theguardian--2020-01-06--Sleepwalking into 2020: are the media who missed Trump's 2016 rise ready now?

In the weeks after the election of Donald Trump in 2016 , the American media went through deep soul searching .
Most news outlets had been taken by surprise by Trump ’ s victory , had failed to see the rise of the electorate that would put him in the White House , and had been led by the clickbait of his tweets .
Then there was Hillary Clinton ’ s emails and an arguable failure to appreciate the importance of misinformation and Russian interference in the election .
This time the press has pledged to do better .
Yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ go before Americans go to the polls again , there are already signs that mistakes of the magnitude of 2016 may be repeated or new challenges arise .
The Guardian and the Columbia Journalism Review have partnered to interview 30 top media figures and commentators , asking how ready they think we are for the 2020 presidential election .
The stakes could not be higher .
With the 2020 presidential election upon us , leading media practitioners and commentators are in anxious and reflective mood .
Margaret Sullivan , media columnist for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ assault and democracy is under assault right now , and these two things are related .
One of the things we didn ’ t do well covering the presidential election last time was that we failed to distinguish between the serious and not so serious – the term false equivalency comes to mind .
So Trump and his sexual assault claims , business record , history of racism – all those things were made equal to Hillary Clinton ’ s emails .
Today we ’ re calling it a little better .
When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re willing sometimes to use that word .
We ’ re willing to use the word “ lie ” .
We ’ ve come a ways in that sense , but I ’ m still not particularly positive about how we ’ re going to deal with 2020 .
Dean Baquet , executive editor of the New York Times : In 2016 I think the media got the country wrong .
I don ’ t think we got Trump .
We didn ’ t understand how much the country was angry at elites @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economic crisis .
And I don ’ t think we understood quite how much the country just wanted to shake things up .
We covered it as usual , the way we always cover elections , as a clash of two ideologies , and I think it was much , much deeper .
Ben Smith , editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News : The media has this incredible quadrennial habit of learning all the lessons of four years ago and applying them when the medium has already moved on .
So I think the media @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mistakes of the last cycle , like giving Trump endless livestreams and letting him use provocative tweets to dominate the conversation .
But I ’ m sure we will fuck it up in some new way we aren ’ t expecting .
Samhita Mukhopadhyay , executive editor of Teen Vogue : People are worried and we don ’ t have an answer .
The US president is openly attacking journalists .
He has convinced a third of the country that the New York Times is fake news .
We can criticize the Times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but it ’ s not fake news .
We have to have some general understanding : outlets like the Guardian , the New Yorker , these are not fake news !
Jorge Ramos , Univision news anchor : In 2016 there were 27 million Latinos eligible to vote and 13 million of them decided to stay home – more than 50 % .
In 2020 there will be 32 million Latinos eligible to vote and I ’ m very concerned that the story might repeat itself again : that Latinos decide to stay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ President Trump but don ’ t trust the Democrats either .
That would be terrible for Latinos .
Daniel Arnall , executive editor of MSNBC : So one of the things that we are doing differently than in the last cycle is focusing more on issues , and coverage of issues that folks across the country are interested in .
That is going to be driving our coverage .
We ’ re going to be substantially less interested in taking like live candidate events , I think , and dealing with all of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Bulwark : Going back to 2016 , when I was part of what you ’ d consider to be the conservative media , it ’ s difficult to remember that there was still a lot of diversity of opinion .
There were a lot of conservative commentators and talk show hosts who were very critical of Donald Trump .
What ’ s really changed is how increasingly tribalized the media has become .
Kara Swisher , tech journalist and founder of Recode : What happened in 2016 should not come as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attention to the tech companies .
Tech moguls collect all the money and pay none of the price .
In 2016 Trump regularly set the 24-hour news agenda with his early morning clickbait tweets .
Will the same Trump-obsession dominate again ?
Frank Bruni , columnist for the New York Times : We ’ ve learned that if you write a story about the ridiculousness of Trump ’ s latest tweet it gets a lot more traffic than an analysis of Elizabeth Warren ’ s Medicare for All plan .
Trump understands what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he has a very acute sense of what people will click on .
So I ’ m concerned that we are going to end up giving Trump more than the lion ’ s share of media time all the way up to election night .
Mukhopadhyay , Teen Vogue : We are living amid constant cutbacks .
Outlets are shrinking .
I worry the story continues to be driven by what is performing , by KPIs ( key performance indicators ) .
That ’ s where a lot of the Trump tweet coverage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fruit .
Susan Page , Washington bureau chief for USA Today : I make no apology for the amount of coverage we give President Trump .
He ’ s the president .
If he says something that ’ s incredibly provocative or does something that has far-reaching ramifications , we have an obligation to report it .
Ramos , Univision : When Trump announced his candidacy in 2015 and when he ejected me from a press conference , we told everyone , listen , this is someone who ’ s making racist remarks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , yet very few people pay attention .
Today I believe it ’ s a completely different story .
Journalists are being much more aggressive than they were in 2016 .
Smith , BuzzFeed : This is a totally different moment to 2016 – it ’ s an election that will be a referendum on Trump ’ s presidency .
The challenge will be covering his presidency and not what he says about it .
Olivia Nuzzi , Washington correspondent for New York magazine : Trump is sort of blowing everything up .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ has provided more opportunity for reporters to be creative .
In the Trump White House , nothing works like it ’ s supposed to .
Baquet , the New York Times : When you cover a theatrical politician you must try not to get caught up in the theatre .
Having said that , I ’ m one of those people who thinks theatrics are still worth covering – they are part of the way he leads the country .
Todd Gitlin , professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University : During @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bureaus of major news organizations – spearheaded by Harper ’ s together with the networks and a number of major news organizations – said : “ We ’ re not going to go along with the ‘ minders ’ scheme.
” Such collective action is not beyond the bounds of the imagination for 2020 .
Zanny Minton Beddoes , editor-in-chief of the Economist : I think there is some debate in certain quarters about whether the media should be taking one side or another – stand in opposition to Trump .
And that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the sense of polarisation and people living in two entirely ecosystems in the US .
Since Trump took office , the Washington Post has counted 13,435 of his false and misleading claims .
This extraordinary splurge of untruths poses huge challenges for the media as we go into 2020 .
Glenn Kessler , editor of the Fact Checker , Washington Post : The database of Trump ’ s false claims is a very depressing duty .
It just drags you down to have to go through it , like reading one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one speech will have 60 false and misleading claims , most of which you ’ ve already factchecked and said were false .
It ’ s incredibly depressing .
