Розділ: Політика

Texas No Longer a Sure Bet for Trump

Weaving through the crowd, Temple Gonzalez and her family enjoyed the scenes and fried snacks at the Texas State Fair in Dallas.

“Then we get on the rides and cross our fingers,” she laughed. Gonzalez, a mother from a town called The Colony, just outside of Dallas, professed love for Texas and its diversity.

“I’m proud that we love everybody,” she said. “Lots of people from everywhere. And we want more!”

Gonzalez had less welcoming words for U.S. President Donald Trump, who campaigned in Dallas recently.

Temple Gonzalez and other suburban women uneasy with Trump’s demeanor is a factor in Republicans losing support in Texas.

“I don’t think he’s a kind person,” Gonzalez said. “I just don’t like how he treats people. He needs to be modeling that from the top down, and I don’t see that happening.”

Polls indicate suburban women like Gonzalez are a reason Texas – a state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1976 – may no longer be a sure bet for Trump in 2020, despite the fact that he is giving it a lot of campaign time.

“Texas is not in play,” Trump said to a cheering crowd at his October 17 rally at the American Airlines Center in down town Dallas. “Donald Trump is not going to lose Texas, I can tell you that.”

The October rally was Trump’s third in the state in the past year and his sixth visit.

Texas Republicans welcome the attention. “It’s good to see that the president is reaching out and not taking Texas for granted,” said Rodney Anderson, chairman of the Dallas County Republican party.

Red with a purple tint

In 2016, Trump won Texas by only nine points, down from Mitt Romney’s 16-point margin in 2012. Analysts see this as evidence of the state shifting left as well as the fact that incumbent Republican senator Ted Cruz only narrowly defeated Democratic newcomer Beto O’Rourke in the 2018 Senate race.

Although it’s premature to call Texas a swing state, it will probably “go red with a very strong purple tint”, said Shannon Bow O’Brien, professor of politics at the University of Texas in Austin.

“Texas is a growing state and it’s growing in the cities, and a lot of the growth is Democratic voters,” said O’Brien. She pointed out that Trump is struggling in the suburbs in Texas, and said the Texas GOP is “worried.”

Rodney Anderson dismissed the notion but admitted that Republicans “have got a real ball game” in 2020.

Democrats gearing up

Democrats in Texas welcome the demographic shift and aim to build on their growth by wooing independents.

“There are a lot of people that just are not happy with the things that Trump has done and these are the people that actually voted for Trump in the last election,” said Tramon Arnold, political director of the Dallas County Democratic Party.

One of them is Larry Strauss, a life-long Republican, who co-founded the North Texas Jewish Democratic Council in 2017. The council recently hosted a gathering in a Dallas community center to discuss election politics with Harvey Kronberg, publisher of the political newsletter Quorum Report.

“The population is no longer reliably Republican,” said Kronberg. “Particularly the suburbs, which is the richest source of votes out there.”

Kronberg said this is partially because Texas demographics have shifted towards a larger population of Hispanic, Asian and Middle Eastern, as well as “Millennials who are antithetical to social conservatives” and what he calls “an abandonment of Republicans by women”.

But Trump can still rely on his base, who are fired up by his “ad hominem attacks, belittling and making fun of his opponents,” said Kronberg.

Larry Strauss, sitting in the front row, nodded. Strauss was a life-long Republican, until he heard the president’s remarks about the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned violent.

Larry Strauss turned in his Republican membership card and co-founded the North Texas Jewish Democratic Council in 2017 after he heard President Trump’s remarks about the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA.

“When Donald Trump made that comment that there are good people marching on both sides, I went ballistic. I turned in my Republican membership card.”

Strauss, a retiree in his sixties was so distraught he reached out to the Dallas County Democratic Party and established the council, the first of its kind in the state, with co-founder Janice Schwartz.

Strauss supports the House impeachment inquiry against Trump. “We’re lacking integrity in the White House,” he said. “He’s not the type of president that gives a good example to my children and my grandchildren.”

Republicans dismiss the suggestion that Trump is hurting their party’s chances of winning.

“He’s absolutely helping us, 100%,” Rodney Anderson said, adding that the impeachment inquiry is energizing the Republican base even more.

Analysts point out that with strong support from rural areas, Trump may still win Texas, though with an even slimmer margin than 2016. But they say a lot can happen in a year particularly with an ongoing impeachment inquiry.

The latest poll from Quinnipiac University indicates 45% of registered voters in Texas approve of Trump. The same poll indicates 48% would not vote for him in 2020.

Voter suppression

Texas is one of the most diverse states in the country, and one of the four “majority-minority” states in the United States — together with California, Hawaii, and New Mexico — where the population of racial and ethnic minorities combined is larger than the white population.

Activist groups say that because of “voter suppression tactics used by the state and other entities,” the diversity of Texas is not reflected in state legislature and minority communities’ interests are not reflected in state policy.

“Our state legislators are generally a lot whiter and a lot wealthier than Texans,” said Hani Mirza, senior attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit organization based in Austin.

Voting rights groups have long accused Texas of extreme gerrymandering and restrictive voter registration rules, that in effect have rigged the state’s election rules in ways that disempower black and brown voters.

“The tactics used in gerrymandering can dilute minority votes to where they can’t have their voice heard in elections,” said Mirza. He added that when drawing electoral lines, state legislature has broken up minority communities to dilute their votes, or packed minority groups into as few districts as possible to suppress their voice.

Texas is due for a federal census in 2020 and redistricting process in 2021 where electoral maps may be redrawn.

WATCH: Texas weighs in on 2020 election


Texas No Longer Sure Bet for Trump video player.

Presidency not the only prize

The presidency is not the only coveted prize in 2020 as Democrats make inroads in state legislature seats with an eye on redistricting.

“Honestly, it’s not flipping Texas it’s flipping the state legislature seats,” said Shannon Bow O’Brien. “And the Democrats have a shot.”

“The way that things are gerrymandered, we need to make sure that everything is the way that it’s supposed to be, and not favoring the Republican Party,” said Tramon Arnold of the Dallas County Democratic Party.

If in 2020 Democrats win nine seats that they need to control the Texas House, for the first time in decades they would have control over the redrawing of the electoral map.

Future elections based on that map may mean more Democratic lawmakers being sent to Washington, out of the 36 currently representing Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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By Polityk | 10/23/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

Diplomat Provides House With ‘Disturbing’ Account on Ukraine

Former U.S. Ambassador William Taylor, a diplomat who has sharply questioned President Donald Trump’s policy on Ukraine, has provided lawmakers with a detailed account of his recollection of events at the center of the Democrats’ impeachment probe , they said Tuesday.
 
Lawmakers emerging from the room after the early hours of the private deposition said Taylor had given a lengthy opening statement, with a recall of events that filled in gaps from the testimony of other witnesses.
 
“The testimony is very disturbing,” said New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who attended the start of the Taylor interview.
 
Taylor, who declined to comment as he entered the closed-door deposition, is the latest diplomat with concerns to testify. His appearance is among the most watched because of a text message in which he called Trump’s attempt to leverage military aid to Ukraine in return for a political investigation “crazy.” He was subpoenaed to appear.
 
Rep Ami Bera, D-Calif., said Taylor is a career civil servant who “cares deeply” about the country. He said Taylor’s memory of events was better than that of Gordon Sondland, the U.S. European Union ambassador who testified last week but couldn’t recall many specific details.
 
Taylor was expected to discuss text messages he exchanged with two other diplomats earlier this year as Trump pushed the country to investigate unsubstantiated claims about Democratic rival Joe Biden’s family and a debunked conspiracy theory about Ukraine’s role in the 2016 election.

 
The diplomat was one of several intermediaries between Trump and Ukrainian officials as the president advocated for the investigations. Taylor had been tapped to run the embassy there after the administration abruptly ousted the ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, in May.
 
In a series of text messages released earlier this month by Ukrainian envoy Kurt Volker, Taylor appeared to be alarmed by Trump’s efforts as the U.S. was also withholding military assistance to Ukraine that had already been approved by Congress.
 
“I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” Taylor wrote in excerpts of the text messages released by the impeachment investigators.
 
Taylor has stood by the observation that it was “crazy” in his private remarks to investigators, according to a person familiar with his testimony who was granted anonymity to discuss it.
 
Taylor’s description of the policy is in sharp contrast to how Trump has tried to characterize it. The president has said many times that there was no quid pro quo, though his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney contradicted that last week. Mulvaney later tried to walk back his remarks.
 
Taylor, a former Army officer, had been serving as executive vice president at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a nonpartisan think tank founded by Congress, when he was appointed to run the embassy in Kyiv after Yovanovitch was removed before the end of her term following a campaign against her led by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

FILE – President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, top, U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, bottom left, and former U.S. special envoy on Ukraine Kurt Volker are seen in a combination photo. (AP, Reuters)

He was welcomed back to Kyiv as a steady hand serving as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009.
 
“He’s the epitome of a seasoned statesman,” said John Shmorhun, an American who heads the agricultural company AgroGeneration.
 
Before retiring from government service, Taylor was involved in diplomatic efforts surrounding several major international conflicts. He served in Jerusalem as U.S. envoy to the Quartet of Mideast peacemakers. He oversaw reconstruction in Iraq from 2004 to 2005, and from Kabul coordinated U.S. and international assistance to Afghanistan from 2002 to 2003.
 
He arrived in Kyiv a month after the sudden departure of Yovanovitch and the inauguration of Ukraine’s new president, prepared to steer the embassy through the transition. He was most likely not prepared for what happened next.
 
In July, Trump would have his now-famous phone conversation with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which he pressed him to launch the investigations. Trump at the time had quietly put a hold on nearly $400 million in military aid that Ukraine was counting on in its fight against Russian-backed separatists.
 
In the follow-up to the call, Taylor exchanged texts with two of Trump’s point men on Ukraine as they were trying to get Zelenskiy to commit to the investigations before setting a date for a coveted White House visit.
 
In a text message to Sondland on Sept. 1, Taylor bluntly questioned Trump’s motives: “Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union, told him to call him.
 
In texts a week later to Sondland and special envoy Kurt Volker, Taylor expressed increased alarm, calling it “crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” In a stilted reply, several hours later, Sondland defended Trump’s intentions and suggested they stop the back and forth by text.
 
Taylor had also texted that not giving the military aid to Ukraine would be his “nightmare” scenario because it sends the wrong message to both Kyiv and Moscow. “The Russians love it. (And I quit).”
 
U.S. diplomats based at the Kyiv embassy have refused to speak with journalists, reflecting the sensitivity of the impeachment inquiry. The embassy press office did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.

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By Polityk | 10/22/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

McConnell Resolution Prods Trump to Keep Troops in Syria

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has introduced a resolution denouncing Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria and prodding President Donald Trump to halt his withdrawal of U.S. troops from that part of the country.

The Kentucky Republican is also holding off on separate, bipartisan legislation imposing sanctions on Turkey. This creates a split for now between the House and Senate over what Congress should do.  
 
