Iowa Democrats have released a few more results from the caucuses. With 92% of precincts reporting, the ordering hasn’t changed. Pete Buttigieg maintains still the highest count of state delegates, with Bernie Sanders trailing close behind. Sanders still leads the popular vote.
Sanders’ Iowa campaign director has apparently sent a memo to aides, saying they “have a viable path” to overtake Buttigieg.
Bernie Sanders’ Iowa state director sent a memo to aides tonight that says they “have a viable path forward to achieve a clean sweep and retake the lead in state delegate equivalents and national pledged delegates.” She also says staff have been working to confirm results. pic.twitter.com/QGk5i7tVuU
— Holly Otterbein (@hollyotterbein) February 6, 2020
It’s still unclear when we’ll have results from all the precincts. The Guardian is continuing to track the results as they come in.
Updated
Summary
- The Senate voted to acquit Donald Trump on both articles of impeachment, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, almost entirely along party lines.
- Senator Mitt Romney of Utah was the only Republican to cast a “guilty” vote, denying the president his talking point that Republicans were united behind him.
- Shortly after his acquittal, Trump tweeted a video that cast Romney as “slippery”. Trump’s son Donald Trump, Jr. called for the Utah senator and former Republican nominee for president to be “expelled” from the Republican party.
- All the Democrats cast “guilty” verdicts on both articles.
- Democratic leaders have promised to continue investigating Trump and his conduct toward Ukraine, though leaders say they’re still weighing how to proceed.
- The president and his supporters rejoiced at his acquittal. Vice President Mike Pence said, “It’s been an incredible week.” Trump tweeted a meme about never leaving office.
- Trump said he would publicly discuss his acquittal at the White House tomorrow at 12 pm ET.
- The full results of the Iowa caucuses still haven’t been released. With 85% of precincts reporting, Pete Buttigieg has maintained his narrow lead over Bernie Sanders. Sanders, however, leads in the popular vote.
Will Democrats keep investigating Trump?
The impeachment trial has ended in acquittal, but Congress can continue investigating the president’s conduct toward Ukraine, fight to access his financial documents and hear testimony from witnesses that the Senate chose not to question. Democrats have promised to hold the president to account, though Democratic leaders are still weighing how to proceed, according to Politico:
“We haven’t made any decisions about what comes next,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the House’s lead impeachment prosecutor, said in an interview. “We wanted to get through the trial, and so we’ll have those conversations among our caucus, within leadership. Right now we’re just trying to take stock of what just took place.”
Pelosi did not respond to a question late Wednesday about her plans for the Ukraine investigation. But in a statement she more broadly foreshadowed continued efforts to investigate Trump — ones that also center on Trump’s finances and allegations of self-dealing.
“The House will continue to protect and defend the checks and balances in the Constitution that safeguard our Republic, both in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion,” Pelosi said.
Updated
How did Donald Trump escape impeachment? The Guardian’s Tom McCarthy reviews the many factors that that all but guaranteed Trump’s acquittal.
House Republicans have introduced legislation to register disapproval of Speaker Nancy Pelosi after she ripped up a copy of Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech.
“Whereas, the conduct of Speaker Pelosi was a breach of decorum and degraded the proceedings of the joint session to the discredit of the House,” the resolution reads. “Resolved, That the House of Representatives disapproves of the behavior of Speaker Pelosi during the joint session of Congress held on February 4, 2020.”
The resolution, introduced by Texas Representative Kay Granger is unlikely to get anywhere — Representatives are expected to vote to table it tomorrow.
Donald Trump’s campaign sent a fundraising blast soon after the Senate voted to acquit him. “We are STRONGER THAN EVER,” the email reads:
Trump raising $ off #impeachment verdict: “The biggest Witch Hunt in the history of politics is finally over and ...we are STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE...Nervous Nancy, Adam Shifty Schiff, Jerry and Cryin’ Chuck have been LYING to the American People" in order to steal the election. pic.twitter.com/4MbCikXxW2
— Todd J. Gillman (@toddgillman) February 5, 2020
The White House has claimed “full vindication and exoneration” following the acquittal.
Trump, meanwhile, has tweeted a video casting Mitt Romney, the only Republican senator to vote for an article of impeachment, as “slippery”. The president’s son, Donald Trump, Jr. has called for Romney to be expelled from the Republican Party.
Updated
House managers: 'The president will not be vindicated'
In an op-ed published in the Washington Post, the House managers who argued the case against Donald Trump over the past two weeks once more condemned the president’s actions, and the Senate’s decision to acquit him.
“If left in office, the president will not stop trying to cheat in the next election until he succeeds,” they wrote, adding that the only option was to vote him out of office.
Because of the impeachment process, voters can now stand forewarned of the lengths to which the president will go to try to secure his reelection, violating the law and undermining our national security and that of our allies.
By denying the American people a fair trial, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also deprived the president of something that he desperately sought — exoneration. There can be no exoneration without a legitimate trial. Out of fear of what they would learn, the Senate refused to hold one. The president will not be vindicated, and neither will the Senate, certainly not by history.
In case any representatives missed the big news...
House just received the following message from the Senate that President Trump was acquitted on the two articles of impeachment:
— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) February 5, 2020
"I have been directed by the Senate to inform the House of the judgement of the Senate in the case of Donald John Trump." pic.twitter.com/UfuAO0vckY
Congress was formally notified of Donald Trump’s acquittal.
Evening summary
That’s it from me after another historic day in Washington. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands:
- As expected, the Republican-controlled Senate voted to acquit Trump on both articles of impeachment, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
- Republican senator Mitt Romney broke ranks to vote for conviction on the first article of impeachment, abuse of power, although he voted for acquittal on obstruction of Congress. The stunning move robbed Trump of his key talking point that Republicans were unified in opposing his removal from office.
- Every Democratic senator cast “guilty” verdicts on both articles of impeachment, meaning Senate Democrats were actually more unified than their Republican colleagues on the impeachment vote.
- Trump said he would addess the acquittal in a public statement at the White House tomorrow at 12 pm ET.
- More results are trickling out from the Iowa caucuses, but Pete Buttigieg has maintained his narrow lead over Bernie Sanders.
Maanvi will have more updates and analysis coming, so stay tuned.
Speaking in Pennsylvania at a “Women for Trump” event, vice president Mike Pence praised Trump’s State of the Union address and celebrated his acquittal.
“Last night I had a real good seat at the State of the Union,” Pence said to cheers. He then made a veiled reference to House speaker Nancy Pelosi tearing up her copy of Trump’s remarks. “I get the feeling the woman sitting next to me didn’t like the speech as much as I did,” Pence said.
He then turned his focus to the Senate acquittal vote. “After a sham investigation and partisan impeachment, it’s over, America,” Pence said. “It’s been an incredible week.”