Page , USA Today : There is much more impressive factchecking than there was in 2016 .
One of the things that we ’ ve seen happen is not to let something that we know is inaccurate stand unchallenged .
Ramos , Univision : I ’ ve covered Latin America for many decades and I think that has prepared me for what I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
To have someone leading the country who is an authoritarian , who is not telling the truth , who ’ s constantly lying in a country that is completely divided .
Bruni , the New York Times : You can only say the same thing so many times before people become numb and deaf to it .
If the public is not listening , I don ’ t know how that becomes our fault .
Nicholas Johnston , editor-in-chief of Axios : What makes me somewhat optimistic is that four or six @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have the vocabulary to talk about deepfake , fake video and audio , misinformation , the manipulation of social media , the end of truth .
Now we know that these are things , we can talk about it and help voters identify what is true and what is not .
Kessler , the Washington Post : I ’ ve covered just about every presidential administration since Reagan and this administration has the least fidelity to truth and honesty of any I ’ ve encountered .
Sullivan , the Washington Post : The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like Kellyanne Conway , Trump ’ s White House counsel , who is just an inveterate liar .
By having her on , she is allowed to say things that aren ’ t true and although she can be challenged it ’ s still a very strong message having her on air .
My feeling is , don ’ t have her on , you know she ’ s going to lie her way through every broadcast .
That ’ s not censorship .
Censorship is government action that disallows things being said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ producers are not censorship .
Swisher , Recode : If you ’ re not scared when Facebook ’ s Mark Zuckerberg says it ’ s okay for politicians to lie , especially in the context of a system that is so viral compared to any other media , you should be afraid .
Most opinion polls in 2016 predicted that Hillary Clinton would win .
On election day the New York Times gave Clinton an “ 85 % chance to win ” through its forecasting model .
There ’ s been a lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ learned the lessons ?
Arnall , MSNBC : I am still hesitant on polling , and I think there ’ s been a real reluctance by a lot of major organizations to really come to terms with the failures of that through the last cycle .
I think that ’ s a potential weak point that a lot of people should be pushing their organizations on .
I ’ m still like , “ What are we doing differently this time ?
” Larry Sabato , pollster and director of University of Virginia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pollsters got to eat a large , bitter humble pie after election night in 2016 , which came as a tremendous shock .
We ’ d all expected Hillary Clinton to win by three points or so , giving her over 300 electoral college votes .
When Trump won we were forced to relearn that polling is not the word of God or handed down on the Mount to Moses .
Baquet , the New York Times : All of us in the media were just so convinced Trump couldn ’ t win @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paint-by-numbers game we have developed .
Sabato , pollster : The polling industry has tried to correct itself after it was so badly caught off-guard .
We used not to weight by educational level and it turned out that if we had done so we might have been more accurate in 2016 .
So now everybody is weighting by education .
We also had our fingers burned over the electoral college .
The polls got the popular vote more or less correct , with Clinton winning the popular vote by two percentage points @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the profound electoral college impact that gave Trump his victory .
Page , USA Today : You have to rely both on quantitative and qualitative interviews .
Polling is really valuable , but it doesn ’ t tell you everything .
You want some quantitative data that enables you to say , “ Hey , Pete Buttigieg is doing really well among older voters , ” which is one thing we ’ ve just noticed in recent polling , then go out and talk to older voters .
Sabato , pollster : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be dropped entirely .
Most readers didn ’ t understand what probability really means .
It just confuses people , and to do it again next year would be to plant a bomb that could explode in your face .
2016 provoked soul searching about whether Clinton was held to different media standards than Trump , both in the extent and type of coverage .
Is the same happening again within the traditional media obsession with the horserace ?
Bruni , the New York Times : Here ’ s one specific way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ judge whether we ’ ve done our jobs well at the end of the 2020 election : we will not have gone to the Democratic finalists in the primary stage or to the ultimate Democratic nominee , whoever that person is , every time Trump hurls an insult and accusation at them .
We will not have made that the main news story of the day : “ Candidates traded volleys in a war of words.
” We do that all the time .
Sullivan , the Washington Post : I see sexism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s improved since Hillary Clinton ran but it ’ s still not great .
The disappearance of Kamala Harris has some of that wrapped into it , and the constant discussions about whether Elizabeth Warren is likable enough to be elected reflects inherent sexism that we haven ’ t really dealt with .
Page , USA Today : On the day that Donald Trump announced , my assumption was that he was not going to be nominated for president .
And it took a while for me to realize what voters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would be .
So that is a lesson that I think we tried to apply this time , by looking at the Democratic field … It ’ s not up to us .
It ’ s up to voters .
Mukhopadhyay , Teen Vogue : One thing we ’ re seeing with young people is that they are having trouble following the deep nuances between candidates .
It ’ s kind of boring to really point out some of these policy differences because they ’ re not really that different .
Smith , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Our audience actively hates it .
We have to think about a way to replace it in a way that is compelling and that cares about the personalities and the policies while always keeping in mind that there are real things at stake .
Now it ’ s kids in cages .
I mean , who cares that somebody fires his political consultants .
Beddoes , the Economist : We are beefing up our data department , which we ’ ll combine with traditional shoe-leather reporting .
We plan to put those together @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the ability to stand back from the tick-tock of the horserace minute-by-minute , to give rigorous fair-minded analysis .
Smith , BuzzFeed : For our audience nobody thinks that politics is a game or that it ’ s fun or a sport .
The kind of coverage that treats it as though it ’ s entertainment is repellant to people .
That doesn ’ t mean they don ’ t want to know who ’ s going to win or that they don ’ t care about polling , but just that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stakes are .
That ’ s the brand for our coverage : the stakes 2020 .
Trump ’ s unexpected victory four years ago led to questions about whether media organisations , in their coastal bubbles , had failed to hear the frustration of voters in the heartlands .
How is it playing for 2020 ?
Baquet , the New York Times : We have to get out in the country more .
We have to talk to more people , which we ’ ve started to do .
Sarah Kendzior , St @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The View from Flyover Country : Dispatches from the Forgotten America : National media is making the same mistakes as in 2016 .
The midwest has become the sort of stand-in region for what the national media think of as the “ forgotten voter ” .
What a lot of these coastal outlets are doing is parachuting in here with the narrative pre-written trying to find people who fit their preconceptions of what people in the midwest are like .
Honestly the best way they could fix this problem would be to hire @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Al Cross , director of the University of Kentucky Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues : It ’ s not just boots on the ground .
You can ’ t have a parachute mentality .