McConnell says slapping sanctions on Turkey, a NATO member, could backfire by driving Ankara closer to Russia.
 
The Democratic-led House last week overwhelmingly approved a bipartisan resolution opposing the U.S. troop withdrawal.
 
House Democrats say their chamber will vote next week on a separate measure imposing sanctions on Turkey.
 
McConnell says sanctions may eventually be needed but says Congress should hold off for now.

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By Polityk | 10/22/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

‘Just Too Much’: Meet the Uber-Rich Who Want a Wealth Tax

When the grand vacation homes of Newport Beach were empty on a beautiful Memorial Day weekend, Molly Munger decided it was time for the U.S. to consider taxing wealth.
 
 As her family’s boat moved through the harbor a few years ago, Munger, whose father is a billionaire investor, saw that many of her neighbors’ houses were sitting dark and vacant. She knew why: The owners now controlled enough money to holiday at one of their several other luxury homes. It didn’t sit right, she said.
 
“It’s just too much to watch that happen at the top and see what is happening at the bottom,” said Munger, 71, a California civil rights lawyer whose father, Charlie, built his fortune as vice chairman of Warren Buffett’s firm Berkshire Hathaway. “Isn’t it a waste when beautiful homes on the beach are empty for most of the summer?”
 
Munger is now among a handful of billionaires and multimillionaires making a renewed push for the government to raise their taxes and siphon away some of their holdings. As Democratic presidential candidates debate a new tax on wealth rather than on incomes, this group of uber-rich people is urging them on.
 
 “I believe in free markets. I’m the daughter of a capitalist. But not Darwin-like free, unregulated and red in tooth and claw,” Munger said.
 
The chief argument from these tycoons, financiers and scions is that the government could spend their money more effectively than they could on their own by improving schools, upgrading infrastructure and protecting the environment. It challenges a long-standing belief among many politicians and economists that lower taxes on corporations and investment incomes are the most efficient way to deliver growth and spread wealth down the income ladder.
 
The idea also is a direct challenge to the reputed billionaire in the White House, Donald Trump, who once backed a wealth tax but in 2017 enacted a dramatic tax cut that favored the rich.
 
Twenty people, including one who remained anonymous, signed on to a letter this summer essentially asking to be taxed more. The group included financier George Soros, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and heiress Abigail Disney, and others often involved in liberal causes. Bill Gates, the world’s second richest person, didn’t sign it but has since said he “wouldn’t be against a wealth tax” on a net worth that roughly exceeds $100 billion.
 
While Democrats have long pushed for higher taxes on the top income tiers, the current debate goes further — whether to impose annual taxes on what people own, not just on what they earn.

FILE – Senator Elizabeth Warren speaks during the fourth U.S. Democratic presidential candidates 2020 election debate in Westerville, Ohio, Oct. 15, 2019.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has endorsed a wealth tax on holdings above $50 million that could potentially raise as much as $2.75 trillion over 10 years. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ tax would start at $32 million. At last week’s presidential debate, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, expressed openness to levying a wealth tax, while Tom Steyer argued for higher taxes on his own $1.6 billion fortune.
 
There were some detractors: Tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang argues wealth taxes in other nations have failed to raise enough revenues.
 
Former Vice President Joe Biden criticized the Warren and Sanders plans as “demonizing wealth” and argued instead for focusing on income taxes and raising the rates charged on earnings from investments.
 
Biden’s view is backed by many in the economic establishment, even those who say they support using the tax code to counter income inequality.
 
Larry Summers, the former treasury secretary and Harvard University president, argues a wealth tax is essentially unworkable. The richest Americans would find ways to avoid it, making it difficult to implement and unlikely to break the hold on politics by powerful companies and rich donors, he said Friday at a panel on wealth taxes at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. Summers estimates that changes to the income tax could raise more than $2 trillion over 10 years from the top earners, but he doubts that a wealth tax would curb the influence of the richest Americans.
 
But the economists who developed the idea dispute the notion that tax avoidance is an unbreakable law of nature. Wealthier Americans paid taxes in the past when tax avoidance was viewed as freeloading, said Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley whose work has drawn attention to the wealth tax as a fix for worsening inequality.
 
“The tax system reflects the values of society,” he said.
 
The top 1% of Americans hold nearly 40% of the country’s wealth, while the bottom 50% of Americans effectively control none of it, according to the World Inequality Database, an index Saez helped develop. Many in the wealthiest sliver of that top 1% pay lower rates than most Americans because of how their income gets taxed, according to his calculations.
 
Ian Simmons is among the well-off declaring they’re ready to pay more.
 
Simmons runs an investment fund called the Blue Haven Initiative with his wife, Liesel Pritzker Simmons. The 43-year-old joined the effort to recruit other moneyed families to support a wealth tax in the June letter.
 
The idea of taxing a relatively steady base of trillions of dollars felt consistent to Simmons with what he first learned at the Harvard University introductory economics class taught by Martin Feldstein, who was President Ronald Reagan’s economic adviser.
 
“This is really a conservative position about increasing the stability of the economy in the long term and having an efficient source of taxation,” he said.
 
Simmons’ family money came in part from mail order retailer Montgomery Ward, which opened in 1872, an innovation aided by the U.S. Postal Service. The Hyatt hotel chain that helped form his wife’s family fortune was aided by the government’s construction of the interstate highway system.
 
That’s part of the reason he supports a wealth tax — because his family’s fortune stems in part from government programs, echoing Warren’s key argument for her tax plan.
 
 When Simmons called the retired real estate developer Robert Bowditch this year to endorse the idea, the 80-year-old did the math on what it would mean for his own lifestyle. He figured it would cut into some of his charitable giving, but the returns would be much greater because the public would be able to decide in a democratic fashion on how the money would be spent.
 
 “Charitable giving by itself simply cannot provide enough money to support public goods and services, such as public education, roads and bridges, clean air,” Bowditch said. “It has to be done by taxes.”
 
Rich people have had limited success as advocates for tax hikes. In 2011, billionaire Buffett’s declaration that he paid a lower tax rate than his employees spawned President Barack Obama’s proposal to raise rates on people making more than $1 million. The so-called “Buffett rule” fizzled in Congress.
 
 In 1999, when Trump was mulling a presidential bid for the Reform Party, he proposed a one-time tax of 14.25% on fortunes above $10 million, saying at the time that it could eliminate the national debt.
 
 “It’s a win-win for the American people,” Trump said then. Asked if the president still supports the idea, the White House did not respond.

 

 

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By Polityk | 10/22/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

Facebook Unveils Policies to Protect 2020 US Elections

Facebook on Monday said it will apply lessons learned from America’s 2016 election to prevent manipulation of its platforms in the 2020 presidential contest.

In a press release, Facebook said it is working to combat “Inauthentic Behavior” on its applications — a phenomenon widely documented in 2016 that has continued in years since.

Facebook defines inauthentic behavior as “using deceptive behaviors to conceal the identity of the organization behind a campaign, make the organization or its activity appear more popular or trustworthy than it is, or evade (Facebook’s) enforcement efforts.”

U.S. intelligence agencies have accused Russia of creating fake accounts on Facebook and other platforms to spread falsehoods and divisive messaging that pitted U.S. voters against each other.

The social media giant will start requiring pages and advertisements to show their “Confirmed Page Owner.” Pages with large U.S. audiences will need to add their owners first.

The press release shared that Facebook had taken down four pages and groups on Facebook and Instagram that were linked to government-sponsored inauthentic behavior the morning of the press release. Three of them were linked to Iran, and one was in Russia.

As part of its policy, Facebook said it will label media outlets that are wholly or partially under their government’s editorial control as state-controlled media.

The company also pledged to remove misinformation from its newsfeeds. Elsewhere on the platform, pop-up messages will warn users of content that had been rated false or partly false by independent fact-checkers.

Fact-checkers are not trusted by all Americans. According to a survey by Pew Research Center, 69% of Democrats say fact-checking efforts by news outlets and other organizations “deal fairly with all sides.” But only 28% of Republicans concur.

Facebook said it has taken down 50 networks that were engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” many of which were operating ahead of major elections.

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By Polityk | 10/22/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

White House Aide Mulvaney Reiterates, No Ukraine Money Link to Political Investigations

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Sunday defended his claim that President Donald Trump did not withhold nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine in order to get Kyiv to undertake investigations of Democratic rivals and the 2016 election.

Mulvaney told reporters last week there was such a” quid pro quo” by Trump, but hours later walked back the statement and continued to advance his revised version of White House policy discussions in an interview on the “Fox News Sunday” talk show.

“There were two reasons we held up the aid,” Mulvaney said. “The first one was the rampant corruption in Ukraine. It’s so bad in Ukraine that in 2014 Congress passed a law … requiring us to make sure that [the fight against] corruption was moving in the right direction. So corruption’s a big deal. Everybody knows it.”

He added, “The president was also concerned about whether other nations, specifically European nations, were helping with foreign aid to Ukraine.”

FILE – White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney talks to the press at the White House, Oct. 17, 2019.

Mulvaney also mentioned during his White House news conference last Thursday that Trump wanted to know whether Ukraine had possession of a computer server used at the Democratic National Committee in 2016 as it supported former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her unsuccessful campaign against Trump for the White House. The whereabouts of the computer is part of a debunked theory that Ukraine had meddled in the 2016 election, and not Russia, as the U.S. intelligence community concluded.

But Mulvaney said Sunday his mention of Trump’s concerns about the computer “wasn’t connected to the aid,” although last week had said, “That’s why we held up the money.”

“We do that all the time with foreign policy,” Mulvaney had said at the White House.

On Sunday, he said, “I never said there’s a quid pro quo because there isn’t.”

Trump, while initially blocking the aid to Ukraine, eventually released the money to Kyiv.

“The aid flowed,” Mulvaney said Sunday. “Once we were able to satisfy ourselves that corruption, that they were doing better with it…” and other countries’ aid to Ukraine had increased, “the money flowed.” During the news conference last week, Mulvaney added a third condition, whether Ukraine was assisting a U.S. Justice Department probe of the origins of 2016 election investigations that eventually implicated Russia’s interference to help Trump win.

FILE – Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and U.S. President Donald Trump face reporters during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Sept. 25, 2019.

Trump’s interactions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy are at the center of the impeachment inquiry Democrats in the House of Representatives have opened against Trump.

The inquiry was touched off when an intelligence community whistleblower expressed concern about Trump’s July 25 telephone call with Zelenskiy, with a White House-released transcript of the call showing Trump urging the Ukrainian leader to open a corruption investigation into one of his key 2020 election rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden, as well as a probe of his son Hunter Biden’s lucrative position on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.

Both Bidens have denied any wrongdoing, although the younger Biden, 49, said last week he used “poor judgment” in agreeing to work for the Ukrainian company because of the political fallout for his father.

Trump has alleged that when Joe Biden was U.S. vice president, he threatened to withhold loan guarantees to Ukraine unless an earlier corruption probe into the gas company was stopped.

No evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens has surfaced. But reaching out to a foreign government to dig up dirt on a rival is considered to be interference in a presidential election.

Trump has described his call with Zelenskiy as “perfect” and accuses the Democratic-led House of a witch hunt.

 A House vote for Trump’s impeachment in the coming weeks is a possibility, although his conviction after a trial in the Republican-majority Senate and removal from office remains unlikely.

U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, center, arrives for a joint interview with the House Committees on Capitol Hill, Oct. 17, 2019.

Trump donor Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, told impeachment investigators last week that Trump ordered him and other diplomats to work with the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to pressure Ukraine into investigations that could help Trump politically.

Those investigations would include the 2016 election and the Ukrainian gas company where Hunter Biden worked.

Sondland told the investigators he was disappointed that Trump directed diplomats to work with Giuliani on Ukraine matters.

“Our view was that the men and women of the State Department, not the president’s personal lawyer, should take responsibility for all aspects of U.S. foreign policy towards Ukraine,” Sondland said.

He said the diplomats who worked with Giuliani did not know “until much later” that Giuliani would push for a probe of Biden “or to involve Ukrainians, directly or indirectly, in the president’s 2020 re-election campaign.”

“Let me state clearly: Inviting a foreign government to undertake investigations for the purpose of influencing an upcoming U.S. election would be wrong,” Sondland said in his statement. “Withholding foreign aid in order to pressure a foreign government to take such steps would be wrong. I did not and would not ever participate in such undertakings.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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By Polityk | 10/20/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

Pelosi in Jordan for ‘Vital Discussions’ Amid Syria Crisis

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a group of American lawmakers on a surprise visit to Jordan to discuss “the deepening crisis” in Syria amid a shaky U.S.-brokered cease-fire.
 
The visit came after bipartisan criticism in Washington has slammed President Donald Trump for his decision to withdraw the bulk of U.S. troops from northern Syria — clearing the way for Turkey’s wide-ranging offensive against the Kurdish groups, who had been key U.S. allies in the fight against the Islamic State group.
 
Turkey agreed on Thursday to suspend its offensive for five days, demanding the Kurdish forces withdraw from a designated strip of the border about 30 kilometers deep (19 miles).  
 
Pelosi, along with the nine-member Congressional delegation, met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in the capital of Amman late Saturday for talks focusing on security and “regional stability,” according to a statement from her office.
 
Jordan is a key U.S. ally in the region and has been greatly affected by the eight-year-long civil war in neighboring Syria. Jordanian officials say the kingdom hosts some 1 million Syrians who have fled the fighting.
 
 “With the deepening crisis in Syria after Turkey’s incursion, our delegation has engaged in vital discussions about the impact to regional stability, increased flow of refugees, and the dangerous opening that has been provided to ISIS, Iran and Russia,” said the statement, using the Islamic State group’s acronym.
 
Jordan’s state news agency Petra said Abdullah stressed the importance of safeguarding Syria’s territorial integrity and guarantees for the “safe and voluntary” return of refugees.
 
 “The meeting also covered regional and international efforts to counter terrorism within a comprehensive approach,” the agency said.
 
The Congressional delegation included Democrats Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, who is leading the impeachment probe into President Trump; Eliot Engel, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and Bennie Thompson, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. There was one GOP member of the group, Rep. Mac Thornberry, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee.
 
The U.S. Embassy in Amman said the delegation left Jordan early Sunday but gave no further details on where it was heading.
 
Many Democrat and Republican lawmakers say that the U.S. pullout could make way for rivals like Iran and Russia, who back Syrian President Bashar Assad.

 

 

 

 

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By Polityk | 10/20/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

Impeachment Inquiry Puts Spotlight on Perry, Who Shunned It 

Long after more flamboyant colleagues flamed out of President Donald Trump’s favor amid ethics scandals, low-profile and folksy Rick Perry survived in the Cabinet in part by steering clear of controversy. 
 
Until now. 
 
The former Texas governor said Thursday that he was quitting as energy secretary by year’s end. The announcement came as the House impeachment investigation highlighted his work in Ukraine, where he promoted U.S. natural gas and where Trump hoped to find dirt on Democratic rival Joe Biden. 
 
Trump said that Perry had planned for months to leave the Cabinet, but the timing of the announcement of Perry’s departure fits a Trump pattern, said governance expert Kathryn Dunn Tenpas of the Brookings Institution. Her work shows there has been more turnover in Trump’s Cabinet than under any other president since at least Ronald Reagan. 
  
The more important the issue is to the president, the more likely you're on the chopping block,'' Tenpas said. <br />
 <br />
No evidence has emerged that Perry explicitly pressured Ukrainian officials to comply with Trump's push to investigate a Ukraine natural gas company where Biden's son Hunter was a board member. It's a central part of the impeachment investigation.   </p><figure role="group">

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, right, speaks to the Lithuania's Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius.

</a></figure></div><figcaption>FILE - U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, right, speaks to Lithuania's Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius at the presidential palace in Vilnius, Lithuania, Oct. 7, 2019.</figcaption></figure><p>Perry, an evangelical who takes part in weekly Cabinet Bible studies, told a Christian broadcast news outlet his month that as God as my witness,” he never heard any administration figure specifically mention either Biden in discussions about corruption investigations in Ukraine. 
 
Perry did publicly pressure Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, for unspecified reforms “in the energy sector,” however, including in comments at Zelenskiy’s May inauguration. 
  
That was one of several Perry trips and meetings putting him in contact with Ukraine and U.S. figures playing pivotal roles in the actions now being studied by the House committees investigating impeachment. 

White House meeting

Perry also was present for at least part of a White House meeting in July with then-national security adviser John Bolton and other U.S. and Ukrainian officials. Perry, at the time, tweeted out a photo of the group lined up in front of the White House and called it a productive discussion.'' <br />
 <br />
Trump is trying to block members of his administration from testifying before lawmakers who are investigating whether Trump used the powers of his office for personal political aims in Ukraine. The Energy Department on Friday refused to comply with a House subpoena for Perry. <br />
  <br />
A top State Department official, George Kent, has testified that the White House deputized Perry, Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker and Trump's European Union ambassador, Gordon Sondland, to run U.S. policy in Ukraine.
It’s outrageous,” said Senator Bob Menendez, D-N.J. 
 
Perry’s public mission in Ukraine was in line with U.S. and European policy in place before the Trump administration: “flood” Europe with imported natural gas, as Perry said in a video in 2015, even before Trump won office. The policy is designed to help Ukraine and other Eastern European countries escape the political dominance that Russia’s control of the region’s energy supply has helped give Moscow. 
 
Perry’s Texas roots gave him ties with the oil and gas companies exporting to Europe. But there are no allegations that Perry improperly arranged natural gas deals to benefit oil friends. 
 
Corruption in Ukraine can make doing business there dodgy, and Ukraine lacks the giant natural gas terminals and other facilities to import much natural gas directly, energy experts say. That’s made it less of a targeted customer for Western natural gas sales than, for example, Poland. 

Better performance
  
Poland has done much better economically than Ukraine since the breakup of the Soviet Union, enabling Polish leaders to win favor with Trump by buying U.S. warplanes and natural gas. 
 
Perry has acknowledged that he consulted on Ukraine matters with Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani served as one of Trump’s main back-channel movers in the administration’s 2020-related political efforts in Ukraine, in talks bypassing official U.S. government channels. 
  
The U.S. has indicted associates of Giuliani on allegations they illegally tried to funnel cash to Republican politicians, using a natural gas company as a front. It’s part of the tangle of business and political administration efforts in Ukraine that impeachment investigators are trying to unravel. 
 
The world Perry moves in as he promotes U.S. natural gas is rife with fringe characters, said Edward Chow, an expert in Eastern European and international energy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. 
  
There's always these middlemen. Usually they present themselves as having some kind of political connections. Ninety-nine percent of these middlemen never score a deal,'' Chow said.They talk about billion-dollar deals, and it’s like, `Yeah? What’s your bank number?’ ”   

FILE – Energy Secretary Rick Perry, left, speaks at a discussion on the importance of American leadership in artificial intelligence at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif., Aug. 26, 2019.

Publicly, Perry moved through that world as a champion of U.S. energy and energy policy, advocating for American oil, gas and coal, a Trump priority, but also encouraging countries to build up solar, wind and nuclear power. 
 
James Melville Jr., U.S. ambassador to Estonia until he resigned last year in protest of Trump’s treatment of European allies, said he was positively impressed'' by Perry, in some ways, in their one encounter at an event on the Baltic states. <br />
  <br />
Perry
was friendly, he was cordial, he was talkative,” and willing to meet Estonian officials whom Melville brought over to introduce. 
 
He struck me very much as a politician,'' Melville said.Broad knowledge but not very deep” when it came to science-heavy matters under Perry’s stewardship as energy secretary. 
 
Before now, Perry’s defining national moment came as a presidential candidate, when he forgot the name of the Energy Department in a 2011 debate as he was listing Cabinet agencies he wanted to eliminate. 

Active presence
 
As energy secretary, by most accounts he has been an active and eager leader, visiting the country’s research labs and touring power plants. He worked well with lawmakers, in a job that required him to appeal annually to Congress for money for projects despite Trump’s own call for cuts. 
  
“The coolest job I’ve ever had,” he said in his departure video Thursday. 
 
Perry stayed low-key with policy aims that ran counter to the president’s likes, tamping down public shows of support for the wind turbines he had promoted as Texas governor, for example. 
  
“The secretary knows he works for the president … and a large part of his job is enhancing and defending his administration’s and the president’s policy goals. And he has done that,” noted Ray Sullivan, Perry’s former chief of staff in Texas. 

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By Polityk | 10/20/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

Bipartisan Shrug as US Budget Deficit Nears $1 Trillion

Washington is drowning in red ink again, yet the mounting fiscal problem is prompting collective yawns from the Trump Administration and Democrats alike.

It wasn’t so long ago that an announcement that the United States annual budget deficit was approaching $1 trillion — in a time of record low unemployment and steady economic growth, no less — would have set off alarm bells in the nation’s capital and sent politicians running to the television cameras to demand action to rein in federal spending. But a recent report from the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic analysis that shows the deficit ballooning to a seven-year high of $984 billion in fiscal 2019 was greeted with near silence from U.S. lawmakers, the administration and other policy makers.

Instead, as the 2020 presidential campaign heats up, Republicans and Democrats are promoting ambitious new spending and tax relief measures that would add many trillions of dollars to the cumulative federal debt – the sum total of past deficits — which is now approaching a staggering $23 trillion.

After forcing a $1.5 trillion tax cut through Congress in 2017 and demanding sharp increases in military spending, both of which have contributed to a 48% increase in the federal deficit since he took office, President Trump and others in his administration have floated the idea of further tax reductions heading into 2020.

FILE – U.S. President Donald Trump holds an executive order relieving qualified disabled veterans of federally held student loan debt at the AMVETS (American Veterans) National Convention in Louisville, Kentucky, Aug. 21, 2019.

