Donald Trump told ABC News’ Tom Llamas that Ted Cruz’s $1.5m offer for a “mano y mano” debate on Saturday night is “a desperate attempt to gain more publicity.”
“Super PAC money is dirty money,” Trump continued.
This may be the first time Donald Trump had a reason to thank someone at ThinkProgress for a campaign tip, but...
The obvious Trump response to this is to write a $1.5 million check to veterans groups and then say "no." https://t.co/wfDMtf9zgb
— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) January 28, 2016
In addition to booking a venue for his proposed “mano y mano” debate with Donald Trump on Saturday night, Texas senator Ted Cruz has sent a letter to the Republican frontrunner imploring him to attend for the sake of Iowa voters:
Dear Donald,
We owe it to the men and women of Iowa to ensure that they hear jointly and directly from the two leading Republican candidates so that they may contrast our positions on the critical issues we face as a nation as they make their final choice leading up to Monday’s caucuses.
Accordingly, please accept this invitation to join me at an in-person, two-hour Town Hall event at Western Iowa Tech Community College in Sioux City this Saturday, January 30th at 8:00 p.m. Central. This venue is already reserved and I would propose that our campaign evenly divide available seating/ticketing. Our teams can jointly work on the logistical details.
Additionally, I propose one of the following three individuals serve as a Town Hall facilitator: Mark Levin, Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh, If none of these proposed individuals are acceptable to you, I suggest that instead we alternate in fielding direct questions from the audience.
I look forward to your timely response.
Ted
No word yet on Trump’s response, although he did previously suggest hosting such an event “in Canada,” the place of Cruz’s birth.
According to a statement by Super PAC donors, Cruz is also sweetening the deal with the offer of a $1.5 million donation to organizations benefitting US veterans:
Senator Cruz and Mr. Trump both respect the veterans and hold them in the highest regard but Senator Cruz respects the process and we are calling on Mr. Trump to do the same and debates are the purest form of democracy. Iowans - and Americans - deserve to hear from the frontrunners in this ‘two-man race’ one last time. Not only would this be a heck of a debate, but it would also be a terrific opportunity to generate millions of dollars for the veterans.”
The donors - Bob Mercer and Toby Neugebauer, who have committed $11m and $10m to Cruz’s super PACs, respectively - said that they would join together to donate $1.5m to a charity of Trump’s choice if he were to accept Cruz’s invitation to debate on Saturday night.
Updated
Billionaire Republican frontrunner and aspiring solo (debate) artist Donald Trump gave a scorched-earth performance on the airwaves of the very network whose upcoming presidential debate he plans to boycott.
Speaking with primetime host Bill O’Reilly on The O’Reilly Factor, Trump declared that “I have zero respect for Megyn Kelly,” whose opening line of questioning at the first Republican debate in Cleveland, Ohio, led Trump to later insinuate that Kelly had been menstruating at the time. “I don’t think she’s good at what she does and I think she’s highly overrated,” Trump continued. “And frankly, she’s a moderator; I thought her question last time was ridiculous.”
Kelly, who will also co-moderate tomorrow night’s debate in Des Moines, Iowa, has been vigorously defended by the network, whose “wise guy” press release criticizing Trump’s ambivalence about attending the debate led him to declare that he would host an event in support of US military veterans instead of attend the debate. It’s unclear how the event, tickets for which are free, will raise funds for veterans.
Trump dismissed O’Reilly’s numerous attempts to convince him that foregoing tomorrow night’s debate is a fatal mistake.
“I believe, personally, that you want to improve the country,” O’Reilly said. “By doing this, you miss the opportunity to convince others … that is true.
“You have in this debate format the upper hand - you have sixty seconds off the top to tell the moderator, ‘You’re a pinhead, you’re off the mark and here’s what I want to say.’ By walking away from it, you lose the opportunity to persuade people you are a strong leader.”
But Trump, as he is wont to do, pointed that Fox News stood to lose a lot more than he will by his refusal to attend its debate.
“Fox was going to make a fortune off this debate,” Trump said. “Now they’re going to make much less.”
Trump - whose debate performances have been consistently middling - told O’Reilly that he’s tired of debating, and that the inclusion of candidates like Jim Gilmore, whose standing in national polls are comparatively minuscule, diminish the event’s importance.
“We’re going to go on forever with these debates - at some point you have to start doing other things than debating,” Trump said.
Updated
Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, has issued a statement calling for additional debates among the Democratic Party presidential candidates:
From the beginning of this campaign Sen. Sanders has called for more debates. Secretary Clinton has not. Now she is asking to change the rules to schedule a debate next week that is not sanctioned by the DNC. Why is that? The answer is obvious. The dynamics of the race have changed and Sen. Sanders has significant momentum. Sen. Sanders is happy to have more debates but we are not going to schedule them on an ad hoc basis at the whim of the Clinton campaign. If Secretary Clinton wants more debates that’s great. We propose three additional debates. One in March, April and May and none on a Friday, Saturday or holiday weekend. And all of the three Democratic candidates must be invited. If the Clinton campaign will commit to this schedule, we would ask the DNC to arrange a debate in New Hampshire on Feb. 4.”