You have to have some appreciation of rural sensibility .
The best reporters know how to do that .
Sykes , the Bulwark : I ’ m in Wisconsin and I do a lot of work on the coast as well .
I ’ ll be on an MSNBC show , and people on the panels @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strange throwback figures , “ nostalgic for a time when men were able to slap women around ” .
And it was like , “ Wait , no.
” First of all , understand that these are people who have their own values , their own communities , and every time you talk about them in this way , you deepen this red , blue divide , this thing .
You need to not treat them as these … deplorable troglodytes .
Caitlin Byrd , political reporter for the Charleston Post and Courier @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you see the same descriptors used to talk about places where I was from : backwoods , dirt road , small town , quiet .
The same tropes over and over .
But this cycle is it seems that more national reporters in particular are realizing that the south is more complicated .
Gitlin , Columbia University : There was a sense after 2016 that we weren ’ t listening to enough people in diners in Ohio .
That wasn ’ t so much misguided as it was inflated .
The average Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ went from not noticing people whose life chances are impacted by the rustification of the midwest to thinking that they are now the central story .
It ’ s an absurd overcompensation .
Kendzior , journalist and author : I meet a lot of people who have some regret about voting for Trump , who are reluctant at times to admit that regret on record .
Some are embarrassed about having made this regrettable decision … The base is still there , they ’ re very frenetic … But I do think that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ portrays it .
Only 46 % of 18-29 year olds voted in 2016 .
Was the failure of media to address young people ’ s interests partly to blame , and if so how to fix it ?
Mukhopadhyay , Teen Vogue : The way the media talks about the youth vote is as social media Snapchat-obsessed young people , who don ’ t care about politics and are not engaged because it ’ s above their head and they are so selfish and that ’ s why they don ’ t vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kind of narrative would turn me off too .
When you do have outlets that speak to their interests you notice that they do become engaged .
Swisher , Recode : When I started my podcast , someone said to me : “ You know , Kara , millennials like snackable content.
” And I was like : “ I don ’ t want to write for people who want snacks .
Everyone who ’ s substantive wants substance.
” They said : “ Millennials are twitchy .
They can ’ t focus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s interesting about it is , they were dead wrong .
Mukhopadhyay , Teen Vogue : None of the presidential candidates have a very well-fleshed-out strategy for Gen Z .
Nobody really knows how the 18-year-old who is in St Louis who works in a fast-food place , we have no idea what they want .
We don ’ t know how they ’ re going to vote .
At Teen Vogue we see it as an opportunity for a generation that has not had somebody actually speak to their needs : climate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ student debt .
Diversity in media – both in terms of the internal makeup of news teams and the way those teams cover Trump ’ s stoking of racial fears – will be a running theme in 2020 .
Errin Haines Whack , national writer on race and ethnicity for the Associated Press : As we head into 2020 , I am still on the campaign trail quite frequently the only black woman in a room .
Sometimes the only black person .
The reality is that two thirds of the people who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yet we have the most diverse field in the history of Democratic politics in the upcoming primary : a record number of women , a record number of people of color .
Responding to that diversity in newsrooms seems to be a journalistic imperative .
Dwight Watkins , Salon editor and bestselling author : I ’ ve been seeing the same people … get out there and basically tell similar stories and make assumptions about whole groups of people .
They talk about the black vote as if it ’ s just one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ utilize the same players and the same people , they take their biases and they apply these biases to our whole group .
And this is just not fair .
Ramos , Univision : Many news organisations have started calling Trump a racist – that ’ s something that didn ’ t happen in 2016 .
When Trump said in June 2015 that Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists , that was a racist statement but many people were not comfortable calling him out on that .
Since then he ’ s made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ news media feel more comfortable now in calling Trump a racist .
Baquet , the New York Times : People who think that Trump only won because 40 % of America is racist are not looking closely at the numbers , and do not have a fully empathetic understanding of America .
I ’ m not saying he didn ’ t stoke racism and get votes from racists .
But that ’ s a very easy answer .
I don ’ t think that journalists should deal with easy answers .
Mukhopadhyay , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the conversations after 2016 were “ Oh no !
we focused so much on getting all these women in the newsroom we alienated all these white men ” .
After the election , editors felt they needed less diverse newsrooms because they were concerned they had gone “ too far left ” or had incorporated identity politics too much and were alienating this white base that was all riled up for Trump .
Ramos , Univision : The numbers of Latinos represented in the US – whether in newsrooms or in Congress @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t have enough Latinos on the air or reporting .
I do see changes .
The first presidential debate among Democratic candidates was organised by NBC and Telemundo , and José Diaz-Balart was one of the moderators .
That alone meant that Spanish was spoken in that debate , immigration was addressed and Hispanic issues were talked about .
I was one of the moderators in the second debate , and for the first time not only did we talk about Latino issues and immigration but I brought in Latin American issues .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
The other 500 journalists pontificating in a journalist ’ s Twitter feed ?
Johnston , Axios : My social media policy for the newsroom would be : delete your Twitter account and don ’ t use that as your window on the world , it ’ s a journalists ’ echo chamber .
OK , that ’ s a joke – we are not going to un-invent the internet .
But I do think it ’ s important in newsrooms to talk about the impact that it has .
We tell our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , get out of the house , go wander the halls of Congress , fly someplace and talk to people .
Mukhopadhyay , Teen Vogue : If you looked at Twitter after the recent Democratic presidential debate , my entire timeline was filled with criticism of Pete Buttigieg .
Meanwhile he ’ s polling really well .
That discrepancy reminds me of that we thought Trump couldn ’ t win in 2016 because we all hated him and thought he was a joke .
That to me indicates that we haven ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ magazine : I try to remind myself that the entire electorate is not represented in these couple hundred Twitter accounts .
Reporting team : Ed Pilkington , Adam Gabbatt and Jim Waterson from the Guardian ; Akintunde Ahmad , Lauren Harris and Savannah Jacobson from the Columbia Journalism Review

Guardian US and the Columbia Journalism Review

In the weeks after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the American media went through deep soul searching. Most news outlets had been taken by surprise by Trump’s victory, had failed to see the rise of the electorate that would put him in the White House, and had been led by the clickbait of his tweets. Then there was Hillary Clinton’s emails and an arguable failure to appreciate the importance of misinformation and Russian interference in the election.
This time the press has pledged to do better. Yet, with less than a year to go before Americans go to the polls again, there are already signs that mistakes of the magnitude of 2016 may be repeated or new challenges arise.