Meanwhile, Democratic presidential candidates including liberal Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont are pushing for additional federal spending on social programs, including a controversial “Medicare for All” proposal. A study by the Urban Institute found that the most expansive version of that program, which extends healthcare coverage to every American and eliminates virtually all out-of-pocket spending on health care, would cost an average of $3.4 trillion per year, or $34 trillion over a decade.

Warren, who is surging in the polls ahead of former Vice President Joe Biden and Sanders, is also advocating expanded Social Security benefits, free college tuition, student debt relief and environmental initiatives with hefty price tags.

The current U.S. federal debt, now approaching $23 trillion  is equal to more than 100% of the estimated $21.3 trillion 2019 Gross Domestic Product. The country has not seen a debt-to-GDP ratio this high since World War II. But still, the primary policy proposals coming from voices on both sides of the political spectrum are in favor of measures that would likely exacerbate the deficit and add to the federal debt.

It’s a state of affairs that leaves Washington budget watchdogs frustrated and worried about the future.

“Certainly, interest in fiscal responsibility seems to be an all-time low,” said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget

“It should be frustrating for everyone, because the deficit is at an all-time high…for this point in the economic cycle,” he said. “It’s really dangerous. And what we need to be doing is getting our debt under control now, understanding that it will have to expand during a recession, not making it even worse.”

That’s a message that neither the Trump administration nor the Democrats running for president appear to have acknowledged.

FILE – A worker aerates printed sheets of dollar bills at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, Nov. 15, 2017.

There are multiple reasons why demands for spending cuts and deficit reduction have been muted in recent years. For one, the seemingly constant state of crisis in Washington, made even more profound by the ongoing effort to impeach President Trump, leaves little room in the headlines for more complex issues like fiscal policy.

However, one key reason that deficit hawks’ collective voice does not command the attention in Washington that it once did is that they have been demonstrably wrong about the effects of rising federal borrowing.

For years, the twin terrors of rising interest rates and inflation were key arguments against allowing the deficit and debt to continue to mount. Expansive federal spending was supposed to goose demand and drive up prices. At the same time, lenders — in the form of the bond market — were expected to demand ever-higher interest rates from a federal government that kept driving itself further into debt.

Additionally, as the government borrowed more and at higher interest rates, the borrowing was supposed to “crowd out” more productive investment in the private sector.

But for the past decade, inflation has remained stubbornly low, even in the years immediately following the Great Recession, when the government was pouring money into the economy to increase demand.

At the same time, the federal government is still able to borrow at historically low rates, making the cost of servicing new debt much lower than budget hawks predicted it would be at this point. And the absence of any evidence that government borrowing is “crowding out” private sector investment has been sparse enough that the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation has declared it to be a concern of “minimal importance.”

Additionally, while much is made of the fact that the federal debt is now higher than annual GDP, that hardly makes the U.S. an outlier among developed nations. Other advanced economies carrying comparable levels of debt include Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom, and France. Japan’s debt load is equal to more than twice its GDP.

In fact, there is a rising consensus among economists worldwide that, especially given the low interest rate environment that is expected to persist indefinitely, high debt levels among advanced economies simply are not that big a deal. Among the loudest voices making this point has been Olivier Blanchard, the former head of the International Monetary Fund — an organization that has spent decades trying to convince developing economies to avoid high debt loads.

“The right attitude…is not to pretend that debt is catastrophic if it is not,” he wrote in a recent paper with economist Ángel Ubide. “Sooner or later, a government will test that proposition and discover that it is false. The right approach is to tailor the advice to the situation of each country.”

 

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By Polityk | 10/19/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

38 People Cited for Violations in Clinton Email Probe

The State Department has completed its internal investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of private email and found violations by 38 people, some of whom may face disciplinary action.

The investigation, launched more than three years ago, determined that those 38 people were “culpable” in 91 cases of sending classified information that ended up in Clinton’s personal email, according to a letter sent to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley this week and released Friday. The 38 are current and former State Department officials but were not identified.

Although the report identified violations, it said investigators had found “no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.” However, it also made clear that Clinton’s use of the private email had increased the vulnerability of classified information.

The Associated Press sent an email seeking comment to a Clinton representative.

The investigation covered 33,000 emails that Clinton turned over for review after her use of the private email account became public. The department said it found a total of 588 violations involving information then or now deemed to be classified but could not assign fault in 497 cases.

For current and former officials, culpability means the violations will be noted in their files and will be considered when they apply for or go to renew security clearances. For current officials, there could also be some kind of disciplinary action. But it was not immediately clear what that would be.

The report concluded “that the use of a private email system to conduct official business added an increased degree of risk of compromise as a private system lacks the network monitoring and intrusion detection capabilities of State Department networks.”

The department began the review in 2016 after declaring 22 emails from Clinton’s private server to be “top secret.” Clinton was then running for president against Donald Trump, and Trump made the server a major focus of his campaign.

Then-FBI Director James Comey held a news conference that year in which he criticized Clinton as “extremely careless” in her use of the private email server as secretary of state but said the FBI would not recommend charges.

The Justice Department’s inspector general said FBI specialists did not find evidence that the server had been hacked, with one forensics agent saying he felt “fairly confident that there wasn’t an intrusion.”

Grassley started investigating Clinton’s email server in 2017, when he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Iowa Republican has been critical of Clinton’s handling of classified information and urged administrative sanctions.
 

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By Polityk | 10/19/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

A Nation Sharply Divided Over Trump Impeachment Inquiry   

Voters in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire are accustomed to taking the lead on important political decisions. With a critical 2020 presidential election looming, these voters are increasingly occupied with the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry. And their opinions are as divided as those in the rest of the nation.

Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks to people at a campaign event, Oct. 9, 2019, in Rochester, N.H.

Outside a recent rally for former Vice President Joe Biden — the focus of President Donald Trump’s alleged attempt to invite foreign interference into the 2020 election — a group of Trump’s supporters protested, saying the impeachment inquiry was proof of the country’s toxic partisan atmosphere.

“People in New Hampshire are vehemently opposed to the impeachment,” said Lou Gargiulo, vice chair of Trump for New Hampshire. “They view it as something that does nothing to help the country, only to further divide. It’s a divisive process that serves no positive purpose.”

Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which Trump pressured Zelenskiy for help digging up dirt on Biden and his son, Hunter, is being viewed very differently by Americans through the prism of political ideologies and partisanship.

A  composite average of public opinion surveys by the polling website Five Thirty-Eight shows the country is split, with 49.5% of voters supporting impeachment and 44.2% opposed. Broken out, many surveys by respected firms such as Pew Research and Gallup show a majority of voters in favor of the impeachment of Trump.  According to the Gallup Poll on Oct. 16, 52% were in favor of impeachment while 46% were opposed.  

WATCH: Voters Divided Over Impeachment Inquiry


Voters Divided Over Trump Impeachment Inquiry video player.

For Gargiulo, “President Trump was having a conversation with another world leader talking about concerns. There are clearly issues in Ukraine with corruption, and he was looking to try to address it.”

But Democratic voter Marsha Miller said the call was clearly wrong and part of a larger pattern of illegal and dishonest behavior by Trump.

“You know there’s been corruption as the foundation, and I feel he took that set or lack of principles into the White House,” Miller said. “And you see it every day. You see it with every institution that we’ve had has in fact been jeopardized because of his corruption, his greed, his all about me — it’s not the country that he cares about.”

She emphasized it was time for political courage from Democrats in so-called swing districts — areas that went for Trump in 2016 or that show the potential to vote for him in 2020.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) walks out with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) to speak with reporters after meeting with President Trump at the White House in Washington, Oct. 16, 2019.

This is a key concern for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democrats who seek to retain their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2020 election.

If the impeachment inquiry advances too quickly, voters could accuse Democrats of rushing to judgment against Trump. He often characterizes the investigations into his administration as “witch hunts” and an effort by Democrats to invalidate his presidency because they fear they cannot win the 2020 presidential election.

Cathy Robertson Souter, a self-described independent in New Hampshire, is one of those all-important voters who could help swing public opinion on impeachment and the 2020 election. At a Biden campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, she said his message about the dangers Trump poses to American democracy resonated with her.

She said she was troubled by the conduct and shifting explanations of the president and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

“We can’t let this happen to our country,” she said. “It’s insane, because they’re going after the whistleblower? I’m sorry, didn’t you say you did it? You said he did it? He [Trump] said he did it. Giuliani said he did it. What’s the argument? And he wants to go after the whistleblower to say that he wants to interview him. It sounds really threatening.”

FILE – Rudy Giuliani, an attorney for President Donald Trump, speaks in Portsmouth, N.H., Aug. 1, 2018.

But nationwide, the Republican argument that Democrats’ impeachment inquiry is distracting Congress from conducting its work on behalf of voters resonates for many. Even in Cameron, Illinois, where farmers are most concerned about the impact Trump’s trade policies will have on their business, impeachment is a distraction.

“Get serious,” Wendell Shauman, a farmer, said he would tell House Democrats if he had the opportunity. The impeachment probe is “just gamesmanship out there and I think the rest of the country thinks you’re just a ship of fools.”

Democrats are taking the political risk of passing articles of impeachment in the House, all the while knowing the chances that the Republican-majority Senate would convict the president are remote.

Trump supporter Marianne Costabile lives in a formerly Republican congressional district in Orange County, California, which flipped to the Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections, sending former educator Katie Porter to Congress. Costabile said she’s considering moving out of the district because of the political changes, but she said she believes the impeachment inquiry will be politically ruinous for Democrats.

“They’re digging and digging and digging, and they won’t be done until they [have] dug a grave for themselves,” Costabile said.

While the impeachment inquiry has further heightened partisan political tensions across the country, many voters also have expressed concern those divides will be long-lasting. And many voters are concerned about the adverse impact Trump is having on political norms and institutions.

“He’s been on sale all along so, you know, you get what you get,” said Debbi Sanfilippo, a former schoolteacher from Long Island, New York. “He still hasn’t turned in his tax returns. He still hasn’t turned in his financial papers. So, how do we know [what] we don’t know? So, basically he’s a liar.”

Ramon Taylor, Carolyn Presutti and Kane Farabuagh contributed to this report.

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By Polityk | 10/19/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

Voters Divided Over Trump Impeachment Inquiry

Since House Democrats launched a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump last month, public support for the probe to potentially remove Trump from office has grown to 52 percent. The slim majority of support reflects sharp divisions among Americans over Trump and politics. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from voters around the United States.

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By Polityk | 10/19/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

Cerebral Buttigieg’s Emotional Restraint Stands Out in Democratic Race

John McAnear, a 77-year-old Air Force veteran, stood in an audience of hundreds in suburban Des Moines with an oxygen tank at his side, wheezing as he implored Pete Buttigieg to protect the Department of Veterans Affairs. 
 
The Democratic presidential hopeful skipped any attempt to bond over their mutual military service. Instead, Buttigieg offered a list of proposals to fix the VA. 
 
Of the many ways the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is different from his better-known rivals, there is this: his ingrained emotional restraint in a show-all-tell-all era. 
 
“You don’t really get the warm fuzzies from him,” said Lisa Ann Spilman, a retired Air Force officer who attended Buttigieg’s event. “But I really like how intelligent and down-to-earth he is.” 

Personal connection
 
As Buttigieg, whose campaign appears better positioned organizationally in Iowa and financially overall than former Vice President Joe Biden’s, attempts to climb into the top tier of Democrats, voters will be taking a measure of him in all ways, including whether he can make the kind of personal connection they have come to expect, at least since Bill Clinton showed he could feel their pain. 
 
Buttigieg chafes at being labeled an emotionless technocrat, and his supporters cite his intellectual agility as his main draw, particularly against someone like President Donald Trump, whose strained relationship with the truth is so frequently on display.  

FILE – Pete Buttigieg speaks during a Democratic presidential candidates debate at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio, Oct. 15, 2019.

In a candidate debate Tuesday, Buttigieg showed rare outward fire, pointedly challenging Senator Elizabeth Warren on her health care plan and former Representative Beto O’Rourke on gun control. “I don’t need lessons from you on courage, political or personal,” Buttigieg said to O’Rourke. 
 
“I don’t mind being a little professorial at times,” Buttigieg acknowledged in a conversation with reporters last month. He added, “Sometimes I think I’m misread because I’m laid back. I’m misread as being bloodless.” 
 
But to describe him as wooden or mechanical gets it wrong. Upbeat in his trademark white shirt with sleeves half-rolled, Buttigieg projects energy and youthful diligence. 
 
He’s not a fiery podium speaker like Senator Bernie Sanders. He isn’t given to big hugs or open self-reflection, like Biden and Warren. 
 
In interactions with voters, Buttigieg’s style is evolving. During a late-summer stop in southeast Iowa, he noted his mother-in-law “is alive because of the Affordable Care Act,” but he moved on without describing her illness or asking if his audience had similar experiences. 
 
It’s notable because Buttigieg is trying to frame his message around empathy in what he calls the nation’s “crisis of belonging.” 

Misfiring
 
And it does not always work. When the question turned to cancer at the Iowa State Fair, he said before discussing his plans, “Cancer took my father earlier this year, so this is personal,” skipping over any elaboration of the pillar Joe Buttigieg was to his only child. 
 
When the questioner noted her family’s loss, he said politely, “I’m sorry. So, we’re in the same boat,” and then turned to a discussion of research. 
 
Buttigieg’s mother, Anne Montgomery, said that in boyhood her son was fun, curious, literate and multitalented but “a reserved person.” 
 
“It’s been a part of his life for a long time,” she said in an Associated Press interview. 
 
What Buttigieg suggests is his tendency to “compartmentalize” has been a liability for some other candidates, most notably for the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee, Michael Dukakis.  

FILE – Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg speaks with local residents at the Hawkeye Area Labor Council Labor Day Picnic, Sept. 2, 2019, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

He offered an almost programmatic answer when asked during a nationally televised debate if he would support the death penalty if his wife were raped and murdered. 
 
Dukakis, who lost in a landslide, acknowledges today that he “botched it” and that his answer fed the narrative that the pragmatic, policy-oriented Massachusetts governor was emotionless. 
 
Buttigieg, Dukakis told the AP, is warm and thoughtful, “but he also happens to be very, very bright, and that, I think, is the biggest part of his appeal.” Dukakis has endorsed his home state senator, Warren. 
 
“He’s not a typical politician,” said Kelsie Goodman, an associate principal for a Des Moines area high school who first saw Buttigieg at an event last month. “And he’s an intellectual judo master.” 
 
As the campaign progresses, there are signs Buttigieg is becoming more comfortable opening up. 
 
At an outdoor event at Des Moines’ Theodore Roosevelt High School last Saturday, he ignited laughter and cheers for his answer to a question about how he would approach debating Trump. 
 
“We know what he’s going to do, and it just doesn’t get to me. Look, I can deal with bullies. I’m gay and I grew up in Indiana. I’ll be fine,” he deadpanned. 

Concern for husband
 
In a rare personal revelation, he told reporters on a bus ride across northern Iowa that he dreaded the thought of his husband, Chasten, being subjected to the cruelties of modern politics. 
 
“Another agonizing feeling is to watch that happening to someone you love,” he said. “At least if it’s happening to me, I can go out there and fight back.” 
 
Still, what Buttigieg’s most vocal advocates praise as his coolness so far seems to be doing little to dampen views of him in Iowa, where he has invested heavily in time and money in hopes of a breakthrough finish. In a September CNN/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll, 69% of likely Iowa caucus participants said they viewed Buttigieg favorably, second only to Warren. 
 
Where Buttigieg clearly connects personally is along the rope line with supporters and when the merely curious meet him after he leaves the stage. 
 

FILE – Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg meets with people at a campaign event Aug. 15, 2019, in Fairfield, Iowa.

In these moments, he has met people who describe their own stories of stepping out of the shadows, as Buttigieg did coming out as a gay man in 2015. Buttigieg regularly mentions Iowa teenager Bridgette Bissell, who described the courage she took from meeting him to announce she was autistic. 
 
Similar moments, Buttigieg said, prompted him to build his campaign around repairing Americans’ sense of connectedness. 
 
In Waterloo recently, local organizer Caitlin Reedy introduced Buttigieg to hundreds at a riverside rally, explaining that she was drawn to him by having experienced the uneasiness of sharing her diagnosis with diabetes. 

Picturing ‘unification’
 
Leaning forward in his chair on the bus the next day, Buttigieg said the campaign was teaching him how people — feeling left out racially, ethnically, culturally, economically — yearn to connect. 
 
“Where it comes from is going through the process of understanding that you’re different,” he said, “and then understanding that that’s part of what you have to offer.” 
 
“Join me in picturing that kind of presidency,” he told more than 600 in Waterloo, “not for the glorification of the president, but for the unification of the people.” 

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By Polityk | 10/18/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

Tensions Running High in Washington Over Impeachment and Syria

Official Washington finds itself consumed by the twin crises of impeachment and Syria this week.  President Donald Trump is trying to fend off congressional Democrats moving toward impeachment, even as he faces a fierce backlash from some Republicans over his decision to pull U.S. forces out of Syria. Trump is used to weathering political storms, but this one is particularly intense, as we hear from VOA National correspondent Jim Malone.
 

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By Polityk | 10/18/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

Trump Rallies Supporters in Texas

U.S. President Donald Trump held a campaign rally in Texas Thursday evening to drum up support in a state that may be shaping up to become a battleground in the upcoming 2020 national election. Trump rallied as news broke about the cease-fire announced by White House officials and Turkey in its assault on Kurdish fighters in northern Syria. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this report from Dallas.
 

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By Polityk | 10/18/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

Trump Seeks to Rally Supporters in Texas

U.S. President Donald Trump is in Texas on Thursday for a campaign rally in Dallas to drum up support from his base in a state that until recently could be counted on to vote Republican but might be shaping up to become a battleground. 
 
Trump arrived in Texas as news broke about the cease-fire agreement reached by the United States and Turkey, with Ankara agreeing to suspend its military operation in Syria to allow Kurdish forces to retreat from a designated safe zone. 
 
Speaking in Fort Worth before participating in a roundtable with supporters and a fundraising luncheon in the city, Trump called the cease-fire “an incredible outcome” and “something they’ve been trying to get for 10 years.” 
 
Trump said he was looking forward to the Texas rally, calling it “a record crowd.”  

Supporters of President Donald Trump wait to enter a campaign rally as the sun rises, Oct. 17, 2019, outside the American Airlines Center in Dallas.

Thousands of his supporters lined up outside the American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas, with several dozen having camped outside the venue since Tuesday evening. 
 
“I am so excited. I’m so pumped. Couldn’t sleep this morning. I just wanted to get here so bad,” said Daylene Randham of Fort Worth, adding that she loved Trump for his “America-first policies from day one.” 
 
“I think he’s gonna electrify this crowd,” said Gayle Roberts, who said he’d flown in from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to attend the event, his eighth Trump rally so far. 

Gayle Roberts from Wyoming, attending his 8th Trump rally.

The president has given Texas a lot of attention; this was his sixth visit to the state and third campaign rally here in the past year. He held a fundraising trip through Houston and San Antonio in April, visited El Paso in the wake of a deadly mass shooting in August, and joined Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a “Howdy Modi” event in Houston last month. 
 
Impeachment ‘a lot of bull hockey’ 
 
Thursday’s rally was Trump’s first visit to the state since opposition Democrats began their impeachment inquiry — something his supporters here dismiss. 
 
“It’s a load of bull hockey,” said Vicky Debolt of north Texas. “If it was real, they would have brought it out sooner. So I think it’s just a lot of bull hockey and a bunch of lies and I don’t believe it.” 

Mike Adams of Decatur, Texas, said he did not believe Trump was pressuring the Ukrainian leader for dirt on his potential 2020 political opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden — the allegation that House Democrats are basing their impeachment inquiry on. 
 
“If somebody knows that other people did something wrong in their country, and you can talk to them about it, and they can help share that, what’s wrong with that?” Adams said. 
 
There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden or his son Hunter Biden, as Trump has alleged. 

Trump insists that he did nothing improper in his call with Ukrainian President Zelenskiy. But on Thursday, Mick Mulvaney, his acting chief of staff admitted the administration withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Democrats.

Asked about Mulvaney’s statement that contradicts Trump’s position that there is no quid pro quo in his dealing with Zelenskiy, the president said he has “not heard anything about it”, adding that “Mick is a good man”.

Trump also said that he has accepted Rick Perry’s resignation. The Secretary of Energy is also entangled in the the impeachment probe into Trump’s actions involving Ukraine. Trump said he will announce Perry’s replacement at the rally.

WATCH: Trump Rallies Supporters in Texas


Trump Rallies Supporters in Texas video player.

Blue county in changing state 
 
The Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area is important to Trump, as it is a solidly blue region in a state that until recently was staunchly Republican. 
 
“Dallas is probably the number one target area,” said Harvey Kronberg of the Quorum Report, a publication focused on Texas politics. “I don’t think the president is vulnerable in Texas. But I don’t think his numbers are nearly as good as we would normally presume, and he’s got to keep the base fired up.” 
 
Dallas is also one of the largest cities in the United States with a large suburban area, where a lot of the election fight will take place, said Shannon Bow O’Brien, who teaches American politics at the University of Texas at Austin. 
 
“Texas is a growing state and it’s growing in the cities,” said O’Brien, “With the growth in the cities, a lot of the growth is Democratic voters.” 
 
A rally in an arena with a 20,000-person capacity in a conservative state may also provide a welcome diversion for a president embattled by an impeachment inquiry and a foreign policy crisis. 
 
“It’s a way for him to get a personal boost,” said O’Brien. “I think this is a way for him to feel better about the fact that many people out there still love him.” 

Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross at the opening of the Louis Vuitton factory near Alvarado, Texas, Oct. 17, 2019.

Louis Vuitton factory 
 
Prior to the rally, the president attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new Louis Vuitton Rochambeau factory near Alvarado, Texas, with Bernard Arnault, chairman of the French luxury conglomerate. 
 
Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, accompanied him to emphasize the administration’s job creation record. 
 
Louis Vuitton signed the “Pledge to America’s Workers,” a Trump administration initiative to bring “better jobs that deliver bigger paychecks” to American workers. The leather goods workshop in Keene, a small town near Alvarado, is expected to create about 1,000 jobs over the next five years. 
 
The luxury brand will be getting a 10-year, 75% tax abatement from the county, the maximum allowed, which amounts to about $91,900 in tax cuts a year. 
 
Democratic rally 
 
Meanwhile Thursday, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke was staging a counter-rally at the Verizon Theatre in Grand Prairie, about 22 kilometers away. 
 
“Our message is solidarity,” said Tramon Arnold, political director of the Dallas County Democratic Party. “We’re not here to make any ill light of the [Trump] event but to show solidarity that we’re here to make sure that we get President Trump out of office.” 

Saqib Ul Islam and Jesusemen Oni contributed to this report.

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By Polityk | 10/18/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

‘See you at the Polls’: Trump and Pelosi Have it out

He said she’s a “third-grade” politician. She said he’s having a meltdown.

And with that President Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chalked up the latest explosive meeting that ended abruptly with a walkout at the White House.

It’s a familiar ritual, with Trump and congressional leaders meeting on official business, only to see the session devolve into colorful, name-calling commentary that’s a new kind of addition to the history books. But this time, against the backdrop of the fast-moving impeachment inquiry, Pelosi arrived not just as the leader of the opposing party but as the speaker who could determine Trump’s political future.

The administration called in congressional leadership to discuss the situation in Syria. The House had just voted, 354-60, to overwhelmingly oppose the president’s announced U.S. troop withdrawal, a rare bipartisan rebuke. Trump’s action has opened the door for a Turkish military attack on Syrian Kurds who have been aligned with the U.S. in fighting the country’s long-running war.

Trump kicked off the meeting bragging about his “nasty” letter to Turkish President Recep Erdogan, according to a Democrat familiar with the meeting who was granted anonymity to discuss it. In the letter, Trump warned the Turkish leader, with exclamation points, not to be “slaughtering” the Kurds. The person called Trump’s opening a lengthy, bombastic monologue.

Pelosi mentioned the House vote and Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, started to read the president a quote from former Defense Secretary James Mattis on the need to keep U.S. troops in Syria to prevent a resurgent of Islamic State fighters.

But Trump cut Schumer off, complaining that Mattis was “the world’s most overrated general. You know why? He wasn’t tough enough.” Trump went on, “I captured ISIS.”

Pelosi explained to Trump that Russia has always wanted a “foothold in the Middle East,” and now it has one with the U.S. withdrawal, according to a senior Democratic aide who was also granted anonymity.

“All roads with you lead to Putin,” the speaker said.

Then it began.

Trump said to Pelosi, “I hate ISIS more than you do.”

Pelosi responded, “You don’t know that.”

Schumer intervened at one point and said, “Is your plan to rely on the Syrians and the Turks?”

Trump replied, “Our plan is to keep the American people safe.”

Pelosi said: “That’s not a plan. That’s a goal.”

Trump turned to Pelosi and complained about former President Barack Obama’s “red line” over Syria. According to Schumer, he then called her “a third-rate politician.”

At that point, the genteel Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House Majority Leader, interjected, “This is not useful.”

Pelosi and Hoyer stood and left the meeting. As they did, Trump said, “Goodbye, we’ll see you at the polls.”

From the White House driveway, Pelosi told reporters Trump was having some kind of “meltdown” inside. She said they had to leave because Trump was unable to grasp the reality of the situation.

Later, she would insist he even botched the insult, calling her “third-grade” rather than “third-rate.”

The impeachment inquiry never came up, she said.

Trump insisted later on Twitter that it was Pelosi who had a “total meltdown,” calling her “a very sick person!”

He also tweeted pictures from the room. “Do you think they like me?” he asked mockingly about one, showing Pelosi and Schumer looking exhausted and glum.

“Nervous Nancy’s unhinged meltdown!” he tweeted with another.

In that photo, Pelosi can be seen, surrounded by congressional leaders and military brass around a table at the White House, finger outpointed. She is standing up, literally, to Trump.

Pelosi turned the photo into the banner on her Twitter page.

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By Polityk | 10/17/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings Dead at 68

Maryland Rep. Elijah E. Cummings died early Thursday at Johns Hopkins Hospital of complications from longstanding health challenges, his congressional office said. He was 68.

A sharecropper’s son, Cummings became the powerful chairman of a U.S. House committee that investigated President Donald Trump, and was a formidable orator who passionately advocated for the poor in his black-majority district, which encompasses a large portion of Baltimore as well as more well-to-do suburbs.

As chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Cummings led multiple investigations of the president’s governmental dealings, including probes in 2019 relating to the president’s family members serving in the White House.

House Committee on Oversight and Reform Chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., speaks to members of the media before Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan appears before a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 18, 2019.

Trump responded by criticizing the Democrat’s district as a “rodent-infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.” The comments came weeks after Trump drew bipartisan condemnation following his calls for Democratic congresswomen of color to get out of the U.S. “right now,” and go back to their “broken and crime-infested countries.”

Cummings replied that government officials must stop making “hateful, incendiary comments” that only serve to divide and distract the nation from its real problems, including mass shootings and white supremacy.

“Those in the highest levels of the government must stop invoking fear, using racist language and encouraging reprehensible behavior,” Cummings said in a speech at the National Press Club.

Long career in politics

Cummings’ long career spanned decades in Maryland politics. He rose through the ranks of the Maryland House of Delegates before winning his congressional seat in a special election in 1996 to replace former Rep. Kweisi Mfume, who left the seat to lead the NAACP.

Cummings continued his rise in Congress. In 2016, he was the senior Democrat on the House Benghazi Committee, which he said was “nothing more than a taxpayer-funded effort to bring harm to Hillary Clinton’s campaign” for president.

Cummings was an early supporter of Barack Obama’s presidential bid in 2008.

Passionate orator

Throughout his career, Cummings used his fiery voice to highlight the struggles and needs of inner-city residents. He was a firm believer in some much-debated approaches to help the poor and addicted, such as needle exchange programs as a way to reduce the spread of AIDS.

Cummings was born on Jan. 18, 1951. In grade school, a counselor told Cummings he was too slow to learn and spoke poorly, and he would never fulfill his dream of becoming a lawyer.

“I was devastated,” Cummings told The Associated Press in 1996, shortly before he won his seat in Congress. “My whole life changed. I became very determined.”

It steeled Cummings to prove that counselor wrong. He became not only a lawyer, but one of the most powerful orators in the Maryland House of Delegates, where he entered office in 1983. He rose to become House speaker pro tem, the first black delegate to hold the position. He would begin his comments slowly, developing his theme and raising the emotional heat until it became like a sermon from the pulpit.

Cummings was quick to note the differences between Congress and the Maryland General Assembly, which has long been controlled by Democrats.

“After coming from the state where, basically, you had a lot of people working together, it’s clear that the lines are drawn here,” Cummings said about a month after entering office in Washington in 1996.

Cummings chaired the Congressional Black Caucus from 2003 to 2004, employing a hard-charging, explore-every-option style to put the group in the national spotlight.v He cruised to big victories in the overwhelmingly Democratic district, which had given Maryland its first black congressman in 1970 when Parren Mitchell was elected.

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By Polityk | 10/17/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

US Ambassador to EU Set to Testify in Impeachment Inquiry

After the State Department blocked him from appearing last week, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland is scheduled to appear Thursday before House lawmakers conducting an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s relations with Ukraine.

The House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees are holding the closed-door deposition where Sondland is expected to say Trump would only offer a White House visit to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy if he committed to investigations involving Trump’s Democratic rivals.

Sondland, a Trump donor, was one of several diplomats who advised the Ukrainian leadership about how to carry out Trump’s demands after his July phone call with Zelenskiy. In the call, Trump asked the Kyiv leader for “a favor” — that Ukraine investigate one of Trump’s top Democratic challengers, former Vice President Joe Biden, and the business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden.

According to a U.S. intelligence whistleblower, Sondland and other diplomats exchanged a series of text messages in which the diplomats wondered why roughly $400 million in aid to Ukraine was frozen.

Texts between Gordon Sondland and William Taylor are superimposed over a hand holding a mobile phone.

Reports say there was a five-hour gap between text messages, during which Sondland telephoned Trump.

The next message assured one diplomat there was no “quid pro quo” of any kind with Ukraine, followed by Sondland writing, “I suggest we stop the back and forth by text.”

Former Pompeo aide

On Wednesday, a former top aide to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told House lawmakers that he quit last week in growing frustration over the politicization of the State Department, with the final straw being President Donald Trump’s ouster of the well-regarded American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch.

In hours of congressional testimony, Michael McKinley, decried the agency’s unwillingness to protect career diplomats like Yovanovitch from political pressure.

McKinley’s statements, recounted by people familiar with his closed-door testimony before the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, are the latest in a string of unflattering accounts about the behind-the-scenes operations of the country’s foreign policy and national security agencies.

McKinley has served as the U.S. ambassador in four countries, and he had other global postings before returning to Washington as an aide to Pompeo.

His testimony, along with that of others, has helped buttress the account of the unnamed whistleblower.

Michael McKinley, a former top aide to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, leaves Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 16, 2019.

Both Bidens have denied wrongdoing, but Hunter Biden, 49, said this week he used “poor judgment” in agreeing to serve on the board of a Ukrainian energy company because it had become a political liability for his father.

Trump has described the call with Zelenskiy as “perfect,” and denied any wrongdoing.

Yovanovitch testified last week that Trump dismissed her based on “unfounded and false claims” after Trump’s personal attorney, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, assailed her performance in Kyiv.

According to a rough recounting of the July conversation supplied by the White House, Trump told Zelenskiy, “The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news, so I just wanted to let you know that. The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, and that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look in to it … it sounds horrible to me.”

Trump continued Wednesday to attack the impeachment hearings against him.

Republicans are totally deprived of their rights in this Impeachment Witch Hunt. No lawyers, no questions, no transparency! The good news is that the Radical Left Dems have No Case. It is all based on their Fraud and Fabrication!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2019

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff defended the process in a letter Wednesday, saying Republicans have not been kept out of the process.

“Questions have been primarily asked by committee counsels for both the majority and the minority, but also by Members of both parties. And the majority and minority have been provided equal staff representation and time to question witnesses, who have stayed until the majority and minority have asked all of their questions — often late into the evening,” Schiff wrote.