Bernie Sanders wasted no time pointing out that while he may have just come to this evening’s rally from the Oval Office, Hillary Clinton is at a fundraiser with wealthier financiers and Jon Bon Jovi back east.
“My opponent is not in Iowa tonight, she is raising money from a Philadelphia investment firm,” he told the packed crowd in Mason City. “I would rather be in Iowa.”
“Here we are again facing the machine,” says actress and activist Susan Sarandon as she introduces Sanders by recalling campaigning against Clinton for Obama eight years ago. “This is not about gender; this is about issues.”
There was no mention of Bill Clinton, however, who is just two miles away at a rival rally on his wife’s behalf at exactly the same time.
Instead, Sanders is devoting an unusually large portion of his speech to attacking Donald Trump, who he clearly sees now as just as much of an opponent as Clinton.
As the overseas media begins turning up in large numbers to the event, Sanders also reminds the audience of the recent debate in the British parliament about whether Trump should even be allowed into the country.
“Think about how this man is going to deal with the world when he can’t even deal with our strongest ally,” says Sanders.
Ted Cruz books a venue for his "mano y mano" debate with Trump
Ted Cruz offered a direct challenge to rival Donald Trump on Wednesday, saying that he had booked a venue in Sioux City, Iowa, on Saturday night for the two Republican frontrunners to engage in a one-on-one, “mano y mano” debate.
Deriding Trump as “gentle Donald” for his decision to pull out of Thursday’s scheduled presidential debate on Fox News, Cruz announced that had already reserved a hall at Western Iowa Tech Community College for an one on one debate with the New York real estate mogul. He initially challenged Trump to a debate in an interview Tuesday with radio host Mark Levin.
Trump, who is holding an unspecified benefit for veterans at the same time as the debate in Des Moines, had long hesitated to participate in the Fox News debate. He had long complained about his dissatisfaction with tough questioning from anchor Megyn Kelly in the first Republican presidential debate in August, 2015. Her questioning led Trump to say that he thought “there was blood coming out of her wherever”, a comment widely believed to refer to menstruation. However, the final straw was when Fox sent out what Trump called “wise guy press release” mocking him.
In the one-on-one debate Cruz suggested prominent conservative radio host Mark Levin as a moderator if “gentle Donald cannot handle Megyn Kelly”. He also suggested Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh as potential moderators if Trump found Levin unacceptable as well an option with no moderator and the two simply answering questions from the audience.
The event marked the continued shift in tone from Cruz who has launched blistering attacks on Trump in recent weeks. Although the two had long been friendly and the Texas senator openly bragged about his refusal to attack Trump, he has since attacked the real estate mogul’s “New York values” after Trump questioned whether the Canadian-born Cruz’s birth made him constitutionally ineligible to be president.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on whether he would accept Cruz’s challenge.
Updated
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is widely viewed as a “good” or even “great” potential president by Republican voters despite his perceived lack of religiousness, a new survey has found:
Of the 56% of Republican voters who see Trump as a potentially good or great president, 17% say they think he is not religious. Republican voters surveyed exhibited a very different pattern when asked about the other leading presidential candidates.
Virtually all Republican voters who think Carson, Cruz and Rubio would be good or great presidents said they view those candidates as at least somewhat religious. Only 2% of Republicans said Rubio would be a good president and that he is not particularly religious; just 1% said the same about Carson and Cruz.
The poll also reflected that having a president who “shares their religious beliefs” is important to Americans, a view commonplace among Republicans. About two-thirds of Republicans say it is “somewhat important” that their president share their religious beliefs.
Expect our book report on the political science tome that everyone and their mother is talking about after the weekend.
Okay fine jeez I'll read it. pic.twitter.com/xXsCB9sl7P
— Scott Bixby (@scottbix) January 28, 2016
Tonight’s Ted Cruz rally in West Des Moines feels like the event of someone about to win the Iowa caucus. The room is packed, the national press has descended like vultures and there is an energy and excitement in the air. The difference, though, is Donald Trump.
The rise of Trump has upset every rule about American politics, let alone the Iowa caucuses. In a normal year, the suspense would focus on Cruz’s margin of victory. But this isn’t a normal year. This is Donald Trump’s year and every benchmark that reporters have once relied upon can no longer be trusted.
Donald Trump’s campaign has released a short statement to supporters about his “special event” in Des Moines tomorrow night:
With just 5 short days before the Iowa Caucus, Mr. Trump will be holding a special event tomorrow night to benefit Veteran Organizations at Drake University - Sheslow Auditorium and we want you to be there! The address of the venue is 2507 Carpenter Avenue, Des Moines, IA 50311. The doors will open at 5:00 p.m. and the event will begin at 7:00 p.m.