The Guardian and the Columbia Journalism Review have partnered to interview 30 top media figures and commentators, asking how ready they think we are for the 2020 presidential election.
‘The media got the country wrong’
The stakes could not be higher. With the 2020 presidential election upon us, leading media practitioners and commentators are in anxious and reflective mood.
Journalists file information inside phone booths at the public impeachment hearings on 19 November 2019 on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. Photograph: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for the Washington Post: The press is under assault and democracy is under assault right now, and these two things are related. One of the things we didn’t do well covering the presidential election last time was that we failed to distinguish between the serious and not so serious – the term false equivalency comes to mind. So Trump and his sexual assault claims, business record, history of racism – all those things were made equal to Hillary Clinton’s emails. Today we’re calling it a little better. When things are “racist” we’re willing sometimes to use that word. We’re willing to use the word “lie”. We’ve come a ways in that sense, but I’m still not particularly positive about how we’re going to deal with 2020.
Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times: In 2016 I think the media got the country wrong. I don’t think we got Trump. We didn’t understand how much the country was angry at elites, upset about the fallout from the economic crisis. And I don’t think we understood quite how much the country just wanted to shake things up. We covered it as usual, the way we always cover elections, as a clash of two ideologies, and I think it was much, much deeper.
Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News: The media has this incredible quadrennial habit of learning all the lessons of four years ago and applying them when the medium has already moved on. So I think the media is totally prepared not to repeat the mistakes of the last cycle, like giving Trump endless livestreams and letting him use provocative tweets to dominate the conversation. But I’m sure we will fuck it up in some new way we aren’t expecting.
In 2020 there will be 32 million Latinos eligible to vote and I’m concerned the story might repeat: Latinos stay home. Jorge Ramos, Univision news anchor
Samhita Mukhopadhyay, executive editor of Teen Vogue: People are worried and we don’t have an answer. The US president is openly attacking journalists. He has convinced a third of the country that the New York Times is fake news. We can criticize the Times all we want for substantive reasons, but it’s not fake news. We have to have some general understanding: outlets like the Guardian, the New Yorker, these are not fake news!
Jorge Ramos, Univision news anchor: In 2016 there were 27 million Latinos eligible to vote and 13 million of them decided to stay home – more than 50%. In 2020 there will be 32 million Latinos eligible to vote and I’m very concerned that the story might repeat itself again: that Latinos decide to stay home because they don’t like President Trump but don’t trust the Democrats either. That would be terrible for Latinos.
Daniel Arnall, executive editor of MSNBC: So one of the things that we are doing differently than in the last cycle is focusing more on issues, and coverage of issues that folks across the country are interested in. That is going to be driving our coverage. We’re going to be substantially less interested in taking like live candidate events, I think, and dealing with all of that.
Trump tweet coverage is low-hanging fruit. Samhita Mukhopadhyay, executive editor of Teen Vogue
Charlie Sykes, editor-in-chief at the Bulwark: Going back to 2016, when I was part of what you’d consider to be the conservative media, it’s difficult to remember that there was still a lot of diversity of opinion. There were a lot of conservative commentators and talk show hosts who were very critical of Donald Trump. What’s really changed is how increasingly tribalized the media has become.
Kara Swisher, tech journalist and founder of Recode: What happened in 2016 should not come as a surprise for anyone who has been paying attention to the tech companies. Tech moguls collect all the money and pay none of the price.
Trump and his tweets
In 2016 Trump regularly set the 24-hour news agenda with his early morning clickbait tweets. Will the same Trump-obsession dominate again?
Donald Trump speaks to members of the media before boarding Marine One at the White House in Washington on 2 December 2019. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP
Frank Bruni, columnist for the New York Times: We’ve learned that if you write a story about the ridiculousness of Trump’s latest tweet it gets a lot more traffic than an analysis of Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare for All plan. Trump understands what news catches people’s interest, he has a very acute sense of what people will click on. So I’m concerned that we are going to end up giving Trump more than the lion’s share of media time all the way up to election night.
Mukhopadhyay, Teen Vogue: We are living amid constant cutbacks. Outlets are shrinking. I worry the story continues to be driven by what is performing, by KPIs (key performance indicators). That’s where a lot of the Trump tweet coverage comes from – it’s low-hanging fruit.
Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today: I make no apology for the amount of coverage we give President Trump. He’s the president. If he says something that’s incredibly provocative or does something that has far-reaching ramifications, we have an obligation to report it.
Ramos, Univision: When Trump announced his candidacy in 2015 and when he ejected me from a press conference, we told everyone, listen, this is someone who’s making racist remarks, he’s attacking the press, yet very few people pay attention. Today I believe it’s a completely different story. Journalists are being much more aggressive than they were in 2016.
Smith, BuzzFeed: This is a totally different moment to 2016 – it’s an election that will be a referendum on Trump’s presidency. The challenge will be covering his presidency and not what he says about it.
Olivia Nuzzi, Washington correspondent for New York magazine: Trump is sort of blowing everything up. And the way he has done that has provided more opportunity for reporters to be creative. In the Trump White House, nothing works like it’s supposed to.
Just one Trump speech will have 60 false and misleading claims … It’s incredibly depressing. Glenn Kessler, editor of The Fact Checker, Washington Post
Baquet, the New York Times: When you cover a theatrical politician you must try not to get caught up in the theatre. Having said that, I’m one of those people who thinks theatrics are still worth covering – they are part of the way he leads the country.
Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University: During the first Gulf war, the Washington bureaus of major news organizations – spearheaded by Harper’s together with the networks and a number of major news organizations – said: “We’re not going to go along with the ‘minders’ scheme.” Such collective action is not beyond the bounds of the imagination for 2020.
Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of the Economist: I think there is some debate in certain quarters about whether the media should be taking one side or another – stand in opposition to Trump. And that’s in part what is feeding the sense of polarisation and people living in two entirely ecosystems in the US.
Lies, damn lies and factchecks
Since Trump took office, the Washington Post has counted 13,435 of his false and misleading claims. This extraordinary splurge of untruths poses huge challenges for the media as we go into 2020.
Kellyanne Conway speaks to reporters after Donald Trump terminated James Comey. Photograph: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Glenn Kessler, editor of the Fact Checker, Washington Post: The database of Trump’s false claims is a very depressing duty. It just drags you down to have to go through it, like reading one of the president’s rally speeches. Just one speech will have 60 false and misleading claims, most of which you’ve already factchecked and said were false. It’s incredibly depressing.
Page, USA Today: There is much more impressive factchecking than there was in 2016. One of the things that we’ve seen happen is not to let something that we know is inaccurate stand unchallenged.