He said transcripts of closed-door interviews will be made public at a time when doing so will not jeopardize the investigation, and that “at an appropriate point” witnesses will be questioned in public sessions “so that the full Congress and the American people can hear their testimony firsthand.”

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By Polityk | 10/17/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

Trump: Democratic Challengers Are ‘Clowns’

U.S. President Donald Trump assailed his Democratic challengers on Wednesday after their latest debate, calling them “clowns” who would crash the economy.

“You would think there is NO WAY that any of the Democrat Candidates that we witnessed last night could possibly become President of the United States,” Trump said on Twitter after the 12 contenders spent much of their three-hour debate attacking Trump’s White House performance over the last three years and calling for his impeachment.

You would think there is NO WAY that any of the Democrat Candidates that we witnessed last night could possibly become President of the United States. Now you see why they have no choice but to push a totally illegal & absurd Impeachment of one of the most successful Presidents!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2019

Trump said that if he loses the November 2020 election after a single four-year term, “Our record Economy would CRASH, just like in 1929, if any of those clowns became President!” 

The 12 candidates wasted no time Tuesday night before telling a national television audience why Trump should be impeached by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives to face trial in the Republican-majority Senate, even if Trump’s removal through the impeachment process remains an unlikely outcome.

In his opening statement, former Vice President Joe Biden, one of Trump’s top challengers, declared, “This president is the most corrupt … in all our history,” an assessment echoed across the debate stage.

FILE – Senator Elizabeth Warren speaks during the fourth U.S. Democratic presidential candidates 2020 election debate in Westerville, Ohio, Oct. 15, 2019.

Another leading candidate, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, said, “Sometimes there are issues that are bigger than politics. Donald Trump broke the law. No one is above the law. Impeachment must go forward.”

Trump’s opponents hurled some of their toughest attacks against Trump for his withdrawal in recent days of U.S. troops from northern Syria, leaving Kurdish fighters — U.S. battlefield allies in the war against Islamic State terrorists — vulnerable to an onslaught from Turkish troops invading from the north. Trump on Wednesday said the Turkish invasion is “not our problem,” declaring that the Kurdish fighters are “not angels.”

Biden called Trump’s abandonment of Kurdish fighters the “most shameful thing I’ve ever seen a president do.” California Senator Kamala Harris called the bloodshed in northern Syria “a crisis of Donald Trump’s making,” while Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar said, “Our president blew it and he’s too proud to say it.”

While mostly targeting Trump, some of the candidates aimed salvos at Warren, who has surged in recent polling, even overtaking Biden in some surveys of Democratic voters. Klobuchar and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg attacked Warren’s call for a government-run national medical insurance plan, claiming she is being evasive about how she would pay for it.

Tuesday’s debate was the fourth in a string of almost-monthly get-togethers for the Democratic challengers seeking to win the party’s nomination to face Trump. But with the candidates lined up on a stage at Otterbein University in the Midwestern state of Ohio, it was the largest such gathering and came as the new drama engulfed the U.S. political world just more than a year before voters head to the polls in the national balloting.

Ukraine phone call

Democrats in the House of Representatives opened the quick-moving impeachment probe after a whistleblower in the U.S. intelligence community raised questions as to whether Trump had put his political survival ahead of U.S. national security concerns when he asked Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for “a favor” in a late July call. Trump called for Kyiv to open an investigation into the role played by Biden in helping oust a Ukrainian prosecutor when he was former President Barack Obama’s second-in-command, and to probe the lucrative service of Biden’s son, Hunter, on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.

FILE – Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during the fourth U.S. Democratic presidential candidates 2020 election debate in Westerville, Ohio, Oct. 15, 2019.

Both Bidens have denied wrongdoing, although the younger Biden, 49, told ABC News this week that he exercised “poor judgment” in serving on the Burisma company board because it had become a political liability for his father.

The elder Biden said he had never discussed with Hunter Biden the decision to join the Ukrainian company’s board. Hunter Biden left the board earlier this year and now pledges to not work for any foreign company if his father is elected president.

Trump has repeatedly described his call with Zelenskiy as “perfect,” said he has done nothing wrong and assailed the impeachment probe as another attempt to overturn his 2016 election victory.

Front-runners

The elder Biden, at 76 on his third run for the U.S. presidency, is the nominal leader in national surveys of Democratic voters of their choice as the party’s standard bearer to face Trump, 73. Biden often defeats Trump in hypothetical polling matchups. So does Warren, a former Harvard law professor.

FILE – Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders speaks during the fourth U.S. Democratic presidential candidates 2020 election debate at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio, Oct. 15, 2019.

Biden and the 70-year-old Warren were at center stage on Tuesday, alongside Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist who currently stands as the third choice among Democrats. The 78-year-old Sanders recently suffered a heart attack, raising questions about his health as the oldest of the presidential contenders.

Asked about his stamina to campaign for the presidency, Sanders said he would be “mounting a vigorous campaign all over this country.” Biden, who would turn 80 during his presidency if he wins the election, deflected a question about his age, saying that with it “comes wisdom. I know what has to be done.”

The nine other candidates on the debate stage besides Biden, Warren and Sanders faced a daunting challenge: how best to distinguish themselves from the front-runners and gain new traction in national polls and surveys of voters in states where Democrats are holding party nominating contests starting in February.

All nine currently are polling in the single digits, compared to Biden and Warren in the upper 20% range, and Sanders at about 15%.

Ahead of the next debate, on Nov. 20, the national Democratic party has set the standards even higher to gain a spot on the stage. The candidates must have bigger polling numbers — at least 3% support in four national polls or 5% support in polls of people in states that are early on the voting calendar — and more financial support, from at least 165,000 individual donors.
 

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By Polityk | 10/16/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

AP Fact Check: Democrats Flub Details on Guns, Syria in Debate

A dozen Democrats seeking the presidency tussled in a debate packed with policy, flubbing some details in the process.

Several gave an iffy explanation Tuesday of why they’re not swinging behind a bold proposal to make people turn over their assault-style weapons. Sloppiness also crept in during robust exchanges over foreign policy, health care, taxes and more.

How some of their claims from Westerville, Ohio, stack up with the facts:

SYRIA

Joe Biden: “I would not have withdrawn the troops, and I would not have withdrawn the additional 1,000 troops that are in Iraq, which are in retreat now, being fired on by Assad’s people.”

The Facts: The former vice president is wrong. There is no evidence that any of the approximately 1,000 American troops preparing to evacuate from Syria have been fired on by Syrian government forces led by President Bashar Assad. A small group of U.S. troops came under Turkish artillery fire near the town of Kobani last week, without anyone being injured, but there is no indication that Syrian troops have shot at withdrawing Americans.

Also, Biden was addressing the situation in Syria, not Iraq.

GUN CONTROL

Pete Buttigieg: “On guns, we are this close to an assault weapons ban. That would be huge.”

Amy Klochubar: “I just keep thinking of how close we are to finally getting something done on this.”

The Facts: No, the U.S. is not close to enacting an assault-weapons ban, as Buttigieg claimed, nor close on any significant gun control, as Klobuchar had it. Congress is not on the verge of such legislation. Prospects for an assault-weapons ban, in particular, are bound to remain slim until the next election at least.

Legislation under discussion in the Senate would expand background checks for gun sales, a politically popular idea even with gun owners. But even that bill has stalled because of opposition from the National Rifle Association and on-again, off-again support from Trump. Democrats and some Republicans in Congress say they will continue to push for the background checks bill, but movement appears unlikely during an impeachment inquiry and general dysfunction in Congress. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear he won’t move forward on gun legislation without Trump’s strong support.

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden, left, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., center and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg speak during a Democratic presidential primary debate hosted by CNN/New York Times at Otterbein…

Buttigieg was citing the chance for an assault-weapons ban as a reason for not supporting the more radical proposal by Democratic presidential rival Beto O’Rourke to force gun owners to give up AR-15s and other assault-style weapons. Klobuchar spoke in a similar context.

Kamala Harris: “Five million assault weapons are on the streets of America today.”

The Facts: The California senator’s statistic on the number of AR- and AK-style firearms is not accurate. Even the gun industry estimates there are now 16 million “assault weapons” in circulation in the United States today. In 1994, President Bill Clinton enacted an assault weapons ban, at a time when there were an estimated 1.5 million of them in circulation. Current owners were allowed to keep them, however, and once the ban expired a decade later, sales resumed and boomed.

JOBS

Elizabeth Warren: “The data show that we’ve had a lot of problems with losing jobs, but the principal reason has been bad trade policy. The principal reason has been a bunch of corporations, giant multinational corporations who’ve been calling the shots on trade.”

The Facts: Economists mostly blame those job losses on automation and robots, not trade deals.

So the Massachusetts senator is off.

Let’s start by acknowledging that the U.S. economy has been adding jobs, just that the nature of those jobs has changed as factory work and other occupations have become less prevalent.

Trade with China has contributed to shuttered factories and the loss of roughly 2 million jobs, according to research published in 2014.

But the primary culprit that accounted for 88% of factory job losses between 2000 and 2010 was automation, according to researchers at Ball State University.

Job figures show that the outbreak of the Great Recession in late 2007 also contributed to manufacturing’s decline.

Warren is basing her claim that trade policy mattered more than automation on research from the Upjohn Institute that suggests relatively modest productivity gains in manufacturing outside of the computer and electronics sectors, a sign to those researchers that trade policy mattered more for job losses.

But there is also a bigger threat from automation for workers outside factories. These are secretaries, bookkeepers and a wide array of professions. Automation can displace these workers and put downward pressure on their wages, forcing them to find other jobs.

Presidential candidate former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, left, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, former Housing Secretary Julian Castro participate in a Democratic presidential primary debate hosted by CNN/New York Times, in Westerville, Ohio, Oct. 15, 2019.

Julian Castro: “Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania actually in the latest jobs data have lost jobs, not gained them.”

The Facts: Nope.

Figures from the Labor Department show that the former Housing and Urban Development secretary is wrong.

Ohio added jobs in August. So did Michigan. Same with Pennsylvania.

So Castro’s statement is off.

However, these states still have economic struggles. Pennsylvania has lost factory jobs since the end of 2018. So has Michigan. And Ohio has shed 100 factory jobs so far this year.

HEALTH CARE

Warren: Buttigieg’s Medicare buy-in option is “Medicare for all who can afford it.”

The Facts: Warren ignored the fact that Buttigieg would provide subsidies to help people pay premiums for the plan.

She was jabbing at Buttigieg’s proposal to create an optional health insurance plan based on Medicare. Individual Americans could join it, even those covered by employer plans.

Buttigieg calls it “Medicare for all who want it.”

His plan tracks with Biden’s health care proposal. Biden would also provide subsidies for those who pick his “public option.”

Details are unclear on who would get financial assistance, and how much that would be. But Buttigieg and Biden have said they want to provide help to a broader cross section of Americans than are currently helped by the Affordable Care Act.

RUSSIA INVESTIGATION

Warren: “Mueller had shown to a fare-thee-well that this president obstructed justice.”

The Facts: That’s not exactly what special counsel Robert Mueller showed.

It’s true that prosecutors examined more than 10 episodes for evidence of obstruction of justice, and that they did illustrate efforts by President Donald Trump to stymie the Russia investigation or take control of it.

But ultimately, Mueller did not reach a conclusion as to whether the president obstructed justice or broke any other law. He cited Justice Department policy against the indictment of a sitting president, and said that since he could not bring charges against Trump, it was unfair to accuse him of a crime. There was no definitive finding that he obstructed justice.

 

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By Polityk | 10/16/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

Democrats Target Trump and Each Other in Latest Debate

A dozen Democratic presidential contenders took part in what was at times a contentious debate Tuesday in Ohio. The Democrats took several rhetorical shots at U.S. President Donald Trump, but they also did not hesitate to challenge each other on issues like health care, income inequality and the pullout of U.S. forces from Syria. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington

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By Polityk | 10/16/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

Democratic Candidates Voice Staunch Support for Trump’s Impeachment

Twelve U.S. Democratic presidential candidates squared off in a spirited debate Tuesday night, all looking to confront President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, even as their Democratic congressional cohorts have accused Trump of political wrongdoing and opened an impeachment inquiry against him. 
 
The dozen challengers all support the four-week-old impeachment probe, although Trump’s removal through impeachment remains unlikely. The candidates, however, wasted no time before telling a national television audience why Trump should be impeached by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives to face trial in the Republican-majority Senate. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., left, and former Vice President Joe Biden participate in a Democratic presidential candidates debate hosted by CNN/New York Times at Otterbein University, Oct. 15, 2019, in Westerville, Ohio.

In his opening statement, former Vice President Joe Biden, one of Trump’s top challengers, declared, “This president is the most corrupt … in all our history,” an assessment echoed across the debate stage. 

‘No one is above the law’

Another leading candidate, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, said, “Sometimes there are issues that are bigger than politics. Donald Trump broke the law. No one is above the law. Impeachment must go forward.” 
 
Tuesday’s debate was the fourth in a string of almost monthly get-togethers for the Democratic challengers seeking to win the party’s nomination to face Trump. But with the 12 candidates lined up on a stage at Otterbein University in the Midwestern state of Ohio, it was the largest such gathering and came as new drama has engulfed the U.S. political world about a year before voters head to the polls in the national balloting. 
 
House Democrats opened the quick-moving impeachment probe after a whistleblower in the U.S. intelligence community raised questions about whether Trump had put his own political survival ahead of U.S. national security concerns when he asked Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for “a favor” in a late July call. Trump called for Kyiv to open an investigation into the role played by Biden in helping oust a Ukrainian prosecutor when he was former President Barack Obama’s second in command, and also to probe the lucrative service of Biden’s son Hunter on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. 
 
Both Bidens have denied wrongdoing, although the younger Biden, 49, told ABC News this week that he exercised “poor judgment” in serving on the Burisma company board because it had become a political liability for his father. 
 
The elder Biden said he had never discussed with Hunter Biden his decision to join the Ukrainian company’s board, which he left earlier this year. Hunter Biden now has pledged not  to work for any foreign company if his father is elected president. 

Trump’s criticism
 
Trump has repeatedly described his call with Zelenskiy as “perfect,” said he has done nothing wrong and assailed the impeachment probe as another attempt to overturn his 2016 election victory. 

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, participates in a Democratic presidential candidates debate at Otterbein University, Oct. 15, 2019, in Westerville, Ohio.

The elder Biden, at 76 on his third run for the U.S. presidency, is the nominal leader in national surveys of Democratic voters of their choice as the party’s standard bearer to face Trump, 73, and he often defeats Trump in hypothetical polling matchups. So does Warren, a former Harvard law professor, who has edged close to Biden or sometimes even surpassed him in national polls of Democrats as their favorite presidential candidate. 
 
Biden and Warren, 70, were at center stage Tuesday, alongside Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist who currently stands as the third choice among Democrats. Sanders, 78, recently suffered a heart attack, raising questions about his health as the oldest of the presidential contenders. 

The candidates railed against income inequality in the United States, where the income gap between corporate chieftains and everyday workers is pronounced. 
 
“We need a wealth tax to protect the next generation,” Warren said. She has called for a 2% annual tax on the wealthiest of Americans, those with more than $50 million in assets. 
 
“No one on this stage wants to protect billionaires,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, but she stopped short of Warren’s plan. Klobuchar said she would repeal “significant portions” of tax-cutting legislation Trump pushed through Congress earlier in his administration. Biden warned against “demonizing wealth,” but he said he would double the taxation of capital gains collected by stock investors. 
 
South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg said the tax debate in Washington, however, often devolves into lawmakers “saying all the right things and nothing happens.”
 
The candidates trailing the top three hopefuls faced a daunting challenge on the debate stage: how best to distinguish themselves from the front-runners and gain new traction in national polls and surveys of voters in states where Democrats are holding party nominating contests starting in February. 
 
All nine currently are polling in the single digits, compared with Biden and Warren in the upper 20% range, with Sanders about 15%. 

Next debate

The national Democratic Party has set standards even higher for those who want a place on the stage for the next debate on November 20. The candidates must have bigger polling numbers — at least 3% support in four national polls or 5% support in polls of people in states that are early on the voting calendar — and more financial support, from at least 165,000 individual donors. 
 
The other challengers Tuesday night were California Senator Kamala Harris, who has slipped in the polls in recent months and has refocused her efforts in going after Trump; New Jersey Senator Cory Booker; former U.S. Housing Secretary Julian Castro; former U.S. Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas; tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang; U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii; and Tom Steyer, a wealthy environmental activist who launched national television ads calling for Trump’s impeachment long before Washington political figures undertook the current inquiry. 

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By Polityk | 10/16/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

Case for Obstruction by White House Is Building, Schiff Says

The case for obstruction by the Trump administration continues to build, House Democrat Adam Schiff says, after senior members and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani defied subpoenas in the impeachment inquiry.

Vice President Mike Pence’s office called the Democratic-led House inquiry “self-proclaimed” and the subpoena “too broad.”

The Pentagon also says it is “unable to comply” at this time for legal reasons.

The White House budget office also rejected the request, and Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, also said no to the subpoena for documents related to his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.

“This appears to be an unconstitutional, baseless, and illegitimate impeachment inquiry,” Giuliani’s lawyer, Jon Sale, said in a letter to the intelligence committee. “The subpoena is overbroad, unduly burdensome, and seeks documents beyond the scope of legitimate inquiry,” Sale wrote, adding that the information the Democrats want is protected by attorney-client privilege.

FILE – Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, talks with reporters, Nov. 29, 2016, in New York.

Late Tuesday, Congressman Michael McCaul, the lead Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the impeachment inquiry is being conducted “behind closed doors when it should be in front of the American people.”

“I call upon the Speaker to put that resolution on the floor so we can move forward in a more transparent way that’s more open to the American people because at the end of the day, they are going to be the ones who suffer from an unjust process,” McCaul said.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., talks to reporters about a transcript of a call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelenskiy, at the Capitol in Washington, Sept. 25, 2019.

But Schiff said Republicans are completely represented in the closed-door hearings, saying they are given every opportunity to question witnesses and see evidence.

The White House has demanded the full House of Representatives vote on whether there should be an inquiry.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is surrounded by reporters as she arrives to meet with her caucus at the Capitol in Washington, after declaring she will launch a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said late Tuesday nothing requires such a vote and there will not be one at this time. She said the House is honoring its responsibilities and the constitution.

“We’re not here to call bluffs. This is not a game for us. This is deadly serious,” she said.

Trump’s personal attorney Giuliani was deeply involved in pressuring Ukraine to open a corruption probe into Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

Democrats investigating Trump, and even some inside the White House, suspect Giuliani is running a shadow foreign policy outside the State Department on Trump’s behalf.

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton called Giuliani “a hand grenade who is going to blow up everybody,” a former White House aide reportedly told the impeachment inquiry.

Fiona Hill was a White House national security official for Russian and European affairs. She testified behind closed doors Monday.

People familiar with her testimony said she told the lawmakers that Bolton and others in the Trump administration were troubled by Giuliani’s efforts toward Ukraine. Bolton reportedly said he was not part of any “drug deal” Giuliani and White House Chief of Staff Nick Mulvaney “are cooking up.”

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton gestures while speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Sept. 30, 2019.

Bolton has not commented.

The House impeachment inquiry also heard testimony Tuesday from Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent.

Other officials are scheduled to testify this week, including U.S. Ambassador to the European Union and Trump campaign donor Gordon Sondland.

Sondland exchanged a series of text messages with other diplomats who were enlisted to help get Ukraine to investigate Biden.

In one message, Sondland wrote that Trump insists there would be no quid pro quo with Ukraine. He is expected to now testify that Trump himself dictated that message.

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a bilateral meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on the sidelines of the 74th session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Sept. 25, 2019.

The Trump-Ukraine scandal was set off when an intelligence whistleblower expressed concern to the inspector general about Trump’s July 25 telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskiy.

A White House-released transcript of the call shows Trump apparently urging Zelinskiy to open a corruption investigation into the Bidens, including Hunter Biden’s job with a Ukrainian energy company.

Trump also alleged that when Joe Biden was U.S. vice president, he threatened to withhold loan guarantees to Ukraine unless an earlier corruption probe into the gas company was stopped.

No evidence of wrongdoing by Joe or Hunter Biden has surfaced. But reaching out to a foreign government to dig up dirt on a rival is considered to be interference in a presidential election and an impeachable offense.

House investigators also want to know if Trump would release $400 million in badly-needed U.S. aid to Ukraine if Ukraine would cooperate in a Biden investigation.

Trump has describes his call with Zelinskiy as “perfect” and accuses the Democratic-led house of a witch-hunt.

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By Polityk | 10/16/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

What Is a Kangaroo Court?

The White House has said that it will not cooperate with the impeachment inquiry being conducted by House Democrats. President Donald Trump went one step further by calling the House committees investigating him a “kangaroo court.” What exactly is a kangaroo court? VOA explains.

 

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By Polityk | 10/15/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика

Warren Joins Buttigieg in Nixing Threat to Church Tax Status

Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign says she would not seek to revoke the tax-exempt status of churches or other religious entities that decline to perform same-sex marriages.

The Massachusetts Democrat’s campaign spokeswoman addressed the issue after former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke said religious institutions should lose their tax exemption for opposing same-sex marriage – drawing criticism from conservatives.

“Religious institutions in America have long been free to determine their own beliefs and practices, and (Warren) does not think we should require them to conduct same-sex marriages in order to maintain their tax-exempt status,” campaign spokeswoman Saloni Sharma said when asked about O’Rourke’s remarks.

Warren is the latest Democratic presidential hopeful to create distance from O’Rourke’s suggestion. Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind., criticized the idea to CNN on Sunday.

 

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By Polityk | 10/14/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
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