill he sponsored, which seeks to ban assault firearms, which he defines in a number of vague, useless, and incorrect ways, actually tries to suggest that a bayonet mount and a weapon weighing 50 ounces or more when the pistol is unloaded are also examples of weapons of war features.

Stephen Gutowski, a reporter for The Washington Free Beacon and one of the few reporters who actually knows about firearms, took Levine to task on Twitter for his disinformation screed.

Delegate Mark Levine (D) just delivered the most utterly uninformed speech on firearms Ive ever seen in my life. How can you be so misinformed on what youre proposing imprisoning Virginians over, @DelegateMark? You dont even have a basic understanding of what you want to ban, Gutowski tweeted.

Delegate Levine (D) is sponsoring HB 961 which would ban the new sales of many kinds of firearms (including AR-15s) and require those already owned to be registered. It would also confiscate millions of magazines which Levine severely misunderstands, he added.

Watch Levines full answer below:

Link:

WATCH: Pistol Grips A 'Weapons Of War' Feature? Virginia Democrat Trying To Ban Guns Gives 6-Minute Speech, Gets EVERYTHING Wrong About Guns - The...

Sen. Tom CottonThomas (Tom) Bryant CottonSunday shows preview: Lawmakers prepare for week two of impeachment trial Schiff closes Dems' impeachment arguments with emotional appeal to remove Trump Commerce Department withdraws Huawei rule after Pentagon pushback: reports MORE (R-Ark.) on Sunday dismissed the idea ofcalling witnesses in the Senates impeachment trial of President TrumpDonald John TrumpKaine: Obama called Trump a 'fascist' during 2016 campaign Kaine: GOP senators should 'at least' treat Trump trial with seriousness of traffic court Louise Linton, wife of Mnuchin, deletes Instagram post in support of Greta Thunberg MORE, although he said he did not know whether any of his Republican colleagues would vote to hear additional testimony.

Im not going to vote to approve witnesses because the House Democrats have had lots of witnesses we listened to [House Intelligence Committee Chair] Adam SchiffAdam Bennett SchiffSunday shows preview: Lawmakers prepare for week two of impeachment trial Trump defense team signals focus on Schiff Schiff pushes back: Defense team knows Trump is guilty MORE drone on for three days and the president's lawyers, in just two hours demolished the case they had made, Cotton said on CBS Face the Nation.

Theyre not upset that they havent had witnesses, theyre upset that their witnesses havent said what they want them to say, he added.

Cotton sparred with CBS Margaret Brennan on Trumps attorney Jay SekulowJay Alan SekulowGeorge Conway: Witness missing from impeachment trial is Trump Trump legal team offers brisk opening defense of president Trump legal team launches impeachment defense MOREs invocation of the conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

Thats not a conspiracy theory, Cotton responded, citing individual Ukrainian officials who had expressed support for Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonKaine: Obama called Trump a 'fascist' during 2016 campaign Clinton says Zuckerberg has 'authoritarian' views on misinformation Des Moines Register endorses Elizabeth Warren as Democratic presidential nominee MORE and criticism of then-candidate Trump.

Cotton conceded that Ukraine had not engaged in systematic, top-down interference sanctioned at the highest levels like Russia, prompting Brennan to respond youre being precise in your words and thats not what the presidents lawyers said.

Brennan also pressed Cotton on a recording of Trump instructing Rudy GiulianiRudy GiulianiDemocrats see Mulvaney as smoking gun witness at Trump trial Pompeo lashes out at 'shameful' NPR reporter Trump legal team launches impeachment defense MORE associate Lev Parnas to take out then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie YovanovitchMarie YovanovitchWashington Post: Pompeo 'gaslighting' NPR reporter Pompeo lashes out at 'shameful' NPR reporter Parnas says he has turned over tape of Trump calling for diplomat's firing MORE. Cotton noted that Yovanovitch had been recalled over a year after the recording, indicating that Trump was not hasty, he was not precipitous but did not answer Brennans questions about Trumps claims not to have known Parnas before the recording was revealed.

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Cotton: Democrats are 'upset that their witnesses haven't said what they want them to say' | TheHill - The Hill