We can talk about it and help voters identify what is true and what is not. Nicholas Johnston, editor in chief of Axios
Ramos, Univision: I’ve covered Latin America for many decades and I think that has prepared me for what I’m seeing right here in the US. To have someone leading the country who is an authoritarian, who is not telling the truth, who’s constantly lying in a country that is completely divided.
Bruni, the New York Times: You can only say the same thing so many times before people become numb and deaf to it. If the public is not listening, I don’t know how that becomes our fault.
Nicholas Johnston, editor-in-chief of Axios: What makes me somewhat optimistic is that four or six years ago we didn’t even have the vocabulary to talk about deepfake, fake video and audio, misinformation, the manipulation of social media, the end of truth. Now we know that these are things, we can talk about it and help voters identify what is true and what is not.
Kessler, the Washington Post: I’ve covered just about every presidential administration since Reagan and this administration has the least fidelity to truth and honesty of any I’ve encountered.
All of us in the media were just so convinced Trump couldn’t win. Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times
Sullivan, the Washington Post: The Sunday TV talkshows will bring on people like Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s White House counsel, who is just an inveterate liar. By having her on, she is allowed to say things that aren’t true and although she can be challenged it’s still a very strong message having her on air. My feeling is, don’t have her on, you know she’s going to lie her way through every broadcast. That’s not censorship. Censorship is government action that disallows things being said, but judgments made by editors and producers are not censorship.
Swisher, Recode: If you’re not scared when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg says it’s okay for politicians to lie, especially in the context of a system that is so viral compared to any other media, you should be afraid.
Polls
Most opinion polls in 2016 predicted that Hillary Clinton would win. On election day the New York Times gave Clinton an “85% chance to win” through its forecasting model. There’s been a lot of soul-searching since then. Have we learned the lessons?
A 2016 election night watch party at La Plaza de Cultura y Artes in Los Angeles, California. Photograph: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Arnall, MSNBC: I am still hesitant on polling, and I think there’s been a real reluctance by a lot of major organizations to really come to terms with the failures of that through the last cycle. I think that’s a potential weak point that a lot of people should be pushing their organizations on. I’m still like, “What are we doing differently this time?”
Larry Sabato, pollster and director of University of Virginia Center for Politics: All of us pollsters got to eat a large, bitter humble pie after election night in 2016, which came as a tremendous shock. We’d all expected Hillary Clinton to win by three points or so, giving her over 300 electoral college votes. When Trump won we were forced to relearn that polling is not the word of God or handed down on the Mount to Moses.
Baquet, the New York Times: All of us in the media were just so convinced Trump couldn’t win. But he was outside of the paint-by-numbers game we have developed.
Discussions about whether Elizabeth Warren is likeable enough reflects inherent sexism we haven’t dealt with. Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for The Washington Post
Sabato, pollster: The polling industry has tried to correct itself after it was so badly caught off-guard. We used not to weight by educational level and it turned out that if we had done so we might have been more accurate in 2016. So now everybody is weighting by education. We also had our fingers burned over the electoral college. The polls got the popular vote more or less correct, with Clinton winning the popular vote by two percentage points, but we should have thought more about the profound electoral college impact that gave Trump his victory.
Page, USA Today: You have to rely both on quantitative and qualitative interviews. Polling is really valuable, but it doesn’t tell you everything. You want some quantitative data that enables you to say, “Hey, Pete Buttigieg is doing really well among older voters,” which is one thing we’ve just noticed in recent polling, then go out and talk to older voters.
Sabato, pollster: As for forecasting models, they need to be dropped entirely. Most readers didn’t understand what probability really means. It just confuses people, and to do it again next year would be to plant a bomb that could explode in your face.
‘Horserace coverage is dead’
2016 provoked soul searching about whether Clinton was held to different media standards than Trump, both in the extent and type of coverage. Is the same happening again within the traditional media obsession with the horserace?
A Trump rally in Sunrise, Florida on 26 November 2019. Photograph: Jayme Gershen/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Bruni, the New York Times: Here’s one specific way I think we will be able to judge whether we’ve done our jobs well at the end of the 2020 election: we will not have gone to the Democratic finalists in the primary stage or to the ultimate Democratic nominee, whoever that person is, every time Trump hurls an insult and accusation at them. We will not have made that the main news story of the day: “Candidates traded volleys in a war of words.” We do that all the time.
Sullivan, the Washington Post: I see sexism in the coverage of women candidates. It’s improved since Hillary Clinton ran but it’s still not great. The disappearance of Kamala Harris has some of that wrapped into it, and the constant discussions about whether Elizabeth Warren is likable enough to be elected reflects inherent sexism that we haven’t really dealt with.
Page, USA Today: On the day that Donald Trump announced, my assumption was that he was not going to be nominated for president. And it took a while for me to realize what voters were saying, which was that he would be. So that is a lesson that I think we tried to apply this time, by looking at the Democratic field … It’s not up to us. It’s up to voters.
Mukhopadhyay, Teen Vogue: One thing we’re seeing with young people is that they are having trouble following the deep nuances between candidates. It’s kind of boring to really point out some of these policy differences because they’re not really that different.
Smith, BuzzFeed: Horserace coverage is dead. Our audience actively hates it. We have to think about a way to replace it in a way that is compelling and that cares about the personalities and the policies while always keeping in mind that there are real things at stake. Now it’s kids in cages. I mean, who cares that somebody fires his political consultants.
Hire people who actually live in the midwest. Sarah Kendzior, St Louis, Missouri-based journalist
Beddoes, the Economist: We are beefing up our data department, which we’ll combine with traditional shoe-leather reporting. We plan to put those together with the outsider perspective we bring, and the ability to stand back from the tick-tock of the horserace minute-by-minute, to give rigorous fair-minded analysis.
Smith, BuzzFeed: For our audience nobody thinks that politics is a game or that it’s fun or a sport. The kind of coverage that treats it as though it’s entertainment is repellant to people. That doesn’t mean they don’t want to know who’s going to win or that they don’t care about polling, but just that everybody has a sense of what the stakes are. That’s the brand for our coverage: the stakes 2020.
Fly-over country
Trump’s unexpected victory four years ago led to questions about whether media organisations, in their coastal bubbles, had failed to hear the frustration of voters in the heartlands. How is it playing for 2020?
Voters fill out ballots in Janesville, Wisconsin, on 14 August 2018. Photograph: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Baquet, the New York Times: We have to get out in the country more. We have to talk to more people, which we’ve started to do.