House speaker Nancy Pelosi has issued a statement denouncing the Senate’s vote to acquit Trump and reiterating that he will be impeached “forever.”
Lengthy Pelosi statement on articles of impeachment pic.twitter.com/cuhqnHnQdO
— Alana Abramson (@aabramson) February 5, 2020
“Today, the President and Senate Republicans have normalized lawlessness and rejected the system of checks and balances of our Constitution,” Pelosi said.
The speaker once again lamented the Senate’s decision not to hear from new witnesses, arguing the lack of evidence delegitimized Trump’s acquittal.
“The President will boast that he has been acquitted. There can be no acquittal without a trial, and there is no trial without witnesses, documents and evidence,” Pelosi said. “The President has been impeached forever.”
In a letter to the Secret Service requesting Hunter Biden’s travel records, Republican senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson said they were “reviewing potential conflicts of interest posed by the business activities of Hunter Biden and his associates during the Obama administration, particularly with respect to his business activities in Ukraine and China.”
Grassley, the chairman of the Senate finance committee, and Johnson, the chairman of the homeland security committee, wrote, “We write to request information about whether Hunter Biden used government-sponsored travel to help conduct private business, to include his work for Rosemont Seneca and related entities in China and Ukraine.”
It’s worth noting that Republicans controlled the Senate for the final two years of Barack Obama’s presidency, when Hunter Biden was serving on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. They could have launched the investigation then, but they only raised concerns about Biden’s business activities after Trump’s allies tried to pressure Ukraine to look into the matter.
Updated
Republican senators request Hunter Biden's travel records
Moments after Trump’s acquittal in the impeachment trial, two Republican senators indicated they intend to continue investigating Hunter Biden’s business activities in Ukraine.
Breaking: from their press office -
— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) February 5, 2020
“Good afternoon, Senators Grassley and Johnson today requested Hunter Biden’s official travel records from the U.S. Secret Service as a part of their ongoing probe into potential conflicts of interest.
A full news release is forthcoming”
During the trial, Republicans repeatedly tried to deflect attention away from the allegations against Trump by raising concerns about the business activities of the former vice president’s son.
But US and Ukrainian officials have said there is no evidence Joe Biden or his son violated any corruption laws when Hunter was serving on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
Updated
White House claims 'full vindication and exoneration' after acquittal
In a new statement, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham lambasted “the sham impeachment attempt” and claimed Trump had been completely vindicated after the Senate voted for his acquittal.
BREAKING — Statement from the White House press secretary on what she calls “the sham impeachment attempt." pic.twitter.com/wGxKkWnIXt
— Michael D. Shear (@shearm) February 5, 2020
“Today, the sham impeachment attempt concocted by Democrats ended in the full vindication and exoneration of President Donald J. Trump,” Grisham said. “As we have said all along, he is not guilty.”
Grisham also took aim at Mitt Romney, who voted to convict on the first article of impeachment, in the statement: “The Senate voted to reject the baseless articles of impeachment, and only the President’s political opponents – all Democrats, and one failed Republican presidential candidate – voted for the manufactured impeachment articles.”
As senators were voting in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, more results trickled out of Iowa. But something seemed off.
it seems the new results have entered many likely Sanders results in Polk County as Deval Patrick or Steyer.
— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) February 5, 2020
As the New York Times’ Nate Cohn pointed out, it seemed as if SDEs for Bernie Sanders had gone to Deval Patrick or Tom Steyer. SDE’s owed to Elizabeth Warren may have gone to Steyer as well.
The Iowa Democratic Party noted the error, and issued a correction soon after. Sanders’ delegates from counties he’d clearly won were restored.
There will be a minor correction to the last batch of results and we will be pushing an update momentarily.
— Iowa Democrats (@iowademocrats) February 5, 2020
Per the latest numbers, with 85% of precincts reporting, it appears Pete Buttigieg has maintained a narrow lead.
Trump to addresses acquittal in public statement tomorrow
Trump said in a tweet that he would address his acquittal in the impeachment trial in a public statement at the White House tomorrow at 12 pm ET.
I will be making a public statement tomorrow at 12:00pm from the @WhiteHouse to discuss our Country’s VICTORY on the Impeachment Hoax!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2020
Considering Trump’s first response to the acquittal was to tweet a meme about his presidency lasting “4EVA,” it seems unlikely he will be particularly contrite in the statement.
In comparison, when Bill Clinton was acquitted by the Senate in 1999, he reacted by telling the American people that he was “profoundly sorry for all I have done wrong in words and deeds.”
February 12, 1999 – President Bill Clinton following acquittal by the Senate: "I want to say again to the American people how profoundly sorry I am for what I said and did to trigger these events and the great burden they have imposed on the Congress and on the American people." pic.twitter.com/ZfnL4CkxHs
— CSPAN (@cspan) January 31, 2020
Trump’s allies, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, are boasting that the president has been “acquitted for life” following the Senate’s impeachment vote.
Acquitted for life!
— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) February 5, 2020
Acquitted for life. pic.twitter.com/HgqBXwpoWK
— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) February 5, 2020
The phrase seems to be a jab at House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has said that Trump’s legacy will forever be marred by the impeachment.
“I think that we have pulled back a veil of behavior totally unacceptable to our founders, and that the public will see this with a clearer eye, an unblurred eye,” Pelosi told the New York Times earlier this week. “Whatever happens, he has been impeached forever.”
Speaking to reporters after the acquittal vote, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said vulnerable Republicans facing difficult reelections have been politically aided by the impeachment trial.
“I can tell you as a poll watcher who’s looking at polls in certain Senate races, every one of our people in tough races … is in better shape today than they were before the impeachment trial started,” McConnell said.
The majority leader added he was “surprised and disappointed” by Mitt Romney’s decision to convict on the first article of impeachment, but he did not seem to give any credence to the far-fetched idea of expelling Romney from the Republican conference.
I asked @senatemajldr if there’s room in the Republican party for someone who voted to convict President Trump. He said he was “surprised and disappointed” by Romney’s vote- but Romney continues to work with GOP on vast majority of issues pic.twitter.com/2euvyj729f
— Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) February 5, 2020
McConnell also repeatedly dodged a question about whether it was appropriate for the president to ask Ukraine to investigate a political rival.
“I’m here to talk about the political impact of this,” McConnell said.
Hillary Clinton has weighed in on Trump’s acquittal, accusing the Republican senators who opposed the president’s removal of betraying their oath to defend the Constitution.
As the president's impeachment trial began, Republican senators pledged an oath to defend the Constitution.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 5, 2020
Today, 52 of them voted to betray that oath—and all of us.
We’re entering dangerous territory for our democracy. It’ll take all of us working together to restore it.