Register for tickets at TrumpDrakeU.Eventbrite.com.
Please arrive early and limit personal items to expedite entrance into the auditorium.
We hope that you will be able to attend this special rally in honor of our veterans. See you tomorrow!
Sincerely,
Team Trump
Still no word on which veterans organizations in particular that will benefit from the event, or how the free event will raise money for those organization.
Also, a reminder for those desperate to RSVP: The Sheslow auditorium is host to a mere 775 seats - so get those tickets while they’re hot.
In politics, as in opera, it ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings. But if FiveThirtyEight’s newest Iowa caucus forecast is any indication, the fat lady is cracking open a tin of Grether’s Pastilles as we speak.
According to the statistical analysis juggernaut’s latest “polls-plus forecast,” Donald Trump and Ted Cruz each have a 44% chance of winning the Iowa caucuses - the first time Trump has been seen as the (co-)favorite to win the caucuses in the metric since FiveThirtyEight began crunching the numbers months ago.
Most of the other Republican candidates are staying mum on Donald Trump’s announcement, but Texas senator Ted Cruz is marking the announcement with a hat-based fundraiser.
https://t.co/U4RQzKkXTw #DuckingDonald https://t.co/EY96wWYv6g
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) January 27, 2016
The link leads to this page on Cruz’s campaign website, featuring a gold-on-white version of Trump’s now-iconic “Make America Great Again” cap - only this version implores voters to “Make Trump Debate Again.” The hat retails for a $25 donation to Cruz’s presidential campaign.
Cruz - whose spokesman told Politico that there’s no way that the billionaire frontrunner would skip tomorrow night’s debate, “mark my words” - has been the most vocally critical candidate of Trump’s decision to forego Thursday’s debate on Fox News for his own “special event.” After news broke on Tuesday of Trump’s decision to “probably” skip the debate, Cruz told radio host Mark Levin that he was personally challenging Trump to a two-person debate - “mano y mano.”
Updated
Donald Trump announces his counter-debate event details
Donald Trump’s counter-programming for the Republican presidential debate tomorrow night has officially been announced.
Here are the details, from the Donald himself:
For those keeping score, Trump’s “special event” will occur squarely in the middle of Fox News’ presidential debate schedule - the undercard debate, featuring Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Jim Gilmore, will be aired starting at 7pm Eastern, while the primetime debate is set to air at 9pm Eastern, the same time as Trump’s event.
At the same time as Trump campaign’s release of event details (such as they are), the candidate tweeted a clarification of the reasoning behind his refusal to join the rest of the Republican field at the Fox News debate:
It was the childishly written & taunting PR statement by Fox that made me not do the debate, more so than lightweight reporter, @megynkelly.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2016
Speaking of the Fox News debate: Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that there won’t be a Clint Eastwood-esque “empty lectern” on the debate stage tomorrow night - regardless of Trump’s decision to forego the event.
“No, I think that’s pretty standard for debates,” Spicer said. “You know whether or not they show up or not, or whether they happen to be offstage during a commercial break, that generally both sides have always had an unwritten rule saying that empty podiums will not be shown, and of course that will be the case this time as well.”
More details to come: There’s no telling how long Trump’s event will run, or even what the proceedings will entail - more Sarah Palin? - but if Trump’s other events are any indication, the people of Des Moines had better start lining up now regardless.
If you’re just such an Iowan, free tickets are available here, but be warned: The Sheslow auditorium has a maximum capacity of 775 people, and Trump’s events have a history of overselling - and don’t even think of protesting, silently or otherwise.
Updated
The endorsement game is afoot for Donald Trump.
NEW: Lt. Governor of South Carolina, Henry McMaster, endorsing Trump today at SC rally. Highest ranking state official to endorse Trump.
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) January 27, 2016
Texas senator Ted Cruz’s truce with Donald Trump has gone the way of the dodo, the Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui reports:
After cozying up to Trump for the greater part of last year – part of a longer-term gambit to eventually run away with Trump’s supporters – the Texas senator made clear the time had come for the two to distinguish their candidacies.
The choice before Iowans, Cruz said, was simple: “Who has been a consistent conservative that we can trust to stand by our principles?”
The poster behind him provided the answer, which the senator affirmed in a fiery speech delivered in his sermon-like speaking style. While a second-place finish for Cruz might not be fatal, it would be more than underwhelming with expectations running high for his candidacy there.
So when Trump announced in the evening that he would not participate in the next Republican presidential debate, to be held on Thursday in Des Moines, Cruz wasted no time before he pounced.
One the heels of news that Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s luxurious, world-class retweets are disproportionately bestowed upon white supremacists, the billionaire presidential candidate has been called out as a latter-day fascist by none other than Anne Frank’s stepsister.
