The Democratic presidential contest in California remains extremely fluid — but not enough, at least so far, to provide an opening for Michael Bloomberg, who entered the race two weeks ago and was banking on winning big in the delegate-rich state, a new poll for the Los Angeles Times has found.
The survey by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found that both Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — the commanding front-runner in a September California poll — and former Vice President Joe Biden have lost ground among the state’s likely Democratic primary voters over the last two months.
That erosion has benefited Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who narrowly tops the primary field, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., who doubled his support since the September poll.
With less than two months before voting starts in Iowa’s Democratic caucuses and three months before California’s March 3 primary, “the race is really unusually fluid,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley IGS poll of voters likely to go to the polls in the Democratic primary.
“Voters are struggling and not sticking with their candidates,” he said. “They are moving around from candidate to candidate.”
Bloomberg appears ill-equipped to break into the mix. The poll, which was taken Nov. 21-27, just as Bloomberg started advertising in California and elsewhere on Nov. 25, found that he began his campaign with one of the most negative images of any candidate in the field. About 40% of the likely Democratic primary voters surveyed viewed him negatively, and just 15% had a positive impression.
“That’s a hole he’s going to have to dig out of and reintroduce himself to voters,” said DiCamillo. “It’s going to be tough.”
The upshot of the poll is that the field’s most liberal candidates, Warren and Sanders, are in a statistical tie for first place. The leading candidates making a more moderate pitch, Biden and Buttigieg, are lagging and essentially tied for third place.
Sanders is in the nominal lead, as the first-choice pick of 24%; Warren is the first pick of 22%. That is a big change from September, when she led the field with 29%.
Biden is the first choice of 14%, down six points from September. Buttigieg is preferred by 12%, up six points from September.
The poll was taken before California Sen. Kamala Harris dropped out of the race. It asked whom her supporters would name as their second choice if she quit and found that Warren and Biden would benefit the most. If Harris voters were reallocated based on those responses, the race would tighten at the top to Sanders, 25%; Warren, 24%; Biden, 17%; Buttigieg, 13%.
California will affect the prospects of all candidates because it has the largest number of delegates at next summer’s Democratic nominating convention. It is especially important for Bloomberg, a multibillionaire and former New York City mayor. He is skipping the first nominating contests and counting on a big splash March 3 in the so-called Super Tuesday primaries in 17 states and territories, including California.
The Berkeley IGS poll, which was three-quarters complete before Bloomberg’s ads started running, found 8% were considering voting for Bloomberg.
Whether his big spending on ads can change the negative image he brings to the race will be a test of the power of money in politics, but the record on such efforts — by rich presidential candidates such as Ross Perot, who ran as an independent in 1992, and Steve Forbes, a Republican candidate in 2000 — is not promising.
California billionaire Tom Steyer also has made a heavy investment in his own 2020 presidential bid, and his campaign is still floundering: Just 1% of California voters in the Berkeley-IGS survey said Steyer was their first choice, and only 18% viewed him favorably.
Among the top-tier candidates, the opinion shifts among Californians are similar to trends found in other polls nationally and in key early-voting states. Warren is coming back down to earth after a heady run-up in polling this summer and fall; Sanders is regaining traction after an October heart attack unsettled his campaign; and Biden is facing increased competition from Buttigieg among voters who think Warren and Sanders are too far left.
Warren’s image has suffered over the last few months, during which she has struggled to answer the question of how she would overhaul the healthcare system. Her favorability rating remains high, with 67% viewing her positively, but that is down 10 points since September.
Still, the poll found that Warren had more room to increase support among California Democrats than any other candidate: 58% said they at least considered supporting her, compared with the 49% who were considering Sanders, 41% considering Buttigieg and 39% considering Biden.
The poll also provided a window into the perceived strengths of the candidates — and why Biden has come in a weak third compared with his stronger standing in national polls.
Biden led the field when California voters were asked which candidate had the best chance of beating Trump and which was best qualified to serve as president: 29% said he was the most electable, and 28% said he was best qualified, compared with Sanders’ second-place ranking on those points, with 22% and 24%, respectively.
But Biden drops to single digits behind other candidates on other qualities: Just 6% said he was the candidate with the sharpest mental abilities, compared with the 24% who picked Warren, who leads the field on that attribute.
Sanders tops the field on three other attributes — being the candidate who would bring the right kind of change to Washington (28%), the one who comes closest to sharing voters’ values (27%) and the candidate who best understands the problems of “people like you” (28%).
The poll found that the four septuagenarian candidates — Sanders, 78; Biden and Bloomberg, 77; Warren, 70 — faced differing levels of concern about their age.
About one-third said they were extremely or very concerned that Biden’s and Sanders’ age would hurt their ability to serve as president. Only 7% said that about Warren; 17% said so about Bloomberg.
The poll found increasingly stiff three-way competition in California for older voters, a part of the electorate that has been especially important to Biden’s national standing. Both he and Warren lost ground among those 65 and older over the last few months, while Buttigieg gained among that group, a prized bloc because it tends to vote in large numbers.
Biden narrowly leads with 22% of the over-65 vote, down from 26% in September. Warren’s share dropped to 18%, from 32% in September. Buttigieg supporters, meanwhile, increased to 17% of those seniors, from just 7% in September.
Sanders’ campaign, by contrast, hinges on his ability to turn out younger voters who are less inclined than their elders to vote: He barely registered among older voters but was the first choice of 46% of voters ages 18 to 29. That contributes to the advantage Sanders has among Latino voters, who tend to be younger as a group than other ethnicities. In California, 32% of Latino Democrats favor Sanders, a solid 13-point margin over the next closest candidate, Biden, who has 19%.
California will be an important test of candidate strength because it has a much more diverse population than the first two states in the nominating process, Iowa and New Hampshire, which are predominantly white.
The poll was conducted online in English and Spanish from Nov. 21 to 27 among 1,694 Californians considered likely to vote in the state’s upcoming Democratic presidential primary. The estimated margin of error for the Democratic sample is 4 percentage points in either direction.
Former Vice President Joe Biden at a town hall last month. On Thursday, Biden got into a heated exchange with an Iowa voter, calling the man a “damn liar.”
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Former Vice President Joe Biden at a town hall last month. On Thursday, Biden got into a heated exchange with an Iowa voter, calling the man a “damn liar.”
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Presidential candidate Joe Biden squared off with a voter in Iowa on Thursday, calling the man a “damn liar” after he accused Biden of helping to get his son on the board of a Ukrainian gas company in an attempt to win access with Ukraine’s president.
In the testy exchange at a town hall packed with Biden supporters, the former vice president took umbrage with another accusation from the voter: that Biden is too old to run for president.
Biden, who is 77 years old, responded by challenging the voter to a pushup match, a running competition and an IQ test — offers that were greeted with audience applause.
Biden then moved to defending his son, Hunter, who previously served as a board member of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
Hunter Biden is a frequent target of President Trump’s attacks amid the impeachment inquiry. The House investigation has documented a campaign led by Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to pressure Ukraine to announce it was opening an investigation into the younger Biden.
Biden’s son has never been accused of any legal wrongdoing related to his time in Ukraine, a point Biden made loud and clear to the voter.
“Nobody has said my son has done anything wrong,” Biden said. “And nobody has ever said it,” he said, before the voter chimed in: “I didn’t say you were doing anything wrong.”
To this, Biden raised his voice and invoked a stern tone, saying, “You said I set up my son to work on an oil company. Isn’t that what you said? Get your words straight, Jack!”
At one point, a staff member attempted to take the microphone away from the voter, but Biden said, “Let him go, let him go.”
Biden then said that the reason he is running for president is he “has been around a long time” and he “knows more than most people know.”
After the nearly two-minute back-and-forth, Biden said, “I’m not going to get in an argument with you, man.”
The voter then said Biden doesn’t “have any more backbone” than Trump does. The comment elicited boos from the crowd.
Before sitting down, the man said he was not planning to vote for Biden. And Biden quipped back: “Well, I knew you weren’t, man.” Biden said, “You’re too old to vote for me.”
The voter refused to provide his name to reporters but said he is an 83-year-old retired farmer.
The confrontation comes amid a week in which Biden otherwise appeared to be strengthening his standing as the Democratic front-runner.
California Sen. Kamala Harris, a candidate who once seemed to pose a strong challenge to Biden among two key groups in his base — African Americans and the party’s establishment — dropped out of the race on Tuesday.
Biden also picked up the endorsement of a well-known Democrat, former Secretary of State John Kerry.
Biden has a long history of confronting voters who challenge him on the campaign trail. In 1987, amid questions that Biden had inflated his college and law school résumé, Biden told a voter who asked about the matter that “I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do.”
Last month in South Carolina, Biden told immigration activist Carlos Rojas that he “should vote for Trump” when Rojas criticized the Obama-Biden administration for its deportation record.
Soon after, the most senior Latina on his staff quit. Vanessa Cárdenas was reportedly frustrated by both a lack of input and Biden’s rhetoric on immigration.
President Trump touted his international influence as he met with representatives of the United Nations Security Council at the White House over lunch on Thursday, after returning from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in London. During the lunch, Mr. Trump said the U.S. is considering trade actions against NATO members that fail to pay the agreed-upon 2% of GDP toward defense, emphasizing that his push to get members to pay more has been effective thus far.
“We may do things having to do with trade. It’s not fair that they get U.S. protection and they’re not putting up their money and they’re really, I call them, I use that term, delinquent. That’s exactly what they are,” Mr. Trump said, seated alongside U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Kelly Kraft, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, and representatives from around the world.
The luncheon came after awkward moments for the president on the international stage at the NATO summit — a summit the president is calling “tremendous success,” even as he canceled a scheduled news conference after world leaders were caught on camera appearing to mock him.
The lunch with international leaders also followed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s call Thursday morning for the drafting of articles of impeachment against him.
“Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to our founders, and a heart full of love for America, today I am asking our chairman to proceed with articles of impeachment,” Pelosi said on Capitol Hill.
Mr. Trump said Thursday he isn’t concerned about impeachment staining his legacy, repeating his line that the entire process is a “hoax.”
The president responded to Pelosi’s announcement over Twitter earlier in the day, warning that the move to impeach him now “will mean that the beyond important and seldom used act of Impeachment will be used routinely to attack future Presidents.” He continued, “That is not what our Founders had in mind.” He also exhorted Democrats to impeach him quickly — “do it now, fast” — so that he might have a “fair trial in the Senate.”
Three constitutional scholars argued before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that the president’s actions have constituted impeachable offenses. One argued they did not rise to that level. The committee is holding its next impeachment hearing on Monday.
But Mr. Trump addressed other pressing international issues as well, including the protests in Iran. Mr. Trump reiterated that the U.S. supports Iranian protesters.
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – Four people were reportedly killed Thursday after a multi-county police pursuit ended in gunfire on Miramar Parkway following an armed robbery in Coral Gables.
The pursuit ended in a hail of bullets on live television as police fired into the UPS truck taken during the robbery over 25 miles away. The firefight occurred after the truck was slowed by traffic and surrounded by police.
Soon after the truck stopped, police opened fire into the vehicle with the suspects and UPS driver inside.
A man could be seen attempting to exit the truck on the passenger’s side during the gunfire, but it’s not known whether he was the UPS employee or one of the suspects.
Officials confirmed to the Miami Herald that two suspects were killed, along with the UPS driver and an innocent bystander.
Police say the two suspects armed with handguns attempted to rob Regent Jewelers at 1261 Mariana Avenue near the intersection of Miracle Mile and LeJeune Road.
GRAPHIC VIDEO: The video below is graphic and may be inappropriate for some
The owner of the store reportedly exchanged gunfire with the suspects. A woman inside the store was shot in the head during the shooting and was taken to the hospital in stable condition where she was later discharged.
Following the jewelry store shooting, the suspects fled in the UPS truck, leading police north on Florida’s Turnpike to I-75 before getting off near Century Village in Pembroke Pines and then heading to the Miramar area.
A UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter carrying three people crashed Thursday after taking off from an airport in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
The Minnesota National Guard confirmed to NBC News it lost contact with the Black Hawk at around 2 p.m. CST and authorities are searching for it. Its last known location was about 10 miles southwest of the airport, according to NBC affiliate KARE.
Crews from St. Paul Fire and Rescue and the Minnesota State Patrol located wreckage near Kimball, Minnesota, KARE reports.
Master Sergeant Blair Heusdens said the helicopter was conducting a maintenance test flight and that three Guardsmen were on board. The status of the Guardsmen is unknown.
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The St. Paul Fire Department said it was supporting the Minnesota Aviation Rescue Team for a report of an aircraft down in St. Cloud following a mayday. St. Cloud is about 76 miles northwest of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
As with the Yellow Vest protests last year, much will depend on the battle for public opinion. The government was forced to listen, and keep a check on police repression, for as long as there was popular support for that movement. When that support dwindled toward 50 percent, the government shut its ears and unleashed the police.
Polls released Thursday, before the beginning of the strike, showed popular support for it at close to 70 percent.
“What will play for Emmanuel Macron and Edouard Philippe,” his prime minister, “is public opinion,” said Jean Garrigues, a political historian at the University of Orleans. “They’re playing on the degeneration of the movement in public opinion,” as with the Yellow Vests, he said.
But playing against that is the solitary nature of power as conceived by Mr. Macron himself.
“The nature of his movement is that it is constructed around one man,’’ Mr. Garrigues said. ‘‘So there’s very little room to maneuver.”
Reporting was contributed by Aurelien Breeden and Elizabeth Alderman in Paris, and by Elian Peltier in London.
Last month, during a contentious meeting about Syria policy at the White House, a photographer captured the moment Ms. Pelosi stood up from the table in the Cabinet Room, pointing sternly as she spoke to a scowling Mr. Trump.
But Ms. Pelosi’s staff quickly posted it on her social media accounts, regarding it as a powerful image of the speaker standing up to a petulant president. She later said it showed the moment she demanded to know whether the president’s decision to remove troops from Syria was a favor to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Another confrontation took place during a televised Oval Office meeting at the end of last year, when Ms. Pelosi fired back at Mr. Trump’s suggestion that, despite the Democratic victories in the 2018 midterm elections, she lacked political clout in the standoff over spending and a looming government shutdown.
“Mr. President,” she said, “please don’t characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats, who just won a big victory.”
A photograph of Ms. Pelosi leaving the White House after that meeting — in sunglasses and a rust-colored coat — quickly went viral. She was also captured on television clapping sardonically at the president during his State of the Union address this year.
Mr. Trump has regularly attacked the speaker on Twitter.
Along with calling her “Nervous Nancy” after the Syria meeting in October, Mr. Trump also tweeted: “Nancy Pelosi needs help fast! There is either something wrong with her ‘upstairs,’ or she just plain doesn’t like our great Country. She had a total meltdown in the White House today. It was very sad to watch. Pray for her, she is a very sick person!”
Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden on Thursday called a man in Iowa a “damn liar,” “fat” and “too old to vote for me” after the man accused Biden of getting his son Hunter a job with a Ukrainian gas company in exchange for access to the Obama administration.
“You’re a damn liar, and that’s not true,” Biden snapped at the man during a campaign event in New Hampton, Iowa, as an audience of adults and children looked on.
The former vice president Biden then challenged the man — who had also questioned Biden’s fitness for the White House given his age — to feats of strength, endurance and intelligence.
“I’m not sedentary,” said the 77-year-old Biden. “You want to check my shape on, let’s do push ups together, let’s run, let’s do whatever you want to do, let’s take an IQ test.”
Biden spokeswoman Symone Sanders later claimed that Biden said, “Look, facts,” not “Look, fat,” referring to the man.
Sanders said in a tweet that “the gentleman is a self-identified Warren supporter who said he would vote for the VP in a general election … his facts were flat-out wrong and .. the crowd backed VP Biden up in his response.”
“Any assertion VP Biden said a word about the gentleman’s appearance is making this something it is not. In the latter part of the exchange, the VP began to say, ‘Look, facts,’ then said, ‘here’s the deal,'” Sanders said.
“If you’ve been to a Biden event, you’ve heard this before.”
The man, who later refused to identify himself to NBC, ignited Biden’s ire with a comment that referenced President Donald Trump’s pressuring of Ukraine last summer to investigate Biden and Hunter Biden in connection with Hunter’s position on the board of the the natural gas company Burisma.
Trump withheld congressionally appropriated military aid to Ukraine as he pressed that nation to investigate, an act that led to ongoing impeachment proceedings in the House against Trump.
“OK, I’ve got two problems with you,” said the man after introducing himself as an “old, Iowa retired farmer.”
“One, you’re damn near as old as I am. You’re too old for the job. I am 83 and I know damn well I don’t have the mental faculties I did when I was 30 years ago. All right … forget that stuff.”
“I got a question I want you to answer,” said the man.
“We all know Trump has been messing around in Ukraine over there, holding their foreign aid for them to come up saying they’re going to investigate you. We know all about that. He’s no backbone. We know that,” the man said.
“But you on the other hand sent your son over there to get a job and work for a gas company that he had no experience with gas or nothing in order to get access for the president. You’re selling access to the president just like he does …”
Biden then shot back.
“You’re a damn liar, man!” Biden said. “That’s not true and no one has ever said that. No one has proved that.”
“I see it on the TV,” the man said.
Biden said, “No one has said my son has done anything wrong and I did not on any occasion.”
When the man interjected, “I didn’t say you were doing anything wrong,” Biden became angrier.
“You said I set up my son to work in an oil company. Isn’t that what you said? Get your words straight, Jack,” Biden said.
When the man said he had heard the claim on MSNBC, Biden snapped: “You don’t hear that on MSNBC.”
“You do not hear that at all,” Biden said. “Look, OK, I’m not going to get into an argument with you, man.”
When the man said, “I don’t want to either,” Biden said, “Well, yeah, you do.”
“But look, fat, here’s the deal,” Biden said.
The man then said, “It looks, it looks like you don’t have any more backbone than Trump does.”
Biden said to the crowd then: “Any other questions?”
“Yeah, all right. I’m not voting for you,” the man said.
Biden replied, “I knew you weren’t, man.”
“You think I’d thought you’d stand up and vote for me? You’re too old to vote for me.”
Wide social protests forced the Eiffel Tower to be closed in Paris on Thursday, as demonstrators mounted a strike against the government’s plans for a pension system that critics say will force millions of people to work longer.
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Wide social protests forced the Eiffel Tower to be closed in Paris on Thursday, as demonstrators mounted a strike against the government’s plans for a pension system that critics say will force millions of people to work longer.
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Thousands of people are marching in the streets of Paris, Lyon, Marseilles and other French cities Thursday, as more than 30 unions launch a massive workers’ strike that’s meant to shut down the country and force President Emmanuel Macron to reevaluate his plans for pension reform.
The strike is being compared to the crippling protests of 1995, which were also triggered by a retirement reform effort and which unraveled the career of former Prime Minister Alain Juppé.
The Eiffel Tower is shut down; so are most of the light rail lines in Paris. And some of the city’s busiest streets were quiet, as commuters either took part in the general strike or made plans to avoid travel disruptions.
More than 280,000 people demonstrated in about 40 cities — excluding Paris and Lyon, where estimates were not yet available — according to Le Parisien, which cites the AFP news agency.
A protester walks through a cloud of tear gas during a demonstration against national pension changes in Nantes, France, on Thursday.
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A protester walks through a cloud of tear gas during a demonstration against national pension changes in Nantes, France, on Thursday.
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Faced with severe air travel disruptions, France’s civil aviation directorate says that on Friday, 20% of all flights going in and out of Paris and other large cities will be canceled.
While many of the demonstrations took place peacefully, police deployed canisters of tear gas in Bordeaux after a brief but tense standoff at the Place des Quinconces, a huge city square where the march was slated to end. The government estimates some 20,000 people were in the street, as news site 20 minutes reports.
A similar scene played out in Nantes, where journalist Christian Meas described the police playing a game of chat et souris (cat and mouse) with protesters.
France’s national railway company, SNCF, says that on average, only 1 in 10 trains is running on its most popular lines, including the high-speed TGV train.
Demonstrations and severe disruptions are expected to last at least through Monday — the date being mentioned by both the SNCF and key transport unions.
In Paris, NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reports the streets were eerily calm early Thursday, feeling more like a Sunday morning than a weekday.
Transport workers, hospital employees, firefighters, teachers and others who play key roles in society are taking part in the strike, sending a warning to Macron to preserve their pensions under France’s national system despite growing economic challenges.
“People are living longer, and there are fewer workers supporting each retiree,” Beardsley says on Morning Edition. “It needs reforming. People know this, but they say his reform is bad and unfair. He wants people to work longer — people do not want to have to work longer.”
France’s official retirement age is 62, having risen from 60 in the past decade. But the government hopes to install a new universal points-based pension system, which would change how pensions are calculated and effectively give full pension benefits only to workers who retire at age 64.
But beyond the push to preserve current pension terms, the protests also reflect “an anger and a dislike of Macron in society,” Beardsley says, noting the criticisms the president has faced in the wake of the Yellow Vest cost-of-living protests of last autumn.
People hold a banner reading “Pension by points: we all lose. Retirement at 60: we all win” during a demonstration against a plan to overhaul national pensions in Paris.
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People hold a banner reading “Pension by points: we all lose. Retirement at 60: we all win” during a demonstration against a plan to overhaul national pensions in Paris.
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While thousands of police were deployed to secure areas around the protests, Le Figaro journalist Jean-Baptiste de la Torre spoke to three policemen who said they had turned out to show what support they could.
“We are here for our children,” one officer said. While acknowledging orders against joining the strike and march, the officer added, “We wanted to support our women who are teachers.”
The past two years of wildfires have shown that even insurers are struggling to predict the risks associated with climate change. The consequences of that failure could be profound, experts say: The very industry that’s meant to stabilize society in the face of climate change is itself being destabilized by climate change, threatening to make it harder for people to cope with the rising tempo of disasters.
The state’s homeowners insurers lost a total $20 billion in the 2017 and 2018 wildfires, according to an analysis published in October by Milliman, an actuary and consulting firm. That’s twice the industry’s cumulative profits since the last major wildfires, in 1991. A line of business that was until recently profitable is now unprofitable, the authors wrote, “exposed to a severe peril that is neither easily measured nor fully understood.”
Eric Xu, an actuary at Milliman’s San Francisco office and one of the report’s authors, said that the shock of the California wildfires echoes Florida after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which caused $28 billion in damage and caused the failure of a dozen insurers.
But the threat facing insurers in California is in one sense trickier: After Andrew, many national insurers stopped writing coverage in Florida. But Mr. Xu said California represents too great a share of total revenue for most national insurance companies to just walk away from the state altogether.
Unable to leave, insurers have sought other solutions to protect themselves from rising wildfire costs. But those changes highlight the obstacles facing insurers as climate change worsens.
One fix is for insurers to buy what’s called reinsurance — a sort of insurance for insurers — providing payments if claims rise beyond a certain level. But as the risks from climate change have grown, reinsurance companies have raised the cost of the protection they offer.
For insurance companies, the most obvious response is to pass the costs on to customers in the form of higher prices. California insurers filed 80 requests for rate increases in 2018, more than double the number of requests in 2015, according to data provided by the state.
Long before President Donald Trump called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “Little Rocket Man” or met him in person, Trump had an idea to safeguard millions of South Koreans from the dictator’s wrath: Move them. Move them all.
According to an excerpt from Peter Bergen’s new book Trump and His Generals: The Cost of Chaos, posted by Time on Thursday morning, the president made a startling comment during a mid-April 2017 briefing on North Korea.
After seeing a satellite image showing that Seoul — South Korea’s capital, home to 10 million inhabitants — sits just 15 miles south of the country’s heavily militarized border with the North, Trump asked, “Why is Seoul so close to the North Korean border?”
He then made a rather unorthodox suggestion: “They have to move,” Trump said, referring to the city’s residents. “They have to move!” he repeated. Those in attendance at the Oval Office briefing were uncertain whether or not Trump was joking, Bergen writes.
Trump, Bergen notes, had already been briefed numerous times on the danger Seoul faces every day. The city is in direct firing range of thousands of pieces of North Korean artillery that are already lined up along the border between the two countries, also known as the demilitarized zone (DMZ). Around 70 percent of North Korea’s ground forces are within 90 miles of the DMZ, presumably ready to move south at a moment’s notice.
Simulations of a large-scale artillery fight between the North and South produce pretty bleak results. One war game convened by the Atlantic magazine back in 2005 predicted that a North Korean attack would kill 100,000 people in Seoul in the first few days alone. Others put the estimate even higher. A war game mentioned by the National Interest predicted Seoul could “be hit by over half-a-million shells in under an hour.”
Evidently, Trump hadn’t realized just how vulnerable the city’s 10 million citizens were until he saw that satellite photo. So his alarm is understandable. And sure, perhaps he was kidding. But given Trump’s history of suggesting wildly infeasible or downright illegal policy ideas, it’s also entirely possible he was serious.
Moving a city of 10 million people is not exactly easy (or even possible)
Pushing 10 million people — roughly the population of the entire country of Sweden — further south on the peninsula would be a nearly impossible exercise. It’s just too many people to move and would cost a fortune in both transportation and relocation, and of course North Korea would notice such a mass migration.
What’s more, North Korea has weapons that can reach all of South Korea, meaning Seoul’s dwellers would need to leave the country entirely to be safer. Now that North Korea has shown it has a missile that could reach the US — potentially carrying a nuclear bomb — it’s hard to fathom where those millions could go to avoid any danger.
While there’s no question Seoul remains a major target and could be decimated in a war with North Korea, the city’s location remains a sticky reality.
The comment is “uniquely Trumpy,” says Catholic University US foreign policy expert Justin Logan, “but it’s a reminder that the nuclear issue, which is all we talk about, is one part of a larger security problem on the [Korean] Peninsula. A nuclear deal wouldn’t deal with the geography or artillery.”
It’s a problem that even Steve Bannon, Trump’s former lead strategist, lamented in an August 2017 interview with the American Prospect. “Forget it,” he said. “Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”
Trump has changed his tune since the early days of his presidency. He no longer calls for drastic measures like a mass movement of civilians, instead preferring to engage Kim directly to convince him to dismantle his nuclear program. That effort has sputtered, and it appears that unless real progress is made soon, North Korea will abandon diplomacy in favor of further ramping up its weapons development.
“The dialogue touted by the US is, in essence, nothing but a foolish trick hatched to keep the DPRK bound to dialogue and use it in favor of the political situation and election in the US,” Ri Thae Song, vice minister in charge of US affairs, told the state-run Korean Central News Agency this week, using the initials for North Korea’s official name.
“The DPRK has heard more than enough dialogue rhetoric raised by the US whenever it is driven into a tight corner,” Ri continued. “So, no one will lend an ear to the US any longer.”
So if Trump wants to avoid a turbulent 2020, he’ll have to come up with a new idea — and fast.
What’s happening now: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has asked committee chairs to proceed with articles of impeachment – meaning they will write a list of what they see as impeachable offenses by the president.
What happens next: Those articles will be voted on, one by one, by the House Judiciary Committee and then the full House. Pelosi gave no indication of a timeline, nor did she say how narrowly crafted the articles of impeachment would be. The Judiciary Committee is scheduled to meet Monday for presentations on Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine from lawyers for the Intelligence Committee. Here’s a guide to how impeachment works.
Want to understand the impeachment inquiry better?Sign up for the 5-Minute Fix to get a guide in your inbox every weekday. Have questions?Submit them here, and they may be answered in the newsletter.
Security guards outside the main gate at Hawaii’s Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam following the shooting. The Navy says the gunman was assigned to a nuclear-powered attack submarine currently in port.
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Security guards outside the main gate at Hawaii’s Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam following the shooting. The Navy says the gunman was assigned to a nuclear-powered attack submarine currently in port.
Caleb Jones/AP
A U.S. Navy sailor shot and killed two civilian employees of the Defense Department and wounded a third before killing himself at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor military installation.
Rear Adm. Robert Chadwick, commander of Navy Region Hawaii, said the shooting occurred near Dry Dock 2 in the Naval shipyard at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
Chadwick said the male shooter “has tentatively been identified as an active-duty sailor assigned to USS Columbia,” a nuclear-powered Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine.
Chadwick said the names of the shooter and his victims would not be released until next of kin had been notified. He said the wounded civilian is in stable condition at a local hospital.
A motive for the shootings has not been identified, and it is not known whether the victims were random or known to the shooter.
Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam is home to nine Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, a guided missile cruiser and 15 attack submarines, plus the U.S. Air Force Pacific Command.
Prior to his election in 2017, President Emmanuel Macron vowed to reform France’s pension system. He believes the current arrangement is unfair, complex and costly. According to OECD data, France’s retirement system is one of the most expensive in the world, costing the government 14% of the country’s GDP (gross domestic product).
Macron is now pushing for a single, points-based system. At the moment, there are 42 different pension plans that vary according to profession and region, meaning some workers are entitled to a full pension before the general minimum retirement age of 62. The new system would mean that pensioners that contributed the same amount would have equal rights.
Tomasz Michalski, professor of economics at HEC Paris business school, told CNBC Thursday that for every 10 euros that a worker earns in income, that person will get one point under the new system. “But how will these points be translated into benefits?,” Michalski wondered.
The full details of Macron’s reforms have not yet been officially put to Parliament. Thursday’s strike is pre-emptive action and does not have an end date, meaning it could last for some time. Philippe Martinez, leader of French trade union the CGT, told reporters that the strike will not end this evening.
Clinton, of course, talked President Trump and politics — the upcoming election, the impeachment hearings and losing to him in 2016 — but also about her dating life pre-Bill Clinton and rumors about her sexuality.
At the top of the show, Clinton confirmed a long-rumored story (with its own Snopes page) about George W. Bush’s reaction to Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration speech.
“Obviously I was crushed,” she said of her demeanor after losing the 2016 election to Trump. “I was disappointed and I was really surprised because I couldn’t figure out what had happened. So when he’s going to be inaugurated, I was going as the former first lady. That was the reason I was there — I was no longer in the Senate. Secretaries of state don’t attend.”
Clinton attended as a sense of duty, she said despite people telling her, “Don’t go,” and it being “one of the hardest days of my life.” But she said Bush lightened the mood a little.
“Bill and I were sitting with George and Laura Bush and then [Trump] started on that speech which was so bizarre. That’s when I got really worried. I thought: Wait a minute. It’s not rational, but it’s also not politics. It’s not what a president does. A president is supposed to try to reach out to people who weren’t for him or her… I hoped I would hear a little of that but then the carnage in the street and the dark dystopian vision. I was sitting there like just: Wow. I couldn’t believe it, and George W. Bush says to me, ‘Well that was some weird sh**.’”
Clinton didn’t mince words when it came to her feelings about her political foe, talking about Trump being egotistical, a narcissist and calling him an “admirer of dictators.” She said, “If I had lost to a normal Republican, I would have been unhappy but I wouldn’t have had that pit in my stomach: What the heck? What is going to happen? What’s he going to do next? His impulsiveness, his vindictiveness — where does this lead?”
She didn’t save her criticism just for the president, criticizing “cowardly” Republican senators for not taking him on. And of Lindsey Graham, whom she said she once “admired and liked enormously” (and vice versa as he openly praised her in a 2006 Time magazineessay), she said she doesn’t know what happened to him.
“Lindsey was good company, he was funny, he was self-deprecating,” she said.“He also believed in climate change back in those days. I saw him as somebody who, you know, had been working to try to figure out what he believed and how he could do things.”
When asked by Stern if he sold his soul to the devil, Clinton replied, “I don’t know. That’s a fair question, however. I’ll be honest with you. I haven’t talked to him in a long time… It’s like he had a brain snatch, you know?”
The Book of Gutsy Women author said she’s not endorsing anyone ahead of the 2020 presidential election. She’ll support whoever the Democratic nominee is, explaining that she doesn’t want “to get in the middle.” She thinks Joe Biden will likely win the nomination as he’s leading the polls. She also admitted that Bernie Sanders “hurt” her campaign by not endorsing her immediately. She said she’s still “disappointed” about it — and hopes he doesn’t do it again to whoever gets the nomination, adding, “Once is enough.”
Clinton called her own husband a “terrific support” following her 2016 loss after Stern brought up a story he had heard about Bill holding her hand as she fell asleep just devastated after the election. She also spent a lot of time talking about them getting together in their college days. Clinton said she had a boyfriend at the time — whom she said looked like a “Greek god” — and ended up breaking up with him for Bill.
“He was a good guy,” she said of the ex, who has since passed away. “He was so handsome, really handsome. He looked like a Greek god. He was very attractive.”
That led to her referencing rumors, generated by political rivals, about her sexuality.
“Contrary to what you might hear, I actually like men,” Clinton said.
That led Stern to reply, “Raise your right hand, you’ve never had a lesbian affair?”
“Never, never, never!” she answered. “Never even been tempted, thank you very much.”
Clinton added that she “dated a lot of different people” and said, “boys were not my problem.”
Stern, who often extols the virtues of therapy, asked if Clinton saw a therapist after losing the election. She said no. The only time she did she said was in the “late ‘90s” and it was couples counseling with Bill after his affair was being brought to light.
Clinton also had a cough during part of the interview, which they joked about because her health, like her sexuality, is constant fodder for conservatives. She recounted having pneumonia when she attended the 9/11 memorial in 2016 and when she left early because she was overheated, “They had me dead.”
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Clinton also revealed some other personal aspects of her life. She said she loves her three grandchildren, Chelsea Clinton’s brood, but they tire her out. She and Bill no longer own cars, and they rely on the Secret Service to take them everywhere. But it’s important to her that she still gets out there and lives her life — whether it’s going to the supermarket (which she does), taking in Broadway shows with Bill or going to the movies.
Stern did ask if she plans to run in 2020, but she didn’t say either way. He was mostly talking her out of it and telling her to enjoy her life. At one point he asked if she ever considered going into seclusion having had enough of the criticism — and of the “lock her up” chants. She said no because “that would only delight my adversaries.”
Stern, of course, played a role in making Trump famous through the years, giving him a platform on his show. However, Stern didn’t support him in the election — and is very clearly is a Clinton fan, gushing about her through the interview, calling her his “hero” and saying she “would have been spectacular” as president.
Earlier this year, Stern said that he could have helped Clinton get elected — had she appeared on his show during her campaign. He spoke about that on Wednesday, saying he wanted to help sell her his “earth dog” audience by telling them, “This is a cool woman. She really cares. Maybe you don’t get her 100 percent, but she cares. She’s devoted her life to public service.” He said he felt it would help “bring a couple more votes.”
Clinton claimed she didn’t know Stern campaigned to get her on the show at the time. And she said that even if she did know, she probably wouldn’t have gone on even if she had.
“In a presidential campaign… I often did not prioritize media the way I should have. I think that’s one thing. Trump would interview with anybody — and in his pajamas they’d take him — he was just a constant presence. I think I made a miscalculation. I do.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was not happy with President Donald Trump’s remark at the NATO meeting in London that the U.S. would use force against his regime if necessary.
In a statement published by the state-run North Korean Central News Agency, army chief of staff Pak Jong Chon said Kim was “displeased” with the “undesirable remarks” and warned that North Korea and the U.S. “are still technically at war and the state of truce can turn into an all-out armed conflict any moment.”
“One thing I would like to make clear is that the use of armed forces is not the privilege of the U.S. only,” Pak said.
When asked by reporters about North Korea’s continued missile tests on Tuesday, Trump said the U.S. has the most powerful military in the world and that he would use it against Kim’s regime “if we have to.”
He added that Kim “likes sending rockets up, doesn’t he?”
One North Korean official threatened to bring back Kim’s own past insult for Trump.
North Korean 1st Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hu said Thursday that her ministry “cannot contain its displeasure” at Trump’s remarks and warned that if Trump keeps it up, he “will again show the senility of a dotard.” In September 2017, Kim vowed to “tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard,” referring to Trump.
But on Tuesday, Trump stressed that he and Kim have a “good relationship.”
“I like him, he likes me,” Trump said. “We’ll see what happens. It may work out, it may not.”
Pak agreed on the importance of the relationship between Trump and Kim, saying “the only guarantee that deters physical conflict from flaring up” is “the close relations between the top leaders” of the two countries.
“But recently, the U.S. president said that he may use armed forces in clear reference to the DPRK, even though he attached preconditions,” Pak said, referring to North Korea by its formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “This greatly disappointed me.”
He warned that “such elated spirit and bluffing” could agitate North Korea and threaten the fragile peace and that an attack on the regime would be “a horrible thing for the U.S.”
North Korea has issued several belligerent statements toward the U.S. in recent weeks while also conducting short-range missile tests.
In April, Kim declared an end-of-the-year deadline for progress to resume in the negotiations between the two countries. But little progress has been made in the denuclearization talks since a summit in Vietnam between Trump and Kim broke down in February.
Prior to Trump’s comments on Tuesday, a North Korean official reiterated Kim’s deadline and said, “it is entirely up to the U.S. what Christmas gift it will select to get.”
But in both cases, any relief was short-lived. Mr. Nixon ended up resigning weeks after getting home, and Mr. Clinton was impeached by the House only days after his return. The complaints about impeachment interfering with foreign policy rang loud then as well; Mr. Clinton was in the midst of bombing Iraq for defying international weapons inspectors even as the House took its vote.
There is no escape for Mr. Trump either, not in foreign cities, not in the Oval Office and not on the television he stares at upstairs in the White House for hours each day. His presidency is tethered to impeachment, his legislative agenda mostly on hold, his foreign policy overshadowed, his re-election on the line. He takes refuge in the boisterous and jampacked campaign rallies he holds and in the morning and evening lineups on Fox News.
While in London, Mr. Trump defiantly declared he would not watch the opening of the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearings because he would be too busy conducting affairs of state, even as he lashed out at Democrats as “deranged,” “sick,” “nuts,” “crazy” and, in one case, a “maniac.” But while his blue-and-white jet headed back to Washington, he (or aides operating his account in his name) nonetheless blitzed out a couple dozen tweets recirculating posts from Republican allies castigating the hearing as it progressed.
At the White House in his absence, the atmosphere was somewhat surreal. The televisions around the building were tuned to the various news networks, especially Fox News, as they broadcast the hearing, but the volume was usually muted and aides sought to go about their business.
The White House refused to participate in the hearing, arguing that the process has been rigged by partisan Democrats, but it did send a couple of aides to sit in the hearing room and monitor the proceedings.
The assumption there, as elsewhere, was that the hearing changed no minds and the course of the next few weeks is already set — the House will probably vote by the end of the year to impeach along party lines, and the Senate will then hold a trial in which the president will not be convicted, setting him up to litigate the case during his re-election campaign.
“While I wouldn’t say impeachment is a good thing for the president, it is a highly divisive and partisan issue breaking down on party lines,” Ms. Ferrier said. “It has not changed people’s minds on the president. His approval ratings are remarkably consistent, in particular with Republican voters, and he clearly relishes a fight.”
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