After acquittal, Trump reshares meme about never leaving office
Trump has offered his first commentary on the impeachment trial, resharing a meme imagining his presidency extending well beyond the two-term limit established by the Constitution.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2020
Trump has repeatedly joked with supporters about extending his presidency beyond eight years, causing heartburn on the left even as legal scholars insist there is no means for him to do so.
Impeachment trial adjourns
Before adjourning the impeachment trial, Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts thanked the senators for their conduct as he carried out “ill-defined responsibilities in an unfamiliar setting.”
“You have been generous hosts, and I look forward to seeing you again under happier circumstances,” Roberts said.
With that, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell called for the chamber to adjourn, and Roberts gaveled out the session.
The impeachment trial of Donald Trump has officially ended.
Trump's team takes a victory lap after acquittal
Moments after Trump was acquitted, his reelection campaign jumped at the chance to declare victory over Democrats.
Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said the acquittal “totally vindicated” the president, criticizing the impeachment as a “terrible ordeal”:
This terrible ordeal was always a campaign tactic to invalidate the 2016 votes of 63 million Americans and was a transparent effort to interfere with the 2020 election only nine months away.
— Brad Parscale - Text TRUMP to 88022 (@parscale) February 5, 2020
Full campaign statement: pic.twitter.com/ZwSphjRaXL
The Trump campaign’s Twitter account also tweeted out a meme of Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s face photoshopped onto Nancy Pelosi’s in the clip of the House speaker tearing up the president’s State of the Union last night:
Here's what Cocaine Mitch thinks of the Articles of Impeachment pic.twitter.com/WAgxwLKVjE
— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) February 5, 2020
Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts has read the final votes on both articles of impeachment and declared Trump to be acquitted.
Roberts said, “The Senate having tried Donald John Trump, President of the United States, upon two Articles of Impeachment exhibited against him by the House of Representatives, and two-thirds of the Senators present not having found him guilty of the charges contained therein: it is, therefore, ordered and adjudged that the said Donald John Trump be, and he is hereby, acquitted of the charges in said articles.”
Before adjourning, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell thanked Roberts for his service and awarded him “the golden gavel” for his work. McConnell also thanked the Senate pages who helped to keep the floor running during the proceedings.
Trump acquitted of obstruction of Congress
Trump has officially been acquitted of both articles of impeachment, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
The votes -- 52-48 and 53-47 -- fell well short of the two-thirds majority needed to remove the president from office.
Instead, Democrats hoping to oust Trump will have to wait until the November election to try to end his presidency.
Senators are now casting their votes on the second article, saying whether Trump is “guilty” or “not guilty” of obstruction of Congress.
Republicans have already cast enough votes to acquit Trump, but the vote is not official until it is gaveled in.
Vote is under way on second article of impeachment
The vote is under way on the second article of impeachment, obstruction of Congress.
The final vote is expected to be 53-47 because Mitt Romney, who voted “guilty” on the first article of abuse of power, has said he will vote “not guilty.”
As with the first article, the vote is expected to fall well short of the two-thirds majority needed to remove Trump from office.
Trump is acquitted of abuse of power
It’s official: Trump has been acquitted on the first article of impeachment, abuse of power.
The final vote, as expected, was 52-48, with all Democrats and Mitt Romney supporting conviction.
As expected, Mitt Romney just cast his “guilty” verdict on the first article of impeachment, abuse of power.
But the Republican senator is expected to vote “not guilty” on the second article, obstruction of Congress.
The Senate vote began with Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts asking members, “Senators how say you? Is the defendant, Donald John Trump, guilty or not guilty?”
Each senator, in alphabetical order, is now saying whether Trump is “guilty” or “not guilty” on the first article of impeachment, abuse of power.
Today’s impeachment vote is historic for two reasons: it marks the first time a member of the president’s party has voted for his removal from office, and it is also the first time the opposite party has been unified in supporting the president’s conviction.
This is the first time in history a member of the president’s party has voted for removal.
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) February 5, 2020
With Manchin’s and Sinema’s votes, it’s also the first time the whole opposition party has voted to remove.
Vote on first article of impeachment is under way
The Senate vote on the first article of impeachment, abuse of power, is now under way.
The final vote is expected to be 52-48 in favor of acquittal, with every Democrat plus Mitt Romney voting for conviction.
In order to remove from the president from office, two-thirds of the Senate would have to support conviction, so the vote will fall well short of that.
But Democrats will likely declare victory with having been able to forge a (barely) bipartisan coalition to support Trump’s removal from office.
McConnell criticizes Pelosi in final speech before impeachment vote
Moments before the Senate is scheduled to vote on whether to remove Trump from office, majority leader Mitch McConnell issued a final denunciation of the president’s impeachment in a floor speech.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: "We will reject this incoherent case that comes nowhere near—nowhere near—justifying the first presidential removal in history." https://t.co/pZ46hjTyU1 pic.twitter.com/Ewnvuz7DTR
— ABC News (@ABC) February 5, 2020
McConnell criticized Democrats like House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who have said Trump’s expected acquittal will be illegitimate because there was no “fair trial.”
“Perhaps she’ll tear up the verdict like she tore up the State of the Union address,” McConnell said.
The Kentucky Republican concluded, “I hope we will look back on this vote and say this is the day the fever began to break. I hope we will not say this was just the beginning.”
Manchin says he will vote to convict
Senator Joe Manchin has said he will vote to convict Trump on both articles of impeachment, indicating every Democrat will vote for the president’s removal from office.
Voting whether or not to remove a sitting President has been a truly difficult decision, and after listening to the arguments presented by both sides, I have reached my conclusion reluctantly. My full statement: pic.twitter.com/yIgy6Qf5JZ
— Senator Joe Manchin (@Sen_JoeManchin) February 5, 2020
Trump and his allies had hoped to pick off at least one moderate Democrat on the impeachment vote, in the hope of being able to claim a bipartisan acquittal.
Instead, Democrats will be able to claim a bipartisan push for conviction with Mitt Romney’s vote in favor of the first article of impeachment, abuse of power.
Republican senator Susan Collins, who has said she will vote to acquit Trump, walked back her comment yesterday, “I believe that the president has learned from this case.”
The Maine Republican told a reporter that it was more accurate to say she “hopes” Trump has learned from the impeachment trial.
Just spoke with Sen. Collins
— Gregg Lagerquist (@GreggWGME) February 5, 2020
She now says she probably shouldn't have said that she "believes" Pres. Trump has learned his lessons from the fallout from his dealings with Ukraine and #Impeachment
She now says a better word would have been "hopes"#mepolitics pic.twitter.com/k5pC3nrVsc
During an off-the-record luncheon with news anchors yesterday, Trump reportedly dismissed the notion that any of his actions toward Ukraine were inappropriate.