In an essay published by Newsweek, Eva Schloss, an 86-year-old survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, decried Trump’s anti-immigrant policies as reminiscent of Nazi Germany:
If Donald Trump become the next president of the US it would be a complete disaster. I think he is acting like another Hitler by inciting racism.”
The piece, written to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day, compares the plight of Syrian refugees - and global resistance to aiding them - to the experiences of her family in the years leading up to World War II. “I was 11 years old when my family first immigrated to Belgium,” Schloss writes.
“We were treated as if we had come from the moon. I felt as if I wasn’t wanted and that I was different to everybody. It is even harder for today’s Syrian refugees who have a very different culture ... I was shocked that I wasn’t accepted like an ordinary person. I am very upset that today again so many countries are closing their borders.”
While making her closing pitch to Iowans in the final days before the state’s caucuses, Hillary Clinton stopped at a bowling alley on Wednesday where the screens bore not her initials but the Democratic frontrunner’s “Fighting for us” slogan.
It was the sort of backdrop candidates often choose as part of the retail politics associated with courting everyday Americans - Clinton’s own husband, former president Bill Clinton, paid a visit to a New Hampshire bowling alley during his 1992 campaign.
But Clinton’s visit to the Adel Family Fun Center, brimming with a couple hundred supporters, was not a photo-op. It was instead a nod to the early days of her campaign, when the former secretary of state embarked on a low-key listening tour, and what she gleaned from that experience.
The local business in which she stood, with her back to the bowling lanes, was owned by Bryce Smith. Introducing Clinton, he revealed they had met last April at one of the roundtables her campaign organized as she traveled between Iowa and New Hampshire reintroducing herself to voters.
Then, Clinton walked into the race as the presumed frontrunner and arguably the most well-known candidate to ever seek the presidency. She remains the latter, but has found herself locked in a dead heat in Iowa and trailing in New Hampshire to less of a household name: Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.
Clinton has recently emphasized that she is the more electable candidate and continued in the same vein on Wednesday.
“Don’t just focus on one thing in this campaign,” she warned, drawing a subtle contrast to Sanders’ idealism.
But by and large, Clinton focused more intently on her Republican opponents and the implications of Democrats ceding control of the White House in November.
“It’s like two totally alternative universes,” Clinton said, after criticizing Republicans for denying climate change and clinging to trickle-down economics. “We’re living in reality, they’re living in ideology.”
She also invoked their fixation with attacking her, calling it “perversely flattering but … also instructive.”
“They know me, they know I say what I mean,” Clinton said, returning again to the idea that she was best positioned to take on Republicans as her party’s standard bearer.
“A lot of folks have tried to take me out before, and I’m still standing.”
The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs says it all, really.
Nothing matters pic.twitter.com/3oNJCeRlNB
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) January 27, 2016
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is about to “feel the Bern” from Red Hot Chili Peppers, which will headline a concert-slash-fundraiser for for the presidential candidate on February 5 in Los Angeles.
Tickets for the show will go on sale the day of the show, with prices ranging from $30 to $2,700 for a seat at the concert - not exactly the price most of Sanders’ grassroots fundraisers are usually willing or able to shell out.
The lineup is a particularly Sanders-friendly one: All four members of Red Hot Chili Peppers have publicly endorsed the Democratic presidential candidate, joining a list of dozens of other artists in signing a letter that endorses Sanders’ “vision that pushes for a progressive economic agenda,” and “that creates jobs, raises wages, protects the environment and gets big money out of politics.”
Semi-relatedly: The Red Hot Chili Peppers video for their 2006 hit “Tell me Baby.”
Billionaire Republican frontrunner Donald Trump was criticized last week for retweeting an acolyte with the handle “@whitegenocideTM,” the latest instance of what some have called the candidate’s uncomfortably close following among white supremacists.
"@WhiteGenocideTM: @realDonaldTrump Poor Jeb. I could've sworn I saw him outside Trump Tower the other day! pic.twitter.com/e5uLRubqla"
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2016
The incident inspired Marshall Kirkpatrick at Little Bird, a social-media analytics company, to analyze the Twitter accounts of the 21 people Trump retweeted in the past week. Of those accounts, 28% (6 out of 21) follow at least one of the top 50 most popular white nationalist Twitter accounts on the internet, and 62% of them (13 out of 21) follow at least three people who have used the hashtag #WhiteGenocide lately.
Kirkpatrick’s conclusion:
It turns out that Donald Trump mostly retweets white supremacists saying nice things about him.”
Kirkpatrick also found that 114 of the last (roughly) 2,000 people who have used the hashtag #WhiteGenocide also have the word “Trump” in their Twitter bios.
Is that Martin O’Malley between Bush and Carson? How’d he get in there?
Go home Iowa, you're drunk. pic.twitter.com/x4XuunAt74
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) January 27, 2016
Buuuurrnnn
Even though I beat him in the first six debates, especially the last one, Ted Cruz wants to debate me again. Can we do it in Canada?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2016
Update: from the Cruz camp: Buuuuuurrrnnn
Pre-Order Your 'Make Trump Debate Again' Hat Today! #DuckingDonald https://t.co/eOZufQyWFK pic.twitter.com/BcCe3xsDQr
— Brian Phillips (@RealBPhil) January 27, 2016
Updated
FiveThirtyEight profiles Ann Selzer, the “polling Cassandra of Des Moines.” It doesn’t quite have the ring of “Oracle of Omaha,” but it gets the point across.
Clare Malone writes:
Selzer, who has overseen nearly every one of the Register’s Iowa Polls since 1987, is almost universally thought to hold the keys to their secret, fickle hearts.
It’s a reputation that is not unearned: She has on more than one occasion foretold an outcome that no one else saw coming, been pilloried for it, and not budged — the polling Cassandra of Des Moines. And her rise has come at a show-me-a-hero time in polling, as the industry rapidly loses its grip on what has made it tick for so many years: Landline calls are fewer and farther between, and Internet polls might be the wave of the future. Which is why this one question seems so pressing: What makes Ann Selzer so good?
Read the full piece here. The last Selzer poll of the Republican race in Iowa, published on 13 January, had Ted Cruz up by 3 points, with Trump second. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton had slid down to a 2-point lead over Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.
Rush Limbaugh, the pro talker, cigar aficionado and ragemonger, today went on the air and described his admiring understanding of Trump’s decision to ditch the Republican debate.
From the transcript:
RUSH: Okay, where are we on the situation here with Trump and the debate? So far Trump says he’s not showing up. He claims he’s not showing up because Megyn Kelly is going to continue to be a moderator. And if you believe that, I can give you substantive reasons. And it’s all in The Art of the Deal. Trump is not that hard to understand if you pay attention to him and read his books. In The Art of the Deal, one of the things that he makes a huge deal about is being able to know when to walk away and have the guts and the courage to do it. [...]
But the rules of the game say when there’s a debate, you show up. Screw the rules, he’s saying. Why should I willingly give them another shot at me in a circumstance they control, why should I do it? What’s the sense in it for me? I’m leading; I’m running the pack here; why in the world should I put myself in that circumstance? I’ve already seen what’s gonna happen.
This Dittohead approves:
Just got to listen to Rush Limbaugh - the guy is fantastic!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2016
Updated
Here’s a nice endorsement pick-up for Texas senator Ted Cruz, who’s been making a full-court press in Iowa with former Texas governor Rick Perry at his side.
Tony Perkins, president of the influential evangelical group the Family Research Council, is joining Cruz on the campaign trail in Iowa, Perkins says:
Passing through Chicago, home of the current president -- on my way to Iowa to join our next president, @tedcruz.
— Tony Perkins (@tperkins) January 27, 2016
The support of core evangelical voters in Iowa appeared a few weeks ago to be Cruz’s to lose.
But with Donald Trump winning surprising backing among evangelicals, prominently including Liberty University president Jerry Falwell, Jr. – and with challenges from lesser candidates such as Mike Huckabee questioning the integrity of Cruz’s faith – Cruz has had to keep scrambling to capture values voters.
Updated
A subreddit has raised more than $1m for Bernie Sanders, the Burlington Free Press reports:
The “Grassroots for Sanders” campaign organized around an online message board has raised over $1 million for Bernie Sanders.
The board, with over 150,000 subscribers, is a subsection of the online discussion site Reddit, which allows users to organize around topics. A Montpelier-based former grape picker, Aidan King, started the Sanders for President board in 2013, alongside David Fredrick. King now works with the campaign as a digital organizer.
Read the full piece here.
The foundering campaign of Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon, has parted ways with most of Carson’s old core group of friends and advisers – Terry Giles, Berry Bennett, Doug Watts. The informal adviser who always stuck, going on TV to put out brush fires and starting new ones, was conservative media personality Armstrong Williams.
Carson has downplayed Williams’ role in the campaign before. Now he’s downplaying it louder:
Campaign collapsing, Carson slams adviser as dishonest https://t.co/MNU5ApVbKW pic.twitter.com/AafszhHkAp
— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) January 27, 2016
In Carson campaign trail news, Iowa senator Joni Ernst will join him for an event this evening, the Des Moines Register reports. She previously appeared on the trail with Florida senator Marco Rubio.
Joni Ernst will introduce Ben Carson to Iowans at his town hall in Mount Pleasant at 6 p.m. on Friday, at Iowa Wesleyan University chapel
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) January 27, 2016
From the comments / favorites
Here are some of our favorite comments from below the line, in no particular order. Thanks for participating!
I really loved Bernie doing This Land is Your Land. It's so funny, but moving! I got all teared up.
OK, I'm old.
I would like to see Ed Miliband having a go at this Trump burger.
As long as you’re enjoying yourselves!:
Quite hilarious reading the Guardian's praise for the grotesquely right wing Megyn Kelly, of the champion of yellow journalism, Fox News. The cognitive dissonance must be making Guardian heads explode.
Updated
Sanders describes 'productive' meeting with Obama
Bernie Sanders has emerged from his meeting with Barack Obama in the White House. He says they had a “productive and constructive” meeting, discussing Isis, relations with Iran, and other points of foreign policy.
Sanders mounts a defense of the president’s foreign policy, saying “what the president is trying to do is the right thing.”
Update:
Sanders after mtg at WH w/Obama. Did he ask for Obama's endorsement? "No. Of course not."
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) January 27, 2016
Sanders said he told Obama how difficult it had been, years ago, to go to many funerals, even “in my small state of Vermont,” of young soldiers killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I’m very happy to tell you that in the last few years that I have not gone to funerals,” Sanders told reporters outside the White House.
WH press corps ... Sanders pic.twitter.com/XUTA4pc7Zo
— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) January 27, 2016
“I think what the president is trying to do is the right thing,” Sanders continued. “And what he is trying to do is to keep our young men and women out of perpetual war in the quagmire of the Middle East.”
Sanders also found occasion to mention a certain 2002 senate vote: “As you all know, I voted against the war in Iraq. And that’s a major point of difference between myself and secretary Clinton.”
Updated
Donald Trump is so steamed at Fox News that... he’s going on Bill O’Reilly’s show tonight, apparently:
Fox now confirming that Trump is on O'Reilly tonight. They're televising the war that they're a part of...
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) January 27, 2016
Reminder from five hours ago:
The statement put out yesterday by @FoxNews was a disgrace to good broadcasting and journalism. Who would ever say something so nasty & dumb
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2016
Over the line! Guardian politics reporter Sabrina Siddiqui checks in on Hillary Clinton at a bowling alley in Adele, Iowa:
More to come...
A new video ad in produced by an outside group supporting former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee calls into question the sincerity of Texas senator Ted Cruz’s Christian faith. Huckabee won the Iowa Republican caucuses in 2008.
Woman 1: “He doesn’t tithe? A millionaire that brags about his faith all the time?”
Woman 2: “Just what we need. Another phony.”
The Huckabee video teams are working overtime. The candidate is also out with an interminable and weakly humorous Adele parody:
Updated
Do you understand how the Iowa caucuses work? Then you’ll want to skip this elegantly simple video explainer:
Here’s Guardian US data editor Mona Chalabi with a look at today’s polls – and all the caveats you need to make sense of them.
1.
ABC News/Washington Post have a poll suggesting that nationally, the race between Clinton and Sanders is getting closer: the former Secretary of State got 55% of support while Sanders received 36% (O’Malley managed just 4%).
Change: Quite a bit - this is the narrowest the race has been between the two candidates since ABC News/Washington Post began polling the Democratic nomination - that’s because Clinton’s support has fallen and because Sanders’ support has risen. The average of all polls from Real Clear Politics (reminder: many polls are always better than just one) suggests that that the contest was actually narrower in mid-January, when Clinton was ahead by less than 10 percentage points.
Method: A national sample of 1,001 adults were contacted by cell phones and landlines and interviewed in English and in Spanish between January 21 and 24, 2016.
Margin of error: +/- 3.5 percentage points overall. Among registered voters the margin of error rises to +/- 4 percentage points and among Democrat-leaning registered voters (the group that really matter) it rises even higher to +/- 5.5 percentage points.
2.
Emerson College have conducted a poll which Jeb Bush is understandably quite excited about - it shows Trump on 35% in New Hampshire, with Bush at 18%, in second place for the first time in a long time.
Change: I’ll say. Looking at Real Clear Politics averages, the last time Bush was in second place was August last year (when these polls were an even less reliable indicator of who Americans will actually vote for). This poll is a huge outlier - at the moment those averages have Bush in 5th place behind Ben Carson.
Method: Strange to say the least. If I’ve understood correctly, 373 adult registered likely primary voters in New Hampshire were called on Monday, January 25 at 12 pm through Tuesday evening January 26. They were called on landlines and then their data was collected using an Interactive Voice Response system (flashback to the last time I tried to report a stolen credit card - we all know how great those systems are, right?).
Margin of error: +/- 5 percentage points
3.
A poll from Quinnipiac University suggests that Bernie Sanders is ahead in Iowa with 49% of the vote compared to Hillary Clinton’s 45%.
Change: Actually, not much. These results are very similar to ones that Quinnipiac collected two weeks ago.
Method: A total of 606 likely Iowa Democratic caucus participants were interviewed by telephone (landline and cellphones) between January 18 and 24, 2016.
Margin of error: +/- 4 percentage points
Although the Quinnipiac poll doesn’t show much change, there are some interesting results once you drill a little deeper into it. The demographics of respondents suggest that Sanders and Clinton have a very different support base.
Younger voters, men, those from poorer households and (perhaps unsurprisingly) those who describe themselves as very liberal are more likely to say they’ll vote for Bernie. Clinton, meanwhile, is popular among survey respondents who are older. Here’s a little breakout showing just how big those gaps are:
These numbers show just how important turnout is in shaping results on voting day. If younger voters stay at home (and they might), Bernie could be in trouble in Iowa.
Rolling Iowa poll averages now have Sanders ahead (just) for the first time. Below is where Clinton was now in 2008: pic.twitter.com/JZn4SECwel
— Dan Roberts (@RobertsDan) January 27, 2016
Updated
Marco Rubio takes the high road in the Trump-Cruz-Fox spat. Here’s a statement tweeted by his comms team.
“These kinds theatrics [sic] by Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are an entertaining sideshow, but they have nothing to do with defeating Hillary Clinton,” Rubio says in the statement:
BREAKING: Statement by @marcorubio about @FoxNews debate: pic.twitter.com/Qln87mFVoo
— Alex Conant (@AlexConant) January 27, 2016
Rubio’s been hanging in a distant third place in Iowa for about a month now, according to Real Clear Politics polling averages. Is there time to close the gap? Iowa caucuses in five days.
Rupert Murdoch wants Michael Bloomberg to run for president. Murdoch, remember, is a political clairvoyant, recognizing Mitt Romney’s weakness early on in 2012. Or was that obvious.
This is Bloomberg's last chance. You never know until your hat is in the ring! Events change everything, especially during elections.
— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) January 27, 2016
Back in 1987, Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders went into a small studio in Vermont to cut a folk album, undaunted by the fact that, according to the project’s own producer, “Bernie’s not a singer.”
Jim Farber has revisited the album, called We Shall Overcome, in a review for the Guardian:
The way Sanders talks through the songs makes Rex Harrison sound like Pavarotti. But it’s not the tone deaf delivery which transfixes the listener. It’s the accent. If Woody Allen sang Woody Guthrie songs, they’d sound like this. There’s less dust bowl in these grooves than borscht belt. Meanwhile, the arrangement of This Land Is Your Land features a reggae beat as only a pick-up band in Vermont could render it.
Here’s a sampler!
Read the full piece here:
Updated
A diner in Winterset, Iowa, has created a Trump burger: a third of a pound beef patty resting on half a pound of ham layered with grilled onions and melted cheese.
Guardian politics reporter Ben Jacobs ate it, for science. At least he tried to:
In fact, the “yuge” burger was so big, it needed two hands to consume, and this reporter is forced to admit he left it unfinished, dropping out of the race early much as many skeptics once predicted the Donald would.
Check it out:
Yet despite the burger, Trump hadn’t won any votes in the Northside Cafe. Both Valencia and Jahnke were fiscal conservatives who were wary of voicing support for any candidate. But Abby Emmons, a waitress there who supports Marco Rubio, had a far clearer opinion of Trump: “I think he’s a bit of a jackass.”
It’s not just Trump; Megyn Kelly’s brash, unforgiving and often cutting approach to political interviews have made her a formidable opponent for politicians of every stripe, writes Guardian West Coast bureau chief Paul Lewis:
Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly is not the first journalist to incur the wrath of Donald Trump. But she may be the first to have forced the combative Republican presidential frontrunner into submission.
Certainly, she must be the first TV anchor who dedicated an entire live broadcast to a news event that was, as she put it on Tuesday, about “yours truly”.
That was how she reported that Trump was pulling out of the final Republican TV debate before the Iowa caucuses, essentially because he didn’t like the idea of being questioned by Kelly.
“He doesn’t get to control the media,” Kelly told viewers of her evening show, The Kelly File, hours after the billionaire real estate mogul’s dramatic declaration that he was withdrawing from the debate.
“While he has made his position clear about me after that first debate, Roger Ailes made his position clear too,” she said, referring to the Fox News TV executive who has stood by Kelly. She added that Trump had been bringing up the issue of her moderation of the forthcoming debate “again and again and again and again”.
Read the full piece here:
Cruz challenges Trump to go mano-a-mano
Texas senator Ted Cruz, a Tea Party conservative with evangelical cred, has long appeared in position to win Iowa – until two weeks ago, that is, when Trump began sending serious ordnance Cruz’s way.
Now Cruz is fighting to hold ground in the Hawkeye State. His flashiest gambit: challenging Trump to a one-on-one debate, with a moderator of Trump’s choosing.
Trump has not picked up the gauntlet.
In a radio interview and rally Tuesday night in Fairfield, Iowa, Cruz hammered on Trump’s withdrawal from the debate as a sign of weakness.