Sarah Kendzior, St Louis, Missouri-based journalist and author of The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America: National media is making the same mistakes as in 2016. The midwest has become the sort of stand-in region for what the national media think of as the “forgotten voter”. What a lot of these coastal outlets are doing is parachuting in here with the narrative pre-written trying to find people who fit their preconceptions of what people in the midwest are like. Honestly the best way they could fix this problem would be to hire people who actually live in these states.
Al Cross, director of the University of Kentucky Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues: It’s not just boots on the ground. You can’t have a parachute mentality. You have to have some appreciation of rural sensibility. The best reporters know how to do that.
Sykes, the Bulwark: I’m in Wisconsin and I do a lot of work on the coast as well. I’ll be on an MSNBC show, and people on the panels start talking about Wisconsin voters as these strange throwback figures, “nostalgic for a time when men were able to slap women around”. And it was like, “Wait, no.” First of all, understand that these are people who have their own values, their own communities, and every time you talk about them in this way, you deepen this red, blue divide, this thing. You need to not treat them as these … deplorable troglodytes.
Caitlin Byrd, political reporter for the Charleston Post and Courier: Growing up in the south, you see the same descriptors used to talk about places where I was from: backwoods, dirt road, small town, quiet. The same tropes over and over. But this cycle is it seems that more national reporters in particular are realizing that the south is more complicated.
None of the presidential candidates have a very well-fleshed-out strategy for Gen Z. Samhita Mukhopadhyay, executive editor of Teen Vogue
Gitlin, Columbia University: There was a sense after 2016 that we weren’t listening to enough people in diners in Ohio. That wasn’t so much misguided as it was inflated. The average Trump voter has above-average income! News media went from not noticing people whose life chances are impacted by the rustification of the midwest to thinking that they are now the central story. It’s an absurd overcompensation.
Kendzior, journalist and author: I meet a lot of people who have some regret about voting for Trump, who are reluctant at times to admit that regret on record. Some are embarrassed about having made this regrettable decision … The base is still there, they’re very frenetic … But I do think that base is much smaller than the media portrays it.
The need to reach young voters
Only 46% of 18-29 year olds voted in 2016. Was the failure of media to address young people’s interests partly to blame, and if so how to fix it?
Hillary Clinton takes a selfie during a 2016 rally in Des Moines, Iowa. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
Mukhopadhyay, Teen Vogue: The way the media talks about the youth vote is as social media Snapchat-obsessed young people, who don’t care about politics and are not engaged because it’s above their head and they are so selfish and that’s why they don’t vote. If I was Gen Z that kind of narrative would turn me off too. When you do have outlets that speak to their interests you notice that they do become engaged.
Swisher, Recode: When I started my podcast, someone said to me: “You know, Kara, millennials like snackable content.” And I was like: “I don’t want to write for people who want snacks. Everyone who’s substantive wants substance.” They said: “Millennials are twitchy. They can’t focus on anything long.” And what’s interesting about it is, they were dead wrong.
Many news organisations have started calling Trump a racist – that’s something that didn’t happen in 2016. Jorge Ramos, Univision news anchor
Mukhopadhyay, Teen Vogue: None of the presidential candidates have a very well-fleshed-out strategy for Gen Z. Nobody really knows how the 18-year-old who is in St Louis who works in a fast-food place, we have no idea what they want. We don’t know how they’re going to vote. At Teen Vogue we see it as an opportunity for a generation that has not had somebody actually speak to their needs: climate change, immigration, juvenile justice, student debt.
Race in the race
Diversity in media – both in terms of the internal makeup of news teams and the way those teams cover Trump’s stoking of racial fears – will be a running theme in 2020.
An attendee at a rally for Kamala Harris in Oakland, California. Photograph: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Errin Haines Whack, national writer on race and ethnicity for the Associated Press: As we head into 2020, I am still on the campaign trail quite frequently the only black woman in a room. Sometimes the only black person. The reality is that two thirds of the people who cover political journalism are white men. Yet we have the most diverse field in the history of Democratic politics in the upcoming primary: a record number of women, a record number of people of color. Responding to that diversity in newsrooms seems to be a journalistic imperative.
Dwight Watkins, Salon editor and bestselling author: I’ve been seeing the same people … get out there and basically tell similar stories and make assumptions about whole groups of people. They talk about the black vote as if it’s just one thing. So I think when you utilize the same players and the same people, they take their biases and they apply these biases to our whole group. And this is just not fair.
Ramos, Univision: Many news organisations have started calling Trump a racist – that’s something that didn’t happen in 2016. When Trump said in June 2015 that Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists, that was a racist statement but many people were not comfortable calling him out on that. Since then he’s made many other racist remarks and reporters and news media feel more comfortable now in calling Trump a racist.
Baquet, the New York Times: People who think that Trump only won because 40% of America is racist are not looking closely at the numbers, and do not have a fully empathetic understanding of America. I’m not saying he didn’t stoke racism and get votes from racists. But that’s a very easy answer. I don’t think that journalists should deal with easy answers.
Delete your Twitter account and don’t use that as your window on the world. Nicholas Johnston, editor in chief of Axios
Mukhopadhyay, Teen Vogue: I felt a lot of the conversations after 2016 were “Oh no! we focused so much on getting all these women in the newsroom we alienated all these white men”. After the election, editors felt they needed less diverse newsrooms because they were concerned they had gone “too far left” or had incorporated identity politics too much and were alienating this white base that was all riled up for Trump.
Ramos, Univision: The numbers of Latinos represented in the US – whether in newsrooms or in Congress – are abysmal. We don’t have enough Latinos on the air or reporting. I do see changes. The first presidential debate among Democratic candidates was organised by NBC and Telemundo, and José Diaz-Balart was one of the moderators. That alone meant that Spanish was spoken in that debate, immigration was addressed and Hispanic issues were talked about. I was one of the moderators in the second debate, and for the first time not only did we talk about Latino issues and immigration but I brought in Latin American issues.
Escape the Twitter bubble
Where will 2020 election news come from? The other 500 journalists pontificating in a journalist’s Twitter feed?
Campaign signs sit on chairs ahead of an event with Donald Trump in Racine, Wisconsin. Photograph: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Johnston, Axios: My social media policy for the newsroom would be: delete your Twitter account and don’t use that as your window on the world, it’s a journalists’ echo chamber. OK, that’s a joke – we are not going to un-invent the internet. But I do think it’s important in newsrooms to talk about the impact that it has. We tell our reporters to call people on the telephone, get out of the house, go wander the halls of Congress, fly someplace and talk to people.