“It was a perfect call,” Trump told the anchors of his July conversation with the Ukrainian president, during which he asked for a “favor” from the foreign leader and went on to discuss potential corruption investigations.
Speaking on the Senate floor, minority leader Chuck Schumer outlined the charges against Trump and made the case for his removal from office, even as the president’s acquittal appears all but certain.
Sen. Schumer: "There is no greater subversion of our democracy than for powers outside of our borders to determine elections within them" https://t.co/L6h3Of1XFj pic.twitter.com/XKruvpXfe1
— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 5, 2020
Schumer once again quoted Michael Gerhardt, one of the legal experts who testified during the public hearings of the House impeachment inquiry.
Gerhardt told the House judiciary committee in December, “I want to stress that if what we’re talking about is not impeachable, then nothing is impeachable.”
Sinema to reportedly vote to convict
Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema will reportedly vote to convict Trump on both articles of impeachment, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
The Arizona Republic reports:
The decision by Sinema, a moderate Arizona Democrat who was seen as a swing vote, was one of the last remaining questions hanging over Trump’s impeachment trial.
On both counts, when asked if the president is guilty or not guilty, Sinema will say, ‘Guilty.’
Sinema’s votes will put her in line with most of her Democratic colleagues and come hours after the president gave vocal support in his State of the Union address to a bipartisan Sinema bill to provide new parents with cash advances on their taxes.
In deeming the president guilty, Sinema said in a lengthy statement provided first to The Arizona Republic, that she is upholding her duty to the U.S. Constitution, and putting the interests of the country ahead of partisan politics or personal interest.
The last remaining Democratic senator whose stance remains unknown is Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who has declined to say how he will vote.
More Iowa results trickle in
The Senate is just 30 minutes away from voting on whether to remove Trump from office, and more results are trickling in from the Iowa caucuses.
With 75% of precincts reporting, up from 71% last night, Pete Buttigieg has retained his narrow lead over Bernie Sanders.
75% of results tallied. Here's we we stand on Democratic caucus results:https://t.co/TidNpeaUFA pic.twitter.com/14IIcTs1ci
— Rachel Stassen-Berger (@RachelSB) February 5, 2020
Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report has now projected that Buttigieg will win the most state delegate equivalents, wich is the metric used to determine the winner of the Iowa caucuses.
But the fact that Sanders won the highest number of caucusgoers in the first alignment makes it likely that the Vermont senator will also declare victory from Iowa.
If this pans out, the basic upshot is Pete Buttigieg wins the electoral college and Bernie Sanders wins the popular vote in Iowa. https://t.co/Sa7boIC6oO
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) February 5, 2020
Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for Barack Obama, predicted Mitt Romney’s speech explaining his decision to vote to convict on the first article of impeachment would quickly find its way into Democratic attack ads against the vulnerable Republican senators who are voting to acquit.
Mitt Romney’s speech is gonna make for some great ad material against @SenatorCollins, @CoryGardner, @SenMcSallyAZ, @SenJoniErnst, and @ThomTillis.
— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) February 5, 2020
Some of Mitt Romney’s critics have speculated that his criticism of Trump is meant to set him up for a presidential bid in 2024, but the Republican senator laughed at this idea in an interview with the Atlantic.
When I asked Romney about speculation that he's positioning himself for another presidential run, he laughed harder than I'd ever seen him laugh: https://t.co/KtAe5drGxv pic.twitter.com/536g09o7Ns
— McKay Coppins (@mckaycoppins) February 5, 2020
Trump’s former campaign manager is also mocking Mitt Romney after the Republican senator announced he would vote to convict the president on the first article of impeachment.
W.Mitt Romney AKA Pierre Delecto - will always be remembered as the candidate who chocked when it mattered most. He begged for @realDonaldTrump to endorse him - now we know he will be a 1 term Senator.
— Corey R. Lewandowski (@CLewandowski_) February 5, 2020
Trump has not yet weighed in on Romney’s announcement, but it seems very likely that the president will similarly lash out against the Republican senator, considering the long-standing tension between the two.
Romney spoke out against Trump’s election during the 2016 campaign, and as recently as October, the president mocked Romney for having “choked” in his 2012 race against Barack Obama.
Somebody please wake up Mitt Romney and tell him that my conversation with the Ukrainian President was a congenial and very appropriate one, and my statement on China pertained to corruption, not politics. If Mitt worked this hard on Obama, he could have won. Sadly, he choked!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2019
Donald Trump Jr calls for Romney's expulsion from the Republican Party
The president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, lashed out against Mitt Romney after the Republican senator announced he would vote to convict Trump on the first article of impeachment, abuse of power.
Don Jr said Romney, who lost the 2012 presidential election to Barack Obama, was “forever bitter” about not being president and “should be expelled” from the Republican Party.
Mitt Romney is forever bitter that he will never be POTUS. He was too weak to beat the Democrats then so he’s joining them now.
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 5, 2020
He’s now officially a member of the resistance & should be expelled from the @GOP.
But at least one of Romney’s Republican colleagues pushed back against that idea, saying it was up for voters to decide.
“To me, I just couldn’t vote to remove somebody on that record... but everyone has to make their own decisions,” Sen. Hawley says in response to Romney’s vote.
— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) February 5, 2020
When asked if he should be kicked out of GOP: “oh my gosh, no,” adding that will be for voters to decide.
Echoing his Senate floor speech, Mitt Romney said in an interview with Fox News that he believed Trump should be removed from office.
MITT ROMNEY to Fox News: "I do believe [Trump] should be removed from office." pic.twitter.com/blaNvT9skA
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 5, 2020
“It’s hard for me to imagine a more serious attack on the Constitution and on a republic like ours than saying that a president would be able to enlist a foreign government to corrupt our elections so that our president could keep in power,” the Republican senator told Fox News’ Chris Wallace.
“That’s what happens in tinhorn autocracies. It does not happen in the United States of America.”
But Romney noted that he believed his Republican colleagues, who are voting to acquit Trump, also “followed their conscience as they understood it.”
Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee and the niece of senator Mitt Romney, said she “disagreed” with her uncle’s decision to vote to convict on the first article of impeachment but believed the party was “more united than ever” behind Trump.
This is not the first time I have disagreed with Mitt, and I imagine it will not be the last.
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) February 5, 2020
The bottom line is President Trump did nothing wrong, and the Republican Party is more united than ever behind him.
I, along with the @GOP, stand with President Trump.
Lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff applauded Mitt Romney’s “moral courage” after the Republican senator announced he would vote to convict Trump on the first article of impeachment, abuse of power.