“If he thinks Megyn Kelly is so scary, what exactly would he do with Vladimir Putin? I promise you Putin is a lot more scary than Megyn Kelly,” Cruz told talk radio host Mark Levin. At the rally, Cruz joked that Trump was “a fragile soul [whose] hair might stand” if faced with tough questions.
“If someone did that – didn’t show up at the interview – you know what you’d say? You’re fired!” Cruz exclaimed. The crowd, which applauded him throughout his riff, roared in agreement.
So Ted Cruz is out with this website tonight. pic.twitter.com/OeJcSV4GXP
— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) January 27, 2016
Updated
Fox: Trump camp leveled ‘threats’ at Kelly
Following Donald Trump’s announcement Tuesday that he would not participate in the Thursday Republican debate produced by Fox News, the network released a statement saying that Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski had threatened Fox anchor Megyn Kelly with harsh public treatment.
“We can’t give in to terrorizations toward any of our employees,” the Fox statement concludes. In full:
Capitulating to politicians’ ultimatums about a debate moderator violates all journalistic standards, as do threats, including the one leveled by Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, toward Megyn Kelly. In a call on Saturday with a Fox News executive, Lewandowski stated that Megyn had a “rough couple of days after that last debate” and he “would hate to have her go through that again.” Lewandowski was warned not to level any more threats, but he continued to do so. We can’t give in to terrorizations toward any of our employees.
Trump video: ‘Megyn Kelly is a lightweight’
Trump is still replying to Fox’s earlier, sarcastic statement about how “Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly”:
The statement put out yesterday by @FoxNews was a disgrace to good broadcasting and journalism. Who would ever say something so nasty & dumb
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2016
Hello, and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 2016 race for the White House. Donald Trump says he will skip Thursday’s Republican debate in Des Moines because ... he can?
In a news conference Tuesday night, Trump attacked Fox News for slating Megyn Kelly, one of the network’s top anchors, as co-host. Trump complained about “the wise-guy press releases” that Fox sent out making fun of him for fearing Kelly. Then he said he would hold a competing event to “raise some money for the wounded warriors”.
Trump and Kelly have beef, because she once asked him a question about his past disparaging comments about women. What kind of an irrelevant, tendentious question is that?
Anyway, this morning Trump tweeted that he would not “call Megyn Kelly a bimbo, because that would not be politically correct”.
I refuse to call Megyn Kelly a bimbo, because that would not be politically correct. Instead I will only call her a lightweight reporter!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2016
Trump holds a 17-point lead in the Republican race in national polling averages, and a 59% majority of political insiders in an informal, very insidery poll think he’s the nominee.
In other debate news, Kentucky senator Rand Paul has made it back to the main stage and former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, who is still running for president despite no measurable support, somehow made it into the undercard.
Sanders to chat with Obama at White House
In the Democratic race, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is headed to the White House today for a surprise meeting with the president. Barack Obama strongly implied in an interview published Monday that he thought Hillary Clinton was the stronger candidate. But he has a visible soft spot for Sanders – who doesn’t need the president to tell people what he’s about, in any case.
Clinton will take a quickie break from campaigning in Iowa today to run to Philadelphia for a fundraiser featuring Jon Bon Jovi, the rock star. Democrats don’t think she’s as honest and trustworthy as Sanders, according to new ABC News polling data.
Notice that 36% of Democrats do think Hillary Clinton is more honest and trustworthy than Bernie Sanders.
ABC/WaPo poll: Sanders' "honest and trustworthy" lead over Clinton doubles since last month https://t.co/pWT5ePDEdI pic.twitter.com/cJ83pTqENp
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) January 27, 2016
The Guardian’s Gary Younge went to a Trump rally last night ...
Oh. And then this happened pic.twitter.com/fHJnlDSk3s
— Gary Younge (@garyyounge) January 27, 2016
... and Jeb Bush has played the heathen card on Trump:
NEW: Jeb Bush Suggests That Donald Trump is Not a Christian "I don't know what he is." https://t.co/bMrGCRyoNm
— Candace Smith (@CandaceSmith_) January 27, 2016
Here’s where some of the team is deployed today:
Washington correspondent David Smith is at the White House to cover Sanders’ surprise private meeting with Obama. DC bureau chief Dan Roberts takes over the Sanders beat this evening in Mason City, Iowa
Sabrina Siddiqui and Gary Younge will catch up with Hillary Clinton outside of Des Moines this morning, while Dan will be at a Bill Clinton event in Mason City, Iowa.
Ben Jacobs is hanging out with former Texas governor Rick Perry and current Texas senator Ted Cruz, who have a pro-life rally planned.
Donald Trump’s in South Carolina tonight.
Can't abide Trump. Can't abide Kelly. Can't abide the GOP. Can't abide Fox. However, Kelly absolutely singled Trump out in the first debate. Maybe he deserved it, but so do the rest of them. Solution: don't elect a Republican, don't watch Fox.