Mukhopadhyay, Teen Vogue: If you looked at Twitter after the recent Democratic presidential debate, my entire timeline was filled with criticism of Pete Buttigieg. Meanwhile he’s polling really well. That discrepancy reminds me of that we thought Trump couldn’t win in 2016 because we all hated him and thought he was a joke. That to me indicates that we haven’t learned anything.
Nuzzi, New York magazine: I try to remind myself that the entire electorate is not represented in these couple hundred Twitter accounts.
Reporting team: Ed Pilkington, Adam Gabbatt and Jim Waterson from the Guardian; Akintunde Ahmad, Lauren Harris and Savannah Jacobson from the Columbia Journalism Review


theguardian--2020-01-08--Trump says 'Iran appears to be standing down' following missile strikes – live

Dominic Raab , Britain ’ s foreign secretary , arrived in Washington an hour ago .
He had been expected to meet with counterpart Mike Pompeo , US secretary of state , tomorrow but the meeting has been brought forward to late this afternoon .
It ’ s now expected to take place at 4.30pm ET/9.30pm GMT this afternoon .
So far , we understand the two will not make public remarks before they disappear into their tête-a-tête but that could always change in the moment .
The two have met before , several times , and this was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in December ’ s UK general election .
It ’ s not an emergency meeting following the eruption of the US-Iran crisis in the last week ( which affects NATO , British troops in Iraq , Britain ’ s participation in the Iran nuclear deal and British interests overall in a stable Middle East ) .
But there seems little doubt the events of the last six days will now be on the agenda .
Donald Trump urged Britain and others earlier today to join the US in abandoning the Iran nuclear deal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the White House on a phone call earlier today between Donald Trump and British prime minister Boris Johnson .
“ The two leaders discussed the current situation in the Middle East and agreed to continue close coordination in support of shared national security interests.
” The US did not consult nor notify the UK before it assassinated Iranian general Qassem Suleimani last week .

Maanvi Singh in San Francisco (now) and Joanna Walters in New York (earlier)

9 Jan 2020 00.10 GMT Lindsey Graham said that fellow Republican senators Mike Lee and Rand Paul were “overreacting” and that those seeking to limit the president’s war powers were “empowering the enemy”. Just asked Graham about the criticism from Paul and Lee over Iran briefing. “I think they’re overreacting. I’m going to let people know ..to play this game with the war powers act, which I think is unconstitutional, is that whether you mean to or not, you’re empowering the enemy” pic.twitter.com/pnlISwkORb — Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 8, 2020 Lee told Fox News that it was “wrong” for the Trump administration to insist that there must be “no dissension” in the GOP over warlike actions from the president.
8 Jan 2020 23.45 GMT In the aftermath of the Iran missile attacks, there’s been a spread of online disinformation. The Guardian’s Jim Waterson reports: Iran’s missile attacks on two Iraqi airbases have been accompanied by a spread of online disinformation, falsely labelled images and claims of news sources being hacked, which have added to jitters in the region regarding the attacks. Iranian state television said on Wednesday that at least 80 “American terrorists” were killed, despite the US making clear that it had not sustained any casualties as a result of rocket attacks on Iraqi military bases hosting American troops. The attacks occurred in retaliation for the US’s assassination of the powerful Iranian general Qassem Suleimani. Iran has a long history of running state-backed disinformation campaigns which attempt to influence opinion overseas, with Facebook regularly banning Iranian pages it believes are spreading false and divisive material aimed at audiences in the US and UK. Twitter suspended an account impersonating the Israeli journalist Jack Khoury, which had been used to promote false claims that hundreds of US soldiers had been injured in the attacks and claimed they had been secretly evacuated to a hospital in Tel Aviv by a military aircraft. False claims spread online after Iran missile attack on Iraqi airbases Read more
8 Jan 2020 22.44 GMT Top US General: Iran intended to kill Americans The chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley, told reporters that Iran’s missile attack had been intended to kill American personnel and cause damage to the al-Asad airbase. “I believe, based on what I saw and what I know, is that (the strikes) were intended to cause structural damage, destroy vehicles and equipment and aircraft and to kill personnel. That’s my own personal assessment,” Milley said. “But the analytics is in the hands of professional intelligence analysts. So they’re looking at that.” The defense secretary, Mark Esper, said the intent has yet to be determined.
Updated at 22.54 GMT
8 Jan 2020 22.23 GMT Evening summary Hello again, US politics watchers, I take my leave now after a lively day but hand you over to my colleague, Maanvi Singh, in California to take you through the next few hours of US-involved geopolitical events and reaction here in the United States. Key events so far today: The US House will vote tomorrow on new legislation to curb the president’s war powers, after Donald Trump failed to consult or inform Congress before he ordered the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani last week.
tomorrow on new legislation to curb the president’s war powers, after Donald Trump failed to consult or inform Congress before he ordered the assassination of Iranian general last week. Rockets have been falling in the heavily-fortified “Green Zone” around the US Embassy and military facilities in Baghdad . Details scarce so far.
and military facilities in . Details scarce so far. Boris Johnson and Justin Trudeau spoke on the phone about the US-Iranian crisis and the crash of a Ukrainian flight outside Tehran earlier today in which many Canadian passengers were killed.
and spoke on the phone about the US-Iranian crisis and the crash of a Ukrainian flight outside Tehran earlier today in which many Canadian passengers were killed. The British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab , and US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo , are meeting in Washington this hour.
, and US secretary of state, , are meeting in Washington this hour. Donald Trump gave a live televised address at the White House this morning, in which he said “Iran appears to be standing down” after its relatively restrained missile strike on US facilities in Iraq overnight, and pledged more sanctions against Iran, but also appealed to the Islamic republic to explored “shared priorities” with the US, such as Islamic State.
8 Jan 2020 21.59 GMT “No evidence of imminent threat” - Booker Here is some more reaction from both sides of the aisle - but in surprisingly parallel directions, rather than the usual polar opposite. Democratic 2020 candidate Cory Booker just tweeted about the Capitol Hill briefing on the US-Iran crisis. Just stepped out of a 75-minute briefing regarding President Trump’s military actions in Iraq—we were provided no evidence of an imminent threat. I remain deeply skeptical that he had justification for this attack. — Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) January 8, 2020 Booker and other Democrats running for president have had their campaigns rudely interrupted by the rising tension over Iran. Cory Booker on the campaign trail in Iowa yesterday. The Iowa caucuses on February 3 will be the first voting event in the Democratic party process to nominate its 2020 candidate to face Donald Trump at the election in November Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP Less prominent 2020 candidate Tulsi Gabbard was, seconds ago, on CNN saying more or less the same thing. Meanwhile, Republican maverick Senators of the day, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Utah’s Mike Lee, are also exasperated. Lee told Fox News that the congressional briefing was “lame” and that it was “wrong” for the senior Trump administration briefers - the secretary of state, defense secretary, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and director of the CIA - to tell GOP members of congress that there must be “no dissension” in the ranks over any warlike actions from Donald Trump. It seems the members were given very luke warm, unreassuring assurances over whether Congress would be involved in any near future further actions of aggression towards Iran. Lee called it the worst briefing he’d ever heard in his nine years in the Senate. Republican senator Mike Lee blasts the Trump administrations post-Iran briefing, says they were told they could not dissent from Trump, couldn't debate it, and if Trump needed justification to go to war "I'm sure we could think of something" pic.twitter.com/bfyPqoSf8c — Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) January 8, 2020
Updated at 22.12 GMT


theguardian--2020-01-08--Trump backs away from further military confrontation with Iran

Donald Trump backed away from further military confrontation with Iran on Wednesday after days of escalating tensions , saying Tehran appeared to be standing down following missile attacks on two Iraqi bases hosting US and coalition troops .
Flanked by the vice-president , Mike Pence , the defense secretary , Mark Esper , and other high ranking military officials in uniform , Trump delivered remarks in the Grand Foyer of the White House , hours after Iran declared the attack to be retaliation for the US drone strike last week that killed the senior Iranian Gen Qassem Suleimani .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world , ” Trump said , reading from teleprompters .
“ No American or Iraqi lives were lost because of the precautions taken the dispersal forces , and an early warning system that worked very well.
” Later , the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff , General Mark Milley , said the nature of the missile damage at the targeted bases suggested the attack was intended to take US and allied lives .
“ I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and what I know , that they were intended to cause structural damage , destroy vehicles and equipment and aircraft and to kill personnel .
That ’ s my own personal assessment , ” Milley said .
Satellite images showed the missiles destroyed buildings at al-Asad base in Anbar province .
A few hours after the president spoke , the fortified diplomatic area in Baghdad , the Green Zone , was hit by two rockets .
Initial reports suggest they were fired locally , and caused no casualties , but they were a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , some with close ties to Tehran .
Trump ’ s speech was notably more sober than his more bellicose statements and tweets in the immediate aftermath of Suleimani ’ s killing , in which he threatened to bomb Iranian cultural sites , a potential war crime .
The United States , in recent days , deployed 3,500 paratroopers to the Middle East and Americans were urged to leave the region over safety concerns .
Trump said the United States would continue evaluating options “ in response to Iranian aggression ” and that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be imposed .
He did not elaborate .
Iran is already so heavily sanctioned that few experts believe that further US measures would make much economic difference .
The president stressed the considerable power of the United States military but said that his administration did not seek conflict .
“ Our missiles are big , powerful accurate lethal and fast .
Under construction are many hypersonic missiles , ” Trump said .
“ The fact that we have this great military and equipment however it does not mean we have to use it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it.
” The president , who is campaigning for re-election in November , has faced fierce criticism from senior Democrats in recent days over his administration ’ s handling of the standoff .
Joe Biden , the former vice-president seen as the frontrunner for the presidential nomination , accused Trump brought the United States “ dangerously close ” to war with Iran .
Senior administration officials briefed Congress behind closed doors on the decision to target Suleimani and other aspects of the crisis , but they were castigated on both sides of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ There were so many important questions that they did not answer , ” said Democratic senator Chuck Schumer .
“ As the questions began to get tough , they walked out.
” Republican senator Mike Lee called it “ the worst briefing I ’ ve had on a military issue in my nine years ” in the Senate , according to CNN .
Lee called the administration ’ s handling of the crisis “ un-American ” and “ completely unacceptable ” .
On Thursday , the House of Representatives will vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an end to US military action against Iran without congressional approval .
Trump ’ s address came after Iran launched more than a dozen missiles at Iraqi bases hosting US and coalition troops .
Al-Asad airbase in Iraq ’ s Anbar province was hit 17 times , including by two ballistic missiles that failed to detonate , according to the Iraqi government .
A further five missiles were targeted at a base in the northern city of Erbil in the assault , which began at about 1.30am local time on Wednesday .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made clear the strikes had “ concluded ” early on Wednesday morning , and characterised them as “ proportionate measures in self-defence ” rather than an act of war .
“ We do not seek escalation or war , but will defend ourselves against any aggression , ” Zarif wrote on Twitter .
However , while both sides appeared to step back from confrontation in the short term , analysts have warned that the standoff may continue to play out through proxies in the Middle East .
Security experts have also warned of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Iran ’ s supreme leader , Ali Khamenei , described the bombings as “ a slap in the face ” for the US but warned Tehran still had a wider goal of expelling its enemy from the region .
The Iranian president , Hassan Rouhani , said the “ final answer ” to the assassination would be to “ kick all US forces out of the region ” .
In his Wednesday address , Trump again vowed that he would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon and urged world powers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iran that Washington abandoned in 2018 and work for a new deal , an issue that has been at the heart of rising tensions between Washington and Tehran .
Iran has denied it seeks nuclear weapons , and rejected new talks .
“ The time has come for the United Kingdom , Germany , France , Russia and China to recognize this reality , ” Trump said .
“ They must now break away from the remnants of the Iran deal or JCPOA .
And we must all work together toward making a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world a safer and more peaceful place.
” Trump also said he would ask Nato to “ become much more involved in the Middle East process ” , without elaborating .
Trump in the past has repeatedly criticized the alliance and further alienated his European partners by failing to warn them about the Suleimani killing .
There was no immediate reaction from Iranian officials to Trump ’ s comments .
The semi-official Fars news agency described the US president ’ s remarks as a “ big retreat from threats ” .
Ned Price @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worked on the National Security Council during Barack Obama ’ s administration , said that the speech had moved the United States somewhat away from the brink of war with Iran .
“ President Trump ’ s reckless approach has created a dangerous reality in which the best case scenario would be avoiding war with Iran , ” Price said .
“ With his address today , Trump may have met that exceedingly low bar , but just barely .
At the same time , his actions are not consequence-free .
Far from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and our partners are now under increased threat from an array of challenges.
” But Price also noted that by authorizing the Suleimani killing , Trump had “ galvanized Tehran ’ s proxy and military forces into action ” .
“ If history is any guