NEW DELHI — Nine people died Saturday during clashes between demonstrators and police in northern India, raising the nationwide death toll in protests against a new citizenship law to 23, police said.
Uttar Pradesh state police spokesman Pravin Kumar said the nine fatalities increased the death toll in the state to 15 in the protests against the new law, which the demonstrators say discriminates against Muslims.
The “majority of the dead are young people,” Singh said. “Some of them died of bullet injuries, but these injuries are not because of police fire. The police have used only tear gas to scare away the agitating mob.”
Around a dozen vehicles were set on fire as protesters went amok in the northern Indian cities of Rampur, Sambhal, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnore and Kanpur, where a police station was also torched, Singh said.
Indian women shout slogans during a protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act in Gauhati, India, on Saturday. Anupam Nath / AP
The ongoing backlash against the law marks the strongest show of dissent against the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi since he was first elected in 2014.
The law allows Hindus, Christians and other religious minorities who are in India illegally to become citizens if they can show they were persecuted because of their religion in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It does not apply to Muslims.
Critics have slammed the law as a violation of India’s secular constitution and have called it the latest effort by the Modi government to marginalize the country’s 200 million Muslims. Modi has defended the law as a humanitarian gesture.
Uttar Pradesh state is controlled by Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
An anti-terror squad was deployed and internet services were suspended for another 48 hours in the state.
Six people were killed during clashes in Uttar Pradesh on Friday, and police said Saturday that over 600 in the state had been taken into custody since then as part of “preventive action. In addition, five people have been arrested and 13 police cases have been filed for posting “objectionable” material on social media.
Police have imposed a British colonial-era law banning the assembly of more than four people statewide. The law was also imposed elsewhere in India to thwart an expanding protest movement demanding the revocation of the citizenship law.
India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued an advisory Friday night asking broadcasters across the country to refrain from using content that could inflame further violence. The ministry asked for “strict compliance.”
In the northeastern border state of Assam, where internet services were restored after a 10-day blockade, hundreds of women on Saturday staged a sit-in against the law in Gauhati, the state capital.
“Our peaceful protests will continue till this illegal and unconstitutional citizenship law amendment is scrapped,” said Samujjal Bhattacharya, the leader of the All Assam Students Union, which organized the rally.
Students at the Jamia Millia Islamia University and locals participate in a protest demonstration against a new citizenship law in New Delhi, India, Saturday.AP
He rejected an offer for dialogue by Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, saying talks could take place when the “government was hoping to strike some compromise.”
In New Delhi on Saturday, police charged more than a dozen people with rioting in connection with violence during a protest Friday night in the capital’s Daryaganj area.
Two U.S. Democratic presidential candidates, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, denounced the new law on Twitter, and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad criticized it at a news conference following the conclusion of an Islamic summit in Kuala Lumpur.
Mahathir said Saturday that India is a secular state and people’s religion should not prevent them from obtaining citizenship.
“To exclude Muslims from becoming citizens, even by due process, I think is unfair,” he said.
Following the remark, India’s foreign ministry summoned the Malaysian Charge d’Affaires to lodge a complaint. Government ministers have said Muslims of foreign origin will not be prohibited from pursuing Indian citizenship, but will have to go through the normal process like other foreigners.
Protests against the law come amid an ongoing crackdown in Muslim-majority Kashmir, the restive Himalayan region stripped of its semi-autonomous status and demoted from a state into a federal territory in August.
The demonstrations also follow a contentious process in Assam meant to weed out foreigners living in the country illegally. Nearly 2 million people were excluded from an official list of citizens, about half Hindu and half Muslim, and have been asked to prove their citizenship or else be considered foreign.
India is building a detention center for some of the tens of thousands of people who the courts are expected to ultimately determine have entered illegally. Modi’s interior minister, Amit Shah, has pledged to roll out the process nationwide.
The aerospace industry differs from other areas because it gives investors a clear look at future business through company backlogs, giving bulls confidence that the stock would recover, said Richard Safran of Buckingham Research Group.
“Aerospace investors are a little bit unique in one respect, and that is they have far more confidence in taking a two-year outlook than your average Joe,” said Safran, who has a neutral rating and a $365 target on the stock.
Once the Max is approved to fly, Boeing will see a surge in cash flow and could potentially buy back stock, Herbert said, but he still questions the long-term impact of the Max scandal and issues elsewhere in Boeing’s business.
“For me, the bigger issue is company specific as you come out of the sugar high on the Max and people realize, well, what do they need to do to their portfolio longer term and just how damaged is the Max as a brand,” Herbert said.
The delay could also impact orders from China, Safran said, where the Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (COMAC) is having certification issues with one of its planes.
“This year – what looks like over a year – grounding for the Max has now given the Chinese a bit of time to catch up,” Safran said.
The Max was grounded around the world following two fatal crashes, and Boeing’s target it for its return has been repeatedly pushed back as the company seeks regulatory approval. FAA chief Steve Dickson has said the re-certification process for the plane will not be done before the end of the year, and there is expected to be a gap between the time of approval and when the Max carries commercial passengers again.
Facebook removed a seedy network of more than 900 accounts, pages and groups that relied heavily on … [+] artificial intelligence to coordinate inauthentic behavior.
SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Facebook announced on Friday it has removed more than 900 accounts, groups and pages on its own platform and Instagram for using fake accounts to mislead users, including with false profile photos generated by artificial intelligence.
The newly banned accounts, groups, and pages were associated with a network known as “The Beauty of Life” (or “TheBL”), which the social media giant alleges is an offshoot of the controversial conservative news publisher, The Epoch Times. The accounts in question often promoted an anti-communist, pro-Trump message across hundreds of accounts and pages.
“Our investigation linked this activity to Epoch Media Group, a US-based media organization, and individuals in Vietnam working on its behalf,” Facebook said in a statement. “The BL is now banned from Facebook.”
The Epoch Media Group, owner of The Epoch Times newspaper, is tied closely to China’s banned Falun Gong movement and is known for pushing pro-Trump conspiracy theories. Facebook says Epoch Media Group spent $9.5 million on advertisements spreading content through now-suspended Facebook pages and groups. The publisher denied Facebook’s accusations.
“The Epoch Media Group has no connection with the website BL,” said publisher Stephen Gregory in a statement on Friday. “The Epoch Times and The BL media companies are unaffiliated. The BL was founded by a former employee, and employs some of our former employees.”
Facebook says it worked with independent researchers Graphika and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) before taking action against the network of fake users, pages, and groups. The researchers published a 39-page joint report on Friday that outlined their discoveries — most notably that the network was using artificial intelligence to generate fake profile photos.
The network banned by Facebook used fake profile photos generated by artificial intelligence.
Graphika/The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab
“Dozens of these fake accounts had profile pictures generated by artificial intelligence, in the first large-scale deployment of fake faces known to the authors of this report,” researchers say in the report.
The forensics team suggests that this likely isn’t the last we’ll hear of artificial intelligence used to manipulate consumers, a fear that’s grown as artificial intelligence gets more sophisticated. The report warns, “The strong focus on supporting President Trump from pages managed in Vietnam may also indicate a desire amplify pro-Trump messaging throughout the 2020 election.”
As House Democrats try to force President Trump out of office, Senate Republicans have been plowing ahead with his plan to transform the federal judiciary.
A record number of judicial confirmations is cementing one of Trump’s central campaign pledges — and will reverberate for decades, even if impeachment pulls the plug on his presidency.
When Trump took office, nine of the nation’s 13 circuit courts were dominated by Democratic appointees. Now, seven of them have Republican majorities.
Trump has had 50 of his circuit-court judges confirmed — far more than any other recent president at this point in their first terms. President Barack Obama managed just half that number, 25, in the same time frame.
Altogether, 187 Trump-nominated federal judges have been confirmed by the Senate — outpacing the 169 new judges named by George W. Bush and the 166 brought on board by Bill Clinton in their first three years.
Senators approved two Trump nominees, Patrick Bumatay and Lawrence VanDyke, for seats on Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Dec. 10 and 11 as the House Judiciary Committee tussled over the phrasing of its impeachment articles.
And last week, as House Democrats voted to impeach Trump, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pushed 13 district court judges through the Senate.
“The pace is dramatic,” McConnell told radio host Hugh Hewitt Wednesday. “My motto for the remainder of this Congress is ‘leave no vacancy behind.’”
At the same time, the Senate’s efforts are giving Trump’s base reason to remain in his corner.
“Conservatives believe that the courts have been weaponized by the left. This issue has really ignited them,” Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network told The Post.
Lawrence VanDykeAP
“The judicial confirmations have been Trump’s greatest achievement, as far as conservatives are concerned,” Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson said. “These Trump justices will be on the bench for 25 to 30 years.”
Senate Republicans approved the conservative Bumatay and VanDyke for seats on the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit, historically the most liberal bench of all, despite stiff opposition from Judiciary Committee Democrats.
In an explosive October hearing, the two Trump nominees were derided by Senate Dems who called the 40-year-old Bumatay inexperienced and brought VanDyke to tears with accusations of anti-gay bias.
On Nov. 14, as Rep. Adam Schiff’s public impeachment hearings got underway, the Senate approved a Trump-nominated judge that flipped the Manhattan-based Second Circuit to a Republican majority.
The newcomers are shifting the balance of the entire system of 13 circuit courts that operate just below the U.S. Supreme Court and handle thousands of cases a year.
“For most plaintiffs, the court of appeals is the last stop,” Jacobson said — and 25% of its active judges are now Trump appointees.
On December 18, Donald Trump became only the third U.S. president to be impeached. The House voted to impeach him as Mr. Trump held a rally.
He was impeached for two reasons: abusing his power and obstructing Congress. The first charge related to his dealings in Ukraine. He withheld U.S. military aid from Ukraine unless its president announced investigations that would benefit his 2020 reelection campaign. The second article accused Mr. Trump of blocking evidence and witnesses that had been demanded under congressional subpoena in the impeachment inquiry.
Here are the highlights and key takeaways from this historic week:
How members voted
Leading up to the House vote, moderate Democrats and Democrats from districts that voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 were the ones to watch. In the end, three of them either voted against impeachment or only for one of the articles.
Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey voted against both articles. Shortly after the vote, he announced his intention to switch to the Republican Party, and Mr. Trump swiftly endorsed him.
Collin Peterson of Minnesota voted against both articles.
Jared Golden of Maine voted against obstruction of Congress but in favor of abuse of power.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces the adoption of Article I of impeachment against President Trump on December 18, 2019.
House of Representatives
Republicans, meanwhile, stood as a united front, with zero defections.
The chamber’s sole independent, Justin Amash, voted for both articles.
One House member, Tulsi Gabbard, who’s not running for reelection but is pursuing the Democratic presidential nomination, refused to weigh in. She simply voted “present.” After reading the impeachment report, she said she “could not in good conscience vote either yes or no.”
A nation divided
While slightly more of the public believes the president should have been impeached, they’re largely divided. According to a CBS News poll, support for impeachment grew between November and December — from 43% to 46% — and opposition fell — from 40% to 39%. The rest (16%) thought it was too soon to say.
Hannah Stone watches as members of the House vote on the articles of impeachment against President Trump on a television at Coin Laundry on December 18, 2019 in Denver.
Michael Ciaglo / Getty Images
The public is far more divided today than in 1998. A large majority of Americans (64%) did not support the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. (Read how Mr. Trump’s impeachment compared to Mr. Clinton’s here.)
Trump’s response
The day before the impeachment vote, Mr. Trump sent a six-page letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.” It listed no new arguments or requests but vented his frustrations with the impeachment process and accused Democrats of being guilty of what they were impeaching him for.
“You are the ones interfering in America’s elections,” Mr. Trump wrote. “You are the ones subverting America’s Democracy. You are the ones Obstructing Justice. You are the ones bringing pain and suffering to our Republic for your own selfish personal, political, and partisan gain.”
He insisted that he’s being treated worse than the defendants in the Salem witch trials (most of the defendants were executed).
Immediately after his impeachment, Mr. Trump told a crowd of his supporters at a rally that “it doesn’t really feel like we’re being impeached.” Sources involved in his impeachment defense say the president is “angry” but actually in a “very good mood” and feels confident that he can win the messaging war on Twitter as lawmakers head home for the holidays. In fact, those sources say he may try to convince the public that he hasn’t actually been impeached because the House has yet to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate.
President Trump speaks during a rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, as the House votes to impeach him in Washington, D.C.
Jeff Kowalsky
The Senate trial
Before a Senate trial can begin, there are still a couple of steps to be taken. The House must pick an impeachment manager to serve as a prosecutor during the trial, it must send the articles of impeachment to the Senate, and the Senate has to agree on rules for the trial.
Pelosi, however, is waiting for the Senate to draft those rules before she picks her impeachment managers. One of the names that’s been floated is Justin Amash, an independent congressman and vocal Trump critic who left the Republican Party earlier this year.
The Senate must decide whether witnesses will be called, what kind of evidence to admit, and how long the trial will last.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
Getty
Mr. Trump had expressed interest in more testimony (even though his blocking of evidence and witnesses in the House is partially what led to his impeachment). He argues that the trial will be “fair” in the Senate, where Republicans have control.
But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham want a quick trial because, as McConnell told Fox News, “We know how it’s going to end. The president’s not going to be removed from office.”
The witnesses Democrats want are the ones that Mr. Trump blocked from appearing in the House: White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and his senior adviser, Robert Blair; former national security adviser John Bolton; and Office of Management and Budget official Michael Duffey. They were all directly involved in the withholding of military aid from Ukraine.
2020 election impact
Mr. Trump is the first president to be impeached during his first term. In other words, he’s the first president whose future is in the hands of voters after receiving the second-to-worst punishment from Congress. The worst being removal from office, which is unlikely to happen.
The president predicts that his impeachment will have dire consequences for Democrats, not him. He called impeachment a “political suicide march for the Democratic party.”
Democratic presidential hopefuls Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer participate in the sixth Democratic primary debate on December 19, 2019.
Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)
As far as his Democratic rivals in the presidential race go, their response to the news of his impeachment was fairly predictable. Elizabeth Warren used the opportunity to fundraise. Andrew Yang plugged his economic platform. Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, a central figure in the impeachment, echoed Pelosi’s sentiment that it was a “sad day.” Mike Bloomberg issued a warning to voters.
“If Donald Trump wins re-election, he will make extorting a foreign head of state for campaign purposes look like child’s play. 2020 is not just an election. It’s a referendum on whether to save our Constitution — or let Trump light it on fire,” he said.
Amy Klobuchar called on the president to allow witnesses to testify in the Senate trial.
The Senate trial itself could hurt the senators running for president. It will take Booker, Klobuchar, Sanders and Warren off the campaign trail at a crucial time. The Iowa caucuses, which kick off the primary season, take place on February 3.
The global response
In Ukraine, the country at the center of the impeachment inquiry, people interviewed by CBS News didn’t seem to care — or even know about the news.
“Ordinary Ukrainians, most of them, have no idea what is going [on] with this,” said Dmytro Potekhin, a Ukrainian political observer and former human rights activist. “They don’t know that there are impeachment hearings in the states, and they don’t know that Ukraine is regularly mentioned in them.”
Young people have a snack outside a cafe in the center of the Ukrainian capital Kiev on December 18, 2019.
Sergei Supinsky / Getty Images
But he said it’s not really a lack of interest. The impeachment story is “underreported” inside Ukraine, Potekhin said. He noted some Ukrainian-based print and digital news organizations reported on the historic vote, but most local television outlets barely mentioned it, and the majority of people get their news from local TV.
In neighboring Russia, President Vladimir Putin echoed Republicans’ arguments and accused Democrats of trying to undo the election. The U.S. intelligence community concluded after the 2016 presidential election that Russia had interfered in the election, hacking and leaking emails and conducting a sophisticated social media disinformation campaign supported and directed by the Kremlin.
Stefan Becket, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus, Kabir Khanna, Melissa Quinn, Paula Reid, Anthony Salvanto, Grace Segers, Ben Tracy, Kathryn Watson and the Associated Press contributed reporting.
WALPOLE, N.H. – After supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders‘ 2016 presidential campaign, Clarence Boston wanted to check out a fresh face for 2020.
The 29-year-old likes Pete Buttigieg’s youth, his military experience, as well as “what he says and how he says it.”
But when Boston traveled from his home in Vermont to attend a Buttigieg town hall in New Hampshire last month, one thing surprised him about the large crowd.
“I don’t see as many young people as I expected,” Boston said.
One of the oddities of the 2020 presidential contest is that Buttigieg, the youngest candidate at age 37, draws his lowest support from the youngest voters and is best liked by the oldest.
“I think he’s sort of an old soul,” said Rick Carman, a 67-year-old from Exeter, N.H., who attended a barn party for Buttigieg and likes the idea of a new generation taking the political helm.
Yet the 78-year-old Sanders, who will be the nation’s oldest-ever president if elected, continues to dominate among the youngest voters, as he did in 2016.
“I was a big fan of Bernie Sanders when I was 18 years old,” Buttigieg, who wrote an award-winning essay on Sanders in high school, told CBS recently when asked why he isn’t drawing more support from younger voters.
It’s still early. And in Iowa and New Hampshire, the states where the previously-little known Buttigieg has spent the most time, polls show he is drawing more support among younger voters there than he is nationally. But those polls also show it’s the oldest voters who like him best and the youngest who are the least receptive.
“It’s hard to find a political analogy,” said Ruy Teixeira, co-director of the Center for American Progress’ project on demographics and democracy. “In the last 10-15 years, can we think of a candidate that young who has appealed more to older voters than younger voters?”
Even Buttigieg, who saw the same phenomenon when he first ran for mayor of South Bend, Indiana, at age 29, can’t explain it.
“It’s hard for me to understand,” Buttigieg told reporters traveling on his bus in New Hampshire last month. “But we’ve definitely noticed the pattern.”
Ideological split
Some of the difference in appeal may be ideological.
In a December Economist/YouGov national poll of all adults, younger respondents – who are more liberal than older respondents – were much less likely than their older counterparts to describe Buttigieg as liberal.
That plays out on some particular issues like health care and college costs.
Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren want to make public college free for everyone. Buttigieg would make public schools free for families earning up to $100,000, with some assistance offered to those earning up to $150,000. Former Vice President Joe Biden backs free tuition at two-year community colleges.
Sanders and Warren are promising “Medicare for All.” Buttigieg and Biden would build on the 2010 Affordable Care Act by expanding subsidies for private insurance and adding a government-run plan.
Younger voters are more likely to back a single-payer health care system while older voters are more supportive of keeping the current arrangement, said Mary Snow, a polling analyst with Quinnipiac University Poll.
“That’s one of the issues that gives us a little bit of insight into perhaps one of the reasons why he has stronger numbers among older voters than younger,” Snow said.
Universal health care and college affordability are the two issues Spencer Armstrong, a computer science student at the University of Iowa, mentioned when asked why he’s leaning towards backing Sanders in the Democratic caucus.
Revolutionary battle cry v. calmness
But some of Sanders’ appeal is also stylistic.
“He’s very to-the-point and not taking any half stances,” said Armstrong, 21. “He’s fully saying what he intends to do.”
On the flip side, Juliana Stevens, a retired teacher from Alstead, N.H., who has been volunteering for Buttigieg’s campaign, prefers the way Buttigieg answers questions in a “reasoned and calm manner.”
“They yell at you,” Stevens said of Sanders and Warren. “They yell their ideas.”
Buttigieg, said political science professor Dante Scala, is an older person’s idea of how a younger politician should behave.
“I think, for younger voters, he’s more of a student council or a student government type: very earnest, very serious, very interested in the inner mechanics of government,” said Scala, who teaches at the University of New Hampshire. “I don’t know if all of that necessarily is an attractive and enthralling package to your average 20 -year-old.”
Among the top Democratic candidates, Buttigieg had by far the highest net favorability among likely Iowa Democratic caucusgoers over the age of 65 in the November Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll.
“He seems so wise, and he’s the young one,” retiree Kathleen Kennedy said after hearing Buttigieg speak at a July forum in Council Bluffs, Iowa, hosted by AARP.
But in a Economist/YouGov national poll taken Dec. 1-3, a quarter of Democratic voters aged 18 to 29 said they’d be “disappointed” if Buttigieg became the nominee, his worst showing of any age group.
“Young people are ready for a political revolution,” Sanders tweeted this month when a new Quinnipiac University national poll showed him the favorite of more than half of Democratic primary voters under 35.
Buttigieg senior adviser Lis Smith, on the other hand, recently drew attention to the fact that Finland’s new prime minister, who is 34, will be the youngest in the world. The campaign likes to point out that the prime ministers of France and New Zealand were also in their 30s when they took office.
“Trend of 30-somethings coming into power across the globe continues,” Smith tweeted. “Next up: here!”
A repeat pattern
Buttigieg, who would be the nation’s youngest-ever president, was the youngest mayor of a city of 100,000 or more when first elected in 2011 to the post he is about to leave.
When Julie Chismar, a teacher at Buttigieg’s high school, campaigned for him in 2011, she found that the oldest voters didn’t have a problem turning the city over to a 29-year-old.
“They said, ‘It’s time,’” Chismar said in a 2017 interview when Buttigieg unsuccessfully ran to lead the Democratic National Committee. “Fresh ideas. New energy. They didn’t even balk at that.”
Polling in the race showed that the older the voter, the more likely he or she viewed Buttigieg’s age as a “positive.”
“To this day, I wonder why,” Buttigieg wrote in his memoir, “Shortest Way Home.” “Is it that senior voters are less likely to see distinctions between twenties, thirties, and forties? Did I remind them of their children? Whatever the reason, we took the data as a reminder that you should never assume who will or won’t support you.”
Generational change pitch
When Buttigieg launched his presidential campaign in April, the nation’s first millennial presidential candidate pitched a message of generational change. Who better to address top issues of the era than the candidate who grew up with school shootings and will face more of the consequences of climate change?
“I think it’s part of how our campaign has gotten traction, is older generations thinking about what’s next and what kind of future they want to leave,” Buttigieg told a student reporter in New Hampshire.”
While Buttigieg has been battling Warren as the favorite candidate of college-educated voters, he’s primarily competing with Biden for the oldest voters.
“Mayor Pete has vaulted into the top tier largely on the strength of two constituencies,” Democratic strategist David Axelrod recently said on his podcast, Hacks on Tap. “Weirdly, the youngest guy in the race is now challenging Biden for older voters.”
Competition for older voters
Buttigieg’s strength among older voters has been a trend in several polls, both nationally and in early states, over different lengths of time and among different sample groups.
In Quinnipiac University’s national polls taken in the first half of December, Biden was the top choice of voters 50 and older and Buttigieg was second.
In the November Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa poll in which Buttigieg led the field, he also was the favorite among voters 55 and older, and among likely Democratic caucusgoers between ages 35 and 54.
A WBUR poll in New Hampshire released this month showed Buttigieg and Biden neck-and-neck overall, with Biden leading among the oldest voters and Buttigieg doing the best among voters age 45 to 59.
It’s not uncommon for older voters supporting Buttigieg to say of Biden and Sanders that they can’t imagine leading the nation at that age.
“He’s like me,” Gaye Yanuszewski, a 74-year-old from Manchester said of Biden. “He forgets a lot.”
Connie Richardson, a 73-year-old retiree from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who plans to caucus for Buttigieg, said Biden would probably do a good job if elected president. But, she added: “I think he’s got to be tired.”
“No matter how fit you are and how much you work out, how healthy you are, age takes a toll,” she said.
But when a retired farmer told Biden at a New Hampton campaign event this month that he’s too old to be president, Biden challenged him to a push-up contest.
“Look, the reason I’m running is because I’ve been around a long time and I know more than most people know, and I can get things done. That’s why I’m running,” Biden said. “And you want to check my shape, fine. Let’s do push-ups together here, man..”
Buttigieg faced his own challengers at a recent town hall in Coralville. Three three young protesters criticized his climate change plan for not going far enough and pointed out that he’s drawing little support among black voters in South Carolina.
“Climate plan fatally lacking” read one of the banners. “We need more than Pete.”
Acknowledging the protesters, Buttiigieg said his campaign welcomes and hopes to win over “anyone not yet with us.” Then, he added, “I would humbly suggest” the protesters lift their candidate up rather than attacking others.
Pros and cons
Doing well with older voters can be an advantage since they’re more likely to both register to vote and show up at the polls.
That’s particularly true in Iowa, where U.S. Census Data shows that 77% of people aged 65 and older voted in the2018 general election, the second-highest rate in the nation.
South Carolina, another state that votes early in the presidential primary, also ranks high in the share of 2018 voters who were older.
Buttigieg lags far behind Biden in South Carolina, however, because of his lack of support among African American voters and Biden’s dominance of that demographic.
“You can win a nomination with older voters if you have a larger coalition,” Joe Trippi, a veteran Democratic strategist, said in an interview. “But you can’t win it if you are as low as (Buttigieg) is with the African American community.”
Still, Trippi cautions that it’s early and allegiances will continue to change, particularly after the first votes come in in Iowa.
“It’s unwise to try to project where they are today with where they’re going to be two days after Iowa,” Trippi said. “People’s’ doubts are answered or people have greater doubts about the frontrunner.”
If Buttigieg does manage to capture the Democratic nomination through the support of older voters while younger voters remain cool to him, that would be both good news and bad news for Democrats, according to Teixeira at the liberal Center for American Progress.
“The Democrats would very much benefit from doing well among older voters who are a larger share of the voting electorate,” he said. “On the other hand, young voters at this point are really much more part of what you might call the Democratic base.”
More to prove to the youngest voters
Andrew Couch, who named Buttigieg as his top choice in the November Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa poll, said in an interview that he does find it a “little odd” that many younger voters who supported Sanders in 2016 haven’t moved on as he has. Sanders’ age is a concern to Couch, a 21-year-old studying business analytics at the University of Iowa who wants a nominee who would be able to serve for two terms.
Asked about the “coolness” factor of the candidates, Couch said Buttigieg does have a bit of a “Boy Scout vibe.” But he’s not sure if that’s a bad thing or a good thing.
“When people want to serve in government, they want to support the community,” he said. “It takes a certain type of person to do that.”
Buttigieg told the Register that his campaign has to demonstrate “that we’re solving these issues that impact young voters, my fellow voters, more than anyone.”
As for why that’s an easier sell to older voters, Buttigieg concluded: “I think that maybe the virtues of age and experience are a little bit demystified for voters who have more of it.”
Contributing: Mark Nichols, USA TODAY and Zachary Oren Smith, Iowa City Press-Citizen.
SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea lashed back at the United States for taking issue with its human rights record on Saturday, saying Washington’s “malicious words” would only aggravate tensions on the Korean Peninsula, state news agency KCNA reported.
The KCNA statement, attributed to a foreign ministry spokesperson, warned that if the United States dared to take issue with the North’s system of government by citing human rights problems, it would “pay dearly”.
The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday condemned North Korea’s “long-standing and ongoing” violations of human rights in an annual resolution sponsored by dozens of countries including the United States, that Pyongyang’s U.N. envoy rejected.
The North Korean Foreign Ministry statement is its first since U.S. special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, publicly urged Pyongyang on Monday to return to talks. There has been no direct response from North Korea to Biegun’s entreaty.
U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Friday that he remains hopeful the United States can restart diplomacy with North Korea, as the clock ticks down to North Korea’s declared year-end deadline for new U.S. concessions in talks over its nuclear arsenal.
North Korea has repeatedly called for the United States to drop its “hostile policy” before more talks.
But tension has been rising in recent weeks as Pyongyang has conducted a series of weapons tests and waged a war of words with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Some experts say the reclusive state may be preparing for an intercontinental ballistic missile test that could put it back on a path of confrontation with the United States.
Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore
WASHINGTON – Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, claimed Thursday to a crowd of conservative high school students that Democrats want to “execute” him.
Giuliani touted to the crowd that Democrats are “moving” America towards “a dictatorship” with the impeachment process and “taking our Constitution and tearing it up.”
Giuliani claimed the Democrats “want to put [Attorney General Bill] Barr in prison and they want to execute me,” saying that “The Mafia, the FARC, and the word you can’t say — Islamic extremist terrorists — have all taken out contracts of one kind or another to kill me. And my answer is good luck. I just get angrier and I go after you more.”
Giuliani has emerged to be a key player in the events that led to Trump’s impeachment and additionally has become the subject of a criminal investigation by federal prosecutors.
The investigation focuses in part on Giuliani’s work with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. The Soviet-born business associates and legal clients helped Giuliani seek damaging information in Ukraine about the family of Joe Biden, the former U.S. vice president who is vying to challenge Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
The two are also indicted on charges that they schemed to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars in foreign funds to U.S. political candidates and campaign committees.
Giuliani told multiple media outlets in a string of recent interviews that he did “force” former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch out of her role because he believed she was in the way of his attempts to pursue the investigations Trump wanted — the Bidens and the 2016 election.
Giuliani also recently traveled back to Ukraine to gather more evidence to bolster the claims behind his uncorroborated allegations that former vice president Joe Biden fired an Ukrainian prosecutor to help his son and his position on the board of an Ukranian energy company.
Guiliani stated Thursday, “Now, I’m being investigated for crimes. I can assure you I’ve never committed a crime” and insisted that he did “security consulting” in Ukraine “for which he was paid”
Former National Security Advisor John Bolton has warned that North Korea will likely never voluntarily give up its nuclear weapons and that leader Kim Jong Un is trying to exploit President Donald Trump, who he believes is desperate for some kind of a deal.
Speaking with NPR in an interview published Friday, Bolton—who left the White House under a cloud in September—said Kim’s end-of-year deadline for the U.S. to break the deadlock on denuclearization and sanctions relief talk shows that Pyongyang is trying to bounce the president into a better deal.
The North has returned to its characteristic belligerent statements in recent months as talks have floundered. Officials have indicated that if there is still no progress by the end of the year, the North will conduct a major weapons test, risking a significant escalation in regional tensions.
Bolton said he takes “everything that North Korea says with a big grain of salt,” end-of-year threats included. “I think part of this may be bluff on their part. They think the president’s desperate for a deal. And if they put an artificial time constraint on it, they may think they’re gonna get a better deal.”
“We’ll just have to wait and see,” he added. “But this is all part of the North Korean playbook. They’ve successfully jived the three prior American administrations, and they plan to do the same with this one.”
Bolton—a foreign policy hawk who has pushed for regime change in North Korea—repeated previous assertions that the country will never give up its nuclear weapons voluntarily. “There’s simply no evidence, and there never has been for decades, that they are making a strategic decision not to proceed,” he told NPR.
“And the nature of the way North Korea wants to negotiate, what they call ‘action for action,’ invariably benefits the would-be nuclear weapons state because they get economic benefits that are much more important to them than the minimal concessions they make on the nuclear side,” Bolton explained.
The infographic below, provided by Statista, shows a significant uptick in the number of North Korean missile tests in the past 12 months.
The former national security advisor left the White House after disagreeing with the president on multiple foreign policy issues, North Korea among them.
Asked whether Trump’s North Korean strategy was the cause of his departure, Bolton replied, “I’m going to have my say on all that in due course, and I’ll be happy to talk to you about it when the time’s appropriate.”
For all Trump’s boasts of his historic detente with the North Koreans, little of note has been achieved since the president met Kim in Singapore in June 2018.
A subsequent summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, collapsed and ended early, with the two sides unable to agree on a denuclearization timetable.
The months since have passed with the two sides unable to resurrect talks, while Pyongyang has returned to regular short- and medium-range missile tests.
Bolton said this situation will suit the North better than the U.S. “Time is almost always on the side of the proliferator,” he said. “The more time they have, the more they can overcome all the technological and scientific difficulties to perfecting a deliverable nuclear weapons capability.”
“The fact that they’re not doing anything today, and they didn’t do anything yesterday that we can see, is not a good sign,” Bolton warned. “It probably just means we’re not seeing it. But the longer time goes on, the greater their capability will become.”
Ultimately, Bolton sees the Trump-era engagement with North Korea as part of a pattern that has existed for more than 30 years.
“The North Koreans are very happy to declare that they’re going to give up their nuclear weapons program, particularly when it’s in exchange for tangible economic benefits, but they never get around to doing it,” he said.
“And I think the inescapable conclusion is they’re happy to sell that same bridge over and over again, but there’s no serious chance they will ever voluntarily give it up.”
At 8:34 p.m. ET on Wednesday, the Associated Press pushed out the news: “President Donald Trump impeached by U.S. House of Representatives.”
Prepared in advance and transmitted by editor Eileen Putman in Washington within seconds of the completed vote on the House floor, those nine words comprised one of the rarest of stories in AP’s history: They moved as a “flash.”
AP’s internal filing guidelines state, “In the case of exceptionally important news, AP may send a ‘Flash.’”
That means that the news will move across the internet with the fastest possible priority, overriding any other news being transmitted by AP in the moment.
In the digital era, this priority is not normally seen by the end user, but it is contained in the metadata of the story — the information about a story that only a computer reads.
Editors determined last week that the third impeachment of a U.S. president warranted a flash, a designation given to stories of transcendent or historical importance.
Other news that was important, but not necessarily transcendent or historic, traditionally would have carried the slightly less urgent status of “Bulletin.”
However, the term Bulletin has been phased out by AP in recent years. Instead, the first word on all important breaking news is simply APNewsAlert. And more-important news alerts will be sent out to subscribers to AP’s mobile app with an audible alarm, a so-called “noisy” alert.
Nevertheless, the concept of a flash still excites AP filers. The word itself stirs the adrenaline. It still means sending the most important, historic news at AP’s fastest priority.
To push the button on a flash becomes something to reminisce on or to brag about years later because one is part of the history.
A collection of flashes amassed by former standards editor Tom Kent included two truly transcendent ones, on Sept. 11, 2001, when AP moved a flash for each of the two World Trade Center towers that collapsed in the terrorist attack.
But others he cited did not quite reach the same level.
The AP has been sending flashes for at least 113 years, and probably longer.
According to a 1946 edition of the internal publication AP World, managers sought to standardize the use of the flash in an order that went out to all news wire operators on May 1, 1906, two weeks after competitive reports from the Great San Francisco Earthquake had riveted newspaper readers across the country.
“News matter of supreme importance which would necessitate the issuance of extra editions should be sent first as a “flash,’” in a message not to exceed ten words, and should go on all leased wires,” the order said. “Such “flash” must take precedence over all bulletins, must go upon each wire …, must be sent instantly upon the development of the news, and must never exceed ten words in length.”
(They must have been really serious about that 10-word limit.)
Teletype machines or teletype operators would attach “bells” to flashes — meaning they would literally ring in the newsrooms of AP’s members and customers when the alert was printing out, setting the flashes apart from the normal din and clatter of the teletype machines. Five bells were standard for flashes, but some enthusiastic operators might add even more. When the bells rang, editors would race over to the machines to find out what had just happened.
Through the 20th century, flashes were sent rarely, perhaps once or twice a year, and some years could pass with no flashes at all.
Here’s a sampling of some other notable AP flashes:
1941: U.S. declares war on Japan
1944: Eisenhowers Headquzarters [sic] announces allies land in France
1963: Two priests who were with Kennedy say he is dead of bullet wounds
1969: Eagle told to go for a landing
1969: Astronauts land on moon
2005: The Vatican says Pope John Paul II has died.
One other flash, which may seem particularly relevant in light of Wednesday night’s events, was sent on Jan. 4, 2007.
Jan. 4, 2007: The House elects Nancy Pelosi first woman speaker.
Daniszewski, a former Times foreign correspondent, is vice president for standards at the Associated Press.
Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate offered more fireworks than the previous political shout-fests — but fewer Americans tuned in to watch it than any of its five predecessors.
The debate in Los Angeles drew an audience of 6.17 million viewers — lowest so far of the cycle, according to early numbers from Nielsen, Deadline reported Friday.
PBS NewsHour and Politico hosted the debate at Loyola Marymount University, and it also was simulcast by CNN.
Nielsen reported that the debate posted 2.062 million viewers on PBS and 4.088 watched it on CNN.
Despite the sinking ratings, CNN boasted that it beat its cable news rivals in the key 8 to 11 p.m. block with an average of 3.97 million viewers, compared to 3.64 for Fox News and 1.83 million for MSNBC.
In the 25-54 demographic, CNN averaged 1.03 million to Fox News’ 613,000 and MSNBC’s 271,000.
PBS said livestreams from PBS NewsHour, Politico, PBS and CNN platform totaled more than 8.4 million viewers.
The November presidential debate, seen on MSNBC, drew 6.5 million total viewers, Nielsen reported.
Like Thursday’s contest, the November debate followed a day in which impeachment proceedings dominated the news cycle.
The most viewed Democratic debate so far was the first, in June, when 18.1 million tuned in to NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo, according to the website.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump signed a $738 billion defense bill into law Friday that hinged in part on two seemingly disparate issues: Paid parental leave and the president’s treasured new “Space Force.”
The National Defense Authorization Act, which includes pay raises for troops, represents history’s largest investment in military power, Trump told troops gathered for a signing ceremony at Joint Base Andrews in suburban Maryland.
“Our military is now dominant,” Trump said. “Together we are protecting our people.”
Trump signed the bill before boarding Air Force One for a flight to his end-of-the-year stay at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla.
Congressional Democrats signed off on money for Space Force as Republicans agreed to demands on parental and family leave. The bill provides 12 weeks of paid leave for 2.1 million civilian federal workers after the birth of a child, adoption, or start of foster care.
Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, lobbied on behalf of the parental and family leave legislation.
Standard defense funding in the bill will keep the U.S. military the strongest in the world, Trump told troops, and “there’s no country that comes even close.”
As he often does, Trump promoted the new Space Force, now the sixth branch of the U.S. military and the first created in seven decades.
“It’s a big moment,” he said, and will enable the U.S. government to control “the ultimate high ground.”
During a political rally Wednesday in Battle Creek, Mich., Trump told supporters that “I will be able to tell my kids someday, and everybody else, ‘See that Space Force? That was my baby.'”
On Dec. 11, as the bill made its way through Congress, Trump said “all of our priorities have made it” into the defense bill. “Pay Raise for our Troops, Rebuilding our Military, Paid Parental Leave, Border Security, and Space Force!” Trump tweeted, pledging to sign it immediately.
The bill includes a 3.1% pay raise for Pentagon personnel, the largest in more than a decade.
“America’s armed forces are more powerful than ever,” Trump said, “and growing even stronger.”
HOUSTON — Resting on the seat of Heidi Broussard’s vehicle Friday was a week-old shopping list of holiday items she planned to buy for her 3-week-old daughter Margot Carey, but now never will.
Seven days after Broussard and her baby were reported missing, authorities said they found Broussard’s body stuffed into the trunk of a different car parked outside of a home in a Northwest Houston suburb.
Broussard was strangled to death with an undisclosed implement, according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences. Officials have ruled her death a homicide.
Austin and Houston police officials said discoveries in the case Friday point toward a plot to kill Broussard and kidnap her newborn.
An infant believed to be Margot was found alive at the home where Broussard’s body was found, officials said. Authorities were waiting for DNA testing late Friday to officially confirm the baby’s identity.
Austin police officers arrested and charged one person Friday with two counts of kidnapping and one count of tampering with a corpse. Although Austin officials declined to confirm that person’s identity, citing a need to protect the integrity of the investigation, Harris County arrest records show Magen Rose Fieramusca, 33, was arrested Friday on those charges, with bail set at $600,000.
Friday’s developments mark a tragic end to a missing person’s case that captured national attention and confounded authorities since Broussard dropped off her son at an Austin elementary school on the morning of Dec. 12 and was not heard from again.
People following the case online created a Reddit page and more than two dozen Facebook groups to discuss the details of the investigation and speculate about what might have happened to Broussard and her daughter.
Authorities said they followed local leads in the days after the disappearances, which eventually brought them to the doorstep of a home on Bo Jack Drive northwest of downtown Houston. That home, according to property tax records, belongs to a man named Christopher Green.
Neighbors Friday confirmed Green lives with Fieramusca.
Law enforcement officials told the American-Statesman they suspect Fieramusca pretended to be pregnant during Broussard’s pregnancy and plotted to kidnap Margot even before she was born.
Background searches link Fieramusca to two aliases, Megan Hymphrey and Maygen Humphrey.
As of Friday, there was a baby registry for Christopher Green and Maygen Humphrey at registry.thebump.com.
Green told authorities he believed Fieramusca was pregnant with his child. He said he thought she had given birth to the baby while he was out of town.
Authorities said Broussard and Fieramusca might have met at a faith-based group years ago. In a 2013 Facebook post, Broussard calls Maygen Humphrey her “best friend.”
Authorities say they have information placing Fieramusca’s car in the Austin area around the time of Broussard’s disappearance.
Eric Devlin, a lawyer who represented Fieramusca after she was accused of stealing $5,000 from a cash express store in Humble where she worked, told the American-Statesman that Fieramusca “looked pregnant” at a recent court appearance. Charges in that case were dismissed.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has collected data on at least 327 infant abductions that occurred in the U.S. from January 1964 until October 2019. Its research found 41 of those cases were in Texas.
In nearly 12% of the infant abductions in those years, the mother died, according to the data.
Characteristics of a typical infant abductor include a “female of child-bearing age who appears to be pregnant,” the research shows.
Darryl Ehlert, who has lived on Bo Jack Drive for the past 35 years, told the Statesman that Green and Fieramusca have lived next door to his home for more than two years. Ehlert said he learned of the connection between his neighbors and the missing mother and child after he woke up Friday morning.
“It’s pretty scary,” he said. “It’s not something you expect.”
Ehlert said he never really spoke to Fieramusca, who he said was “standoffish.” He did, however, speak to Green a few times about yard work, he said.
“I saw her once about a month ago, and she looked like she might be pregnant,” Ehlert said. “But she also might have just gained weight. I wasn’t sure. I thought, ‘Well, maybe next time I see Chris (Green) I’ll ask him.’”
Broussard’s vehicle was still parked outside her South Austin apartment complex on West William Cannon Drive on Friday. Inside were several items belonging to her children, including a baseball glove and car seat.
Several neighbors outside of Broussard’s apartment Friday shared fond memories of the mother, her boyfriend and children.
Taylor Riordan said his children would often play with Broussard’s at the complex. He, along with other neighbors, said she was very friendly and happy.
“It sends chills through my body,” Riordan said. “As a husband and father, this is the worst situation you can imagine.”
The bills included all 12 annual appropriations bills for the 2020 fiscal year that started Oct. 1. They also included a slew of tax cuts, extending expiring and expired tax breaks and eliminating other taxes that amount to an additional $426 billion in lost revenue, bringing the total cost of the bill to more than $1.8 trillion.
The government spent the first quarter of the fiscal year operating on stopgap funding that was set to expire on Friday. Trump reportedly signed the bill while aboard Air Force One en route to Mar-a-Lago for the holidays.
Trump’s signature brings to a close a fraught year for spending. At the same time last year, his refusal to sign a stopgap measure over funding his proposed border wall led to a 35-day shutdown, the longest in the nation’s history.
The Democratic majority in the House, which was seated in the midst of the shutdown, left Trump with little to show for the shutdown by way of wall funding. After finally striking a deal to reopen the government in February, Trump proceeded to declare a state of emergency along the Southern border to allow him to reprogram other funds.
Not long after, Trump released his annual budget proposal that would have hyper-charged military spending while dramatically cutting domestic spending, slashing more than 20 percent of funds from the EPA, State Department, and Transportation Department, and abolishing funding for popular programs such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Special Olympics.
Congress summarily dismissed the request and ultimately agreed to a deal that would increase spending on both defense and non-defense significantly for both 2020 and 2021. Congressional leaders would need two stopgap measures spanning nearly three months to work out spending allocations, find compromises on controversial issues such as the wall and agree on additional legislation to include in the package.
In the current spending package, one of the attached bills raises the legal age to purchase tobacco products from 18 to 21. Another expands the scope of and access to 401(k) retirement accounts.
Congress also agreed to scrap three taxes intended to pay for Obamacare. Eliminating those three taxes alone will add $373 billion to the deficit over a decade, the lion’s share of the bills’ lost revenue. Negotiators extended energy credits for biofuels and wind power, but not for solar or electric car manufacturers.
Trump, who vowed last March to never again sign a massive omnibus spending package, took umbrage in the fact that the spending was divided among two separate bills and played up Republican wins.
“I will be signing our 738 Billion Dollar Defense Spending Bill today. It will include 12 weeks Paid Parental Leave, gives our troops a raise, importantly creates the SPACE FORCE, SOUTHERN BORDER WALL FUNDING, repeals “Cadillac Tax” on Health Plans, raises smoking age to 21! BIG!” he wrote Friday morning.
I will be signing our 738 Billion Dollar Defense Spending Bill today. It will include 12 weeks Paid Parental Leave, gives our troops a raise, importantly creates the SPACE FORCE, SOUTHERN BORDER WALL FUNDING, repeals “Cadillac Tax” on Health Plans, raises smoking age to 21! BIG!
In the final deal, Congress again refused Trump’s $5 billion border wall request, instead leaving a flat $1.375 billion for physical barriers in circumscribed areas.
Democrats and Republicans in Congress agreed to split their differences on equally controversial issues such as the number of immigration detention beds by leaving those static. They also deferred to courts on whether Trump’s use of emergency powers to reprogram billions in defense funds toward building the wall was legal.
Thus far, the courts have ruled against Trump, but appeals are moving ahead.
The bills did not refill $3.6 billion from military construction programs Trump transferred to the wall.
“Finally, we have secured the funds and resources for our military — our national security,” said Shelby, who also heads the appropriations subcommittee on defense.
“This package includes a significant increase in defense funding and the largest pay raise in a decade for our men and women in uniform,” he added.
All in all, the bills raised defense spending by $22 billion.
Democrats claimed major victories in the bills as well, such as $25 million to fund research into gun violence, the first such funding in 20 years, $425 million for election security, increased funding for climate research and full funding for the 2020 census. They included a 3.1 percent pay increase for federal workers, matching the raise for members of the military.
Caps have already been agreed to for 2021, which could smooth the process.
But skeptics, including Shelby, note that there is unlikely to be big action ahead of a presidential election in November, and another “Christmas tree” bill in December may be in store.
Former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders apologized for a deleted tweet mocking former Vice President Joe Biden, who overcame a childhood stutter, for imitating a child’s speech impediment at Thursday’s Democratic debate.
In responding to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who had bragged that she had taken “100,000 selfies” with supporters at campaign events, Biden responded by pointing out he had taken thousands of selfies, too.
“My wife and I have a call list of somewhere between 20 and 100 people that we call at least every week or every month to tell them, ‘I’m here,'” Biden said. “I give them my private phone number. They keep in touch with me.”
“The little kid who said ‘I-I-I-I can’t talk. Wh-wh-what do I do?’” he added. “I have scores of these young women and men who I keep in contact with.”
Though he did not mention his stutter at Thursday’s debate, Biden has long discussed his struggle over his decades in politics. A recent Atlantic profile detailed his hardships in dealing with the childhood speech impediment and revealed that the former vice president still struggles at times with his speech, including during debates. Biden later denied to Axios that his stuttering was to blame for some of his verbal gaffes.
“I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I hhhave absolutely no idea what Biden is talking about,” Sanders tweeted.
Biden responded to the remark on Twitter.
“I’ve worked my whole life to overcome a stutter. And it’s my great honor to mentor kids who have experienced the same,” he wrote. “It’s called empathy. Look it up.”
Sanders promptly deleted the tweet.
“I actually didn’t know that about you and that is commendable,” she replied. “I apologize and should have made my point respectfully.”
Biden told The Atlantic that the childhood stutter was “the best thing that ever happened” to him.
“Stuttering gave me an insight I don’t think I ever would have had into other people’s pain,” he said.
Asked if he was concerned that President Donald Trump would mock his stutter, Biden replied: “I don’t think so.”
“If you ask the polls, ‘Does Biden stutter? Has he ever stuttered?,’ you’d have 80 to 95 percent of people say, ‘No,'” he said.
“My stutter embarrassed me and made me question myself and abilities daily,” he wrote. “If I could share one piece of advice with all of those struggling with a stutter, it would be this: When you commit yourself to a goal and when you persevere in the face of struggle, you will discover new strengths and skills to help you overcome not only this challenge but future life challenges, as well.”
CT reaches a very small fraction of this large and amorphous group. Its print circulation is 120,000 per month (it is published 10 times per year), about 90,000 of which are paid subscribers, according to publisher Jacob Walsh. Like many publications, it reaches more online — between 3 million and 4 million per month, Walsh said.
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