Having proven Trump guilty, I asked if there was just one Republican Senator who would say “enough”
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) February 5, 2020
Who would stand up against this dangerously immoral president
Who would display moral courage
Who would do impartial justice as their oath required and convict
And there is. https://t.co/xNHi2CP6oF
In his Senate floor speech, Mitt Romney noted he had hoped to hear from John Bolton in part to see if Trump’s former national security adviser could provide exculpatory evidence in connection to the allegations at the heart of the impeachment trial:
I sought to hear testimony from John Bolton not only because I believed he could add context to the charges, but also because I hoped that what he said might raise reasonable doubt and thus remove from me the awful obligation to vote for impeachment.
Like each member of this deliberative body, I love our country. I believe that our Constitution was inspired by Providence. I am convinced that freedom itself is dependent on the strength and vitality of our national character. As it is with each senator, my vote is an act of conviction. We have come to different conclusions, fellow senators, but I trust we have all followed the dictates of our conscience. ...
We’re all footnotes at best in the annals of history. But in the most powerful nation on earth, the nation conceived in liberty and justice, that is distinction enough for any citizen.
Democratic senators raced to applaud their Republican colleague Mitt Romney after he announced he would vote to convict Trump on the first article of impeachment.
I sat silently across the chamber, listening to my friend give one of the most important speeches I have ever had the good fortune to hear in person.
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) February 5, 2020
At a time when many wonder what honor is left in public life, there stands Mitt Romney.
.@brianschatz, wiping tears from his eyes while Romney was speaking on the floor, tells me after why he is so emotional:
— Julie Tsirkin (@julietsirkin) February 5, 2020
“Because we all need to believe that this place can work. It can only work if people put country over party. Romney did that.” https://t.co/4chmgEo8jk
As Republican senator Mitt Romney was wrapping up his Senate speech explaining he will vote to convict Trump on the first article of impeachment, the White House canceled a planned pool spray with the president and Venezuela’s opposition leader.
As Romney was wrapping up his Senate floor speech, this happened: https://t.co/Fb7p30EuNg
— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) February 5, 2020
Republican senator Mitt Romney’s decision to vote to convict Trump is not only stunning; it’s also historic in terms of past impeachment trials.
As has been pointed out, Romney now becomes the first senator in American history to vote to remove a president of his own party in a Senate impeachment trial.
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) February 5, 2020
Republican senator Mitt Romney said he would vote to convict Trump on the first article of impeachment, abuse of power, but would vote to acquit on the second article, obstruction of Congress.
BREAKING: Sen. Mitt Romney: "The grave question the Constitution tasks senators to answer is whether the president committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor. Yes, he did." https://t.co/pZ46hjTyU1 pic.twitter.com/mphoUd39I5
— ABC News (@ABC) February 5, 2020
Romney acknowledged his vote would not be enough to change Trump’s ultimate acquittal, but he cast his decision as a matter of duty to his office.
“With my vote I will tell my children and their children that I did my duty,” Romney said. “What the president did was wrong. Grievously wrong.”
Romney says he will vote to convict
In an emotional speech on the Senate floor, Republican senator Mitt Romney announced he would vote to convict Trump in the impeachment trial.
Romney: "The president's insistence that [the Bidens] be investigated by the Ukrainians is hard to explain other than as a political pursuit."
— ABC News (@ABC) February 5, 2020
"There's no question in my mind that were their names not Biden, the president would never have what he did." https://t.co/pZ46hjTyU1 pic.twitter.com/UONT1TpWlw
“My faith is at the heart of who I am,” Romney said, choking up for several seconds. “I take an oath before God as consequential.”
Romney said this was “the most difficult decision I have ever faced” but had concluded that Trump was “guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust.”
“The grave question the Constitution tasks senators to answer is whether the President committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of a ‘high crime and misdemeanor,’” Romney said. “Yes, he did.”
Romney’s decision robs Trump of a key talking point -- that every Republican senator supported his acquittal. Instead, Democrats will be able to claim the push to convict Trump was (barely) bipartisan.
If you thought waiting two days for the Iowa results was fun, then you’ll love this: Texas Democrats say they are also anticipating a delay in the reporting of results when voters head to the polls there on Super Tuesday.
The Texas Tribune reports:
Officials with the Texas Democratic Party said they were recently told by the Texas Secretary of State’s office that it will not be able to provide on election night the numbers needed to allocate a majority of the 228 delegates up for grabs in the state on Super Tuesday. In a Jan. 23 meeting, the Democrats said, top state election officials cited limitations to their revamped reporting system, which is used to compile returns from the state’s 254 counties.
‘They basically said that’s not built out yet,’ said Glen Maxey, the special projects director for the Texas Democratic Party who attended the meeting with state officials.
At issue are 149 delegates that will be won by Democratic presidential candidates through a complex formula that divvies up those delegates based on the distribution of votes in each of Texas’ 31 state Senate districts. Maxey said he and other officials were told the state initially will collect election returns at the county level but not at the senatorial district or precinct level, which are needed to calculate how many delegates each candidate picks up. Party officials were told those more detailed numbers would be made available ‘the next day or so,’ Maxey said.
On top of that delay, California officials have said it may take up to a week to determine delegate allocation because of the state’s high number of Democratic voters. (California is also voting on Super Tuesday and is the top prize in the Democratic presidential primary.)
It looks like members of Trump’s impeachment defense team, who have consistently dismissed any notion that the president’s actions toward Ukraine were improper, will be present for today’s acquittal vote.
President Trump's impeachment team will be on Capitol Hill for the vote this afternoon, I'm told.
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) February 5, 2020
Updated
Pete Buttigieg’s energetic campaigning in a clutch of counties in rural northeastern Iowa that flipped to Trump four years ago paid off when he triumphed in almost all of them.
In a shift among Democrats to the centre, Buttigieg took Howard County - notable as the US county that had the biggest swing from Barack Obama to Trump in 2016. It was won handily by Bernie Sanders in the caucuses against Hillary Clinton that year. But on Monday, Sanders was driven into third place in Howard behind Buttigieg and Joe Biden as a majority of local Democrats focussed on who they thought would be most electable over more ideological considerations.
The same was true in more than a dozen counties in northeastern Iowa that switched from Obama to Trump, some of which had also backed Sanders four years ago.
Buttigieg won 12 state delegates in Howard County to seven for Biden and six for Sanders. Elizabeth Warren took just two. Amy Klobuchar did well in the region too, winning in one county and coming in second in several others, in part because she is a senator for neighbouring Minnesota.
This is Laura Hubka, Democratic chair in Howard County, Iowa which swung from Obama to Trump by a bigger margin than any other county. Hubka has swung too - from an enthusiastic Sanders activist to backing Buttigieg who she thinks more electable. #IowaCaucuses @guardianUS /1 pic.twitter.com/MjQ6pJUlvK
— Chris McGreal (@ChrisMcGreal) February 4, 2020
One of those who switched horses from Sanders was the chair of the county Democrats, Laura Hubka. Hubka, a US navy veteran who works in radiology at the local hospital, was a fervent supporter of the Vermont senator four years ago but then decided he was unelectable. As she looked around for an alternative, she liked what she heard from Buttigieg.
“I really liked Warren to begin with but then I sat down and talked to Pete at an event. Then as I talked to more and more Democratic voters I realised that in this county and this nation people aren’t as far left as I am in wanting single-payer health care and that we had to find a way to be behind somebody that had more realistic views. As I looked around, it seemed to be Pete,” she said.
Hubka said the swing away from Sanders is not as dramatic as it might seem given that she thinks much of his vote in Howard four years ago was a reaction against Clinton.
“Before it was Clinton or Sanders and now we had a more moderate candidate that really spent time talking to people and didn’t have all the baggage. This county was not friendly for Hillary Clinton. This time there was a moderate candidate that just appealed more to the people without having all the baggage of Bill Clinton and the Democratic party establishment behind them,” she said.
Buttigieg put months of campaigning into Iowa, crisscrossing the state, appearing in small cities and towns, meeting large numbers of voters face to face, and building momentum. But he’s not going to be able to do that in every state, so can he go on pulling off upset wins? Hubka thinks so.
“I’ve had so many people come into the office at work today, registered Republicans, saying I really wasn’t looking into Pete but now I’m going to look into him,” she said. “There’s those people who don’t want to register as Democrats but who are now going to take a look at Pete just over the last 24 hours and hear what he’s all about. It does make a difference when he meets people but he’s going to be doing more town halls, he’s going to be on CNN. I’m hoping it’ll elevate him nationally.”
Symone Sanders, a senior adviser to Joe Biden, repeatedly dodged a question from CNN about whether the Iowa results can be trusted, considering the reporting of the numbers has been so delayed.
Watch this. Biden adviser @SymoneDSanders will NOT say she believes the data coming in from Iowa is correct.
— Zach Wolf (@zbyronwolf) February 5, 2020
This is not going to help anyone trust the process. "I guess we'll have to take the Iowa Democratic party at their word." pic.twitter.com/s0dYhaoWX0
The current results show Biden in fourth place, a dismal showing for the former vice president that Biden himself described earlier today as a “gut punch.”
But some of Biden’s allies and advisers have apparently sought to cast doubt on the results because of the reporting delay.
When asked on Monday night whether the results were discredited because of the reporting inconsistencies, senator Chris Dodd, a Biden ally, said, “Yeah, sounds to me like if you can’t—you know, if this is wrong what else is wrong?”
However, the Iowa Democratic Party has said the data officials have is accurate and substantiated by a paper trail.
Updated
Biden takes on Buttigieg and Sanders after Iowa
This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Amanda Holpuch.
As we await more results from Monday’s Iowa caucuses, the candidates are clearly wasting no time in going after the current top-two finishers, Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders.
At a campaign event in Somersworth, New Hampshire, Joe Biden went after both Buttigieg and Sanders. He said it would be “a risk” to nominate Buttigieg, considering his most recent job was as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, an argument the former vice president echoed over Twitter.
Mayor Pete likes to call me part of the old failed Washington. Was it a failure when I helped pass Obamacare, the Paris Agreement, the Violence Against Women Act, or the assault weapons ban?
— Joe Biden (Text Join to 30330) (@JoeBiden) February 5, 2020
I have a stronger record of passing big, progressive legislation than anyone running.
On Sanders, Biden warned the Vermont senator was too far left for the party and said down-ballot Democratic candidates would “have to carry the label he chose for himself,” referring to Sanders’ self-description as a Democratic socialist.
In New Hampshire, Joe Biden criticizes Sen. Bernie Sanders' "socialist" label: "If Senator Sanders is the nominee for the party, every Democrat...will have to carry the label." https://t.co/HnCERhLRFW pic.twitter.com/8LARIJC9uw
— ABC News (@ABC) February 5, 2020
Updated
Afternoon summary
- Going into today, there were a handful of senators who have not indicated how they would vote on impeachment. One of those senators, Alabama Democrat Doug Jones, said this morning he would vote to convict.
- We’re still waiting to see how a few others will vote, including: Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia; Republican Mitt Romney, of Utah; Democrat Diane Feinstein, of California; and Democrat Krysten Sinema, of Arizona.
- House judiciary chairman, Jerry Nadler, told CNN it is “likely” they will subpoena former national security adviser, John Bolton.
California senator Diane Feinstein said she would back a proposal by fellow Democrat, Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, to censure Donald Trump, according to the Washington Post.
On Monday, Manchin called on senators to censure, a formal rebuke to the president less dramatic than impeachment.
“I do believe a bipartisan majority of this body would vote to censure president Trump for his action in this matter. Censure would allow this body to unite across party lines,” Manchin said Monday on the Senate floor. “His behavior cannot go unchecked by the Senate and censure would allow a bipartisan statement condemning his unacceptable behavior in the strongest terms.”
Feinstein is one of few Democrats who has said or suggested she would not vote to convict the president. Last week, she told reporters she was unsure about how she would vote.
Breaking: Senator Feinstein tells me this morning that she will back Senator Manchin’s censure proposal, adding a second name to the list. Says she’s in touch with Manchin. No word on her final vote on both impeachment articles.
— Robert Costa (@costareports) February 5, 2020
Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren has released a campaign video for her presidential run which touts her relationship with president Barack Obama.
People told me the CFPB could never happen, but it did. I was proud to fight alongside President @BarackObama for middle-class families. I know how to fight—and I know how to win. pic.twitter.com/zYppPvgwtL
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) February 5, 2020
The 30 second spot quotes a speech Obama gave in September 2010 to announce Warren, then a Harvard Law professor, would be head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It was Warren’s idea to create the agency, but it was not certain she would be picked to helm it.
“She’s a native of Oklahoma and a janitor’s daughter who has become one of the country’s fiercest advocates of the middle class,” Obama said in 2010.
Warren is one of four Senators balancing the campaign trail with the impeachment vote. In New Hampshire this morning, she told a crowd she couldn’t stay long enough to do one of her trademark selfie lines because she had to vote to impeach the president.
.@ewarren takes the stage at her town hall in Nashua.
— Daniella Díaz (@DaniellaMicaela) February 5, 2020
She tells the audience she can’t stay as long as she wants to do “selfies” because “Today, I’m headed to Washington to vote for the impeachment of Donald Trump.” pic.twitter.com/kFPyWiIUYO
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders also spoke about impeachment at a town hall this morning in New Hampshire, which has its presidential primary election on Tuesday. “If Trump gets away with this, I want you to appreciate the precedent that is being established,” Sanders said.
Trial on the Trail: Bernie, who is heading back to Washington in a few hours, starts NH town hall by talking about how the Senate is poised to exonerate Trump later today: "If Trump gets away with this, I want you to appreciate the precedent that is being established."
— Caitlin Huey-Burns (@CHueyBurns) February 5, 2020
Donald Trump will meet today with Venezuela’s opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, the White House announced this morning. The White House said:
The visit is an opportunity to reaffirm the commitment of the United States to the people of Venezuela and to discuss how we can work with president Guaidó to expedite a democratic transition in Venezuela that will end the ongoing crisis. We will continue to work with our partners in the region to confront the illegitimate dictatorship in Venezuela, and we will stand alongside the Venezuelan people to ensure a future that is democratic and prosperous.
Guaidó made a surprise appearance at last night’s State of the Union.
Alabama Democrat Doug Jones will vote to convict
Alabama senator Doug Jones, one of the few Democrats who might have voted to acquit the president, just released a statement to say after “many sleepless nights” he has “reluctantly” decided to vote to convict on both articles of impeachment.
“I did not run for Senate hoping to participate in the impeachment trial of a duly-elected President, but I cannot and will not shrink from my duty to defend the Constitution and to do impartial justice,” Jones said in a lengthy statement.
Senators are elected to make tough choices. We are required to study the facts of each issue before us and exercise our independent judgement in keeping with the oaths we take. The gravity of this moment, the seriousness of the charges, and the implications for future presidencies and Congresses all contributed to the difficult with which I have arrive at my decision.
Meanwhile, another Democrat who could go either way, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, has told reporters the public will learn how he is voting when it is time to vote.
STILLNOT SAYING: when I asked Senator Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia, how he’s going to vote today he responded “4 o clock” three times on his way into a committee
— Lauren Fox (@FoxReports) February 5, 2020
Updated
The Senate has convened for a final round of 10 minute speeches before today’s 4pm impeachment votes on the two articles of impeachment.
Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, a Republican, said he did not support impeachment “simply for actions that are inappropriate.” He continued: “The question then, is not whether the president did it,” Alexander said, adding it s about what Congress and the people should do.
Alexander called it a “wholly partisan” impeachment. He said if it went through it “would create a weapon of perpetual impeachment” and would be gasoline on a fire that stokes divisions in the country.
John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, also used a weapon metaphor to describe impeachment, which he said is: “the nuclear option in our Constitution.” He is voting for acquittal.
New York senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, used his time to criticize Trump’s State of the Union speech and challenge the president’s claims in the remarks.
There might still be room to hear from former national security adviser, John Bolton, in the halls of Congress.
House judiciary chairman, Jerry Nadler, told CNN it is “likely” they will subpoena Bolton.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler tells us that House Dems will “likely” subpoena John Bolton and continue with investigations to follow after today.
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 5, 2020
“I think it’s likely yes,” he told me of issuing a Bolton subpoena.
When asked the same question on Sunday, House Intelligence chairman Adam Schiff was more circumspect and would not confirm or deny a plan to subpoena Bolton.
“I don’t want to comment to this point on what our plans may or may not be with respect to John Bolton, but I will say this: whether it’s before -- in testimony before the House – or it’s in his (forthcoming) book or it’s in one form or another, the truth will come out (and) will continue to come out,” Schiff told CBS.
Donald Trump appears to be en route to becoming the third US president to remain in office following acquittal in a Senate impeachment trial. But what might it mean for Trump’s future that he was impeached at all?
Guardian national affairs correspondent, Tom McCarthy, has the answers:
Heading into the impeachment vote today, one of the lone Republican senators tipped as a possible voter for impeachment, Susan Collins, said she hoped the president learned from his “wrong” conduct.
It took only a few hours for the Maine senator to learn the president had not.
On the Senate floor yesterday, Collins confirmed she would vote to acquit Trump, despite her disapproval of his request that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy investigate Joe Biden and his son in a phone call on 25 July.
“It was wrong for president Trump to mention former vice President Biden on that phone call, and it was wrong for him ask a foreign country to investigate a political rival,” Collins said. But, she added, “I do not believe the House has met its burden of the showing the president’s conduct, however flawed, warrants the extreme step of removal from office.”
In an interview with CBS News, Collins also said: “I believe that the president has learned from this case.”
Later that day at a State of the Union luncheon, a reporter asked Trump what he made of Collins comments, Trump responded that he had done nothing wrong. “It was a perfect call,” he said.
On the other side of the aisle, Democratic senator Kirsten Gillibrand, of New York, said Republicans decision to acquit the president was an “abject failure.”
It's becoming clear that Senate Republicans will vote to acquit President Trump. And in doing so, they'll be excusing proven criminality for political expediency. That's an abject failure of congressional oversight and a betrayal of constitutional duty.
— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) February 5, 2020
My colleague Tom McCarthy has written about the prospects for the impeachment vote today. Not only is it unlikely that more than one Republican might break ranks and vote to convict Trump, it’s possible a handful of Democrats might vote to acquit him.
With the momentum seemingly on Trump’s side, the chances improved that the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, would deliver a clean party-line acquittal vote for the president on Wednesday afternoon. The Republicans hold a 53-seat majority in the Senate.
Two Republicans, Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine, broke with the party during the trial to vote in favor of calling witnesses and issuing subpoenas for documents blocked by the Trump administration.
On Tuesday afternoon, Collins announced she would vote to acquit on both articles of impeachment. “I do not believe that the House has met its burden in showing that the president’s conduct, however flawed, warrants the extreme step of removal from office,” she said.
Romney had given no public indication of how he planned to vote.
Three Democrats were likewise in the spotlight as potential swing votes. Doug Jones of Alabama, who faces a difficult election in November, has joined Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia in calling for a censure of Trump – a possible indication that one or both viewed the prospective removal of Trump as a step too far.
Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, a moderate Democrat in a state that supported Trump in 2016, has not indicated how she is planning to vote.
Trump is up and about and happy with the coverage of his State of the Union speech last night:
It was a great and triumphant evening for our Country. Thank you for all of the nice remarks and wonderful reviews of my State of the Union Speech. It was my great honor to have done it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2020
He has also retweeted numerous critiques of Nancy Pelosi’s decision to rip her copy of his speech up.
Updated
Who is Pete Buttigieg?
Pete Buttigieg threw everything into winning the Iowa Democratic caucuses and – with 71% of the vote in following Monday’s results debacle – his gamble may well have paid off.
If so, the former mayor of tiny South Bend, Indiana, may look back on this moment as the peak of his political career, or the start of a long, hard slog that could take him all the way to the White House.
Buttigieg’s supporters see him as a fresh, upbeat voice of moderation who could potentially unite the party and unseat Donald Trump, a military veteran and intellectual whose appeal recalls Barack Obama’s.
Critics say he is an inexperienced, policy-lite novice who worked as a management consultant for McKinsey, holds fund-raisers in the “wine caves” of the super-rich, and has no record of the support among non-whites he would need to win the Democratic nomination and the November election.
The great unknown is whether the US would vote for a gay president. Those dismissing such worries point to Obama twice proving the US could elect a black man, and Hillary Clinton’s netting of 3m more votes than Trump in 2016, which showed a woman could win the popular vote. Further back, John F Kennedy overcame suggestions a Catholic could never win the White House.
But an October poll showed only half of American voters said they were ready for a gay president, and some have put the gender gap in Buttigieg’s support down partially to male homophobia. A voter in Iowa asking to rescind her vote for Buttigieg after learning that he was gay was widely reported this week. “Are you saying that he has the same-sex partner? Pete?” she asked. “I don’t want anybody like that in the White House.”
Born in 1982 to a Maltese-born father and an American mother, Pete Buttigieg - pronounced buddha-judge - attended Harvard and Oxford and worked as a management consultant before serving in the US naval reserve from 2009 to 2017, reaching the rank of lieutenant and being awarded the Joint Service Commendation Medal following his seven-month tour in Afghanistan in 2014.
After working for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential bid, among other political campaigns, he was elected mayor of his home city of South Bend in 2012. He came out as gay in 2015 and won that year’s election with 80% of the vote, marrying his partner Chasten in 2018.
His time as mayor was not without controversy - some of which partly explains ongoing suspicion of him among some African-American Democrats. He notoriously received less than 1 per cent support from black Democrats in one 2019 poll.
In 2012 Buttigieg asked for the resignation of the city’s first black police chief amid a row over the illegal taping of officers’ telephone calls, and the city was sued for racial discrimination. And in 2019 he was seen as reacting in a flat-footed way to the killing of an African-American man by a white police officer. “You’re running for president and you want black people to vote for you? That’s not going to happen,” one woman told him.
It’s a problem Buttigieg – who backs a publicly-run health insurance scheme, background checks for gun buyers, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and tackling climate change – will have to resolve if he is to now make the case that Joe Biden is not as electable as he seems and that the centrist Democratic establishment should unite around him instead.
He can hope for a good showing in the New Hampshire primary next week, but the diverse electorates of South Carolina, California and Texas will prove much more difficult terrain, and may see him eclipsed.
Meanwhile former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg – who plans to join the race in earnest in March and has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising in California and elsewhere – will be making the same argument to Democratic moderates that he is the most electable moderate. The billionaire doubled his spending on TV ads following the Iowa debacle, clearly sensing an opening.
And if the centrist vote splits three ways between Buttigieg, Biden and Bloomberg that could end up benefitting the man who seems to have come second in Iowa – veteran socialist senator Bernie Sanders.
“In order to govern, in order to lead, in order to move this country forward, we need a president focused on the future and ready to leave the politics of the past in the past,” Buttigieg said in New Hampshire on Tuesday. His opponents will hope to leave the former mayor’s strong showing in Iowa in the past instead.
Updated
Senators get ready to acquit Trump
Hello and welcome to another big day in American politics.
It’s fair to say Donald Trump is probably having a pretty good week. Last night he got 80 minutes to make his case for a second term on primetime TV with his State of the Union address, as the Democrats continued to struggle to publish results from their first primary contest on Iowa on Monday.
Later today, Trump will be acquitted in his impeachment trial – and despite several Republican senators admitting his conduct in holding back military aid for Ukraine as he asked its president to investigate Democrat Joe Biden was inappropriate, perhaps only one will vote to convict him. Meanwhile a Gallup poll has his approval rating at 49%, the highest level for that survey since 2017.
Here’s a rundown:
Iowa
As we speak just over 70% of the vote is in, and former small-town mayor Pete Buttigieg is slightly ahead of socialist senator Bernie Sanders, with his liberal rival Elizabeth Warren in third and Joe Biden trailing in fourth - a very worrying result for the centrist former vice-president.
It’s not clear exactly when the Iowa Democratic party will release the rest of the results, following the shambles on Monday night when technical problems with an app caused their reporting system to collapse.
This looks like a good result for Buttigieg, who can claim that he’s a serious, top-tier candidate. He will now argue that Biden is not as electable as he seems on paper and that the centrist Democratic establishment should instead unite around him. But he has very little support among non-white voters and it’s not clear he’ll be able to pick up sufficient votes in the bigger and more diverse states that are coming up in the next few weeks.
Sanders – who is leading in the popular vote, although not the delegate count – will be disappointed if he doesn’t end up coming first, although a strengthened Buttigieg might be good for him in the long term if the centrist vote ends up splitting three ways between Buttigieg, Biden and Mike Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who is joining the race next month. Bloomberg doubled his spending on TV ads in the wake of the debacle yesterday, clearly sensing an opening.
The focus moves now to New Hampshire, where Sanders has a clear lead. Tonight at 8pm ET CNN will hold the first of two town-hall style candidates’ debates, the first one featuring Biden, Warren, and businessmen Andrew Yang and Tom Steyer.
You can see all the Iowa results so far and watch the rest of them eventually come in with our results tracker here.
Impeachment
At about 4pm ET today, Donald Trump will in all likelihood become the third US president to be acquitted after an impeachment trial.
Dashing Democratic hopes, moderate Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski have both now confirmed they will not vote to convict Trump. That leaves only Mitt Romney, the former presidential candidate, as the one possible vote against the president.
It’s hard to say at present whether the impeachment trial has been a net gain or a net loss for Trump. Democrats may feel that if even half a percentage point ends up being knocked off Trump’s vote tally in November by impeachment, that’s a success. Trump and the Republicans will continue to make the case that the impeachment process was an attempt by the Democrats to overturn Americans’ democratic choice in 2016, and take away their democratic choice this year. Polling so far has been inconclusive.
State of the union
Trump’s re-election strategy is thought to be all about riling up his base against the Democrats, and his State of the Union speech last night seemed both to encourage and to illustrate the bitter divisions in American political life. “Each year feels progressively worse and more hopelessly polarised than the one before,” my colleague David Smith wrote. Trump hyped up the strength of the economy, and focused on immigration, abortion, guns, reglion, and judicial appointments in ways guaranteed to delight the right and infuriate the Democrats, with his usual disregard for factual accuracy.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats’ leader in the House, ripped up her copy of the speech as she stood behind Trump in full view of the cameras. Other Democrats walked out. Anti-gun campaigner Fred Guttenberg was thrown out for heckling. Trump bestowed the presidential medal of freedom on rightwing talk-show host Rush Limbaugh live then and there. Republicans chanted “four more years”.
“The state of our Union is stronger than ever before,” Trump intoned. Everything about this event suggested the opposite.
We’ll be covering all this and more throughout the day right here.
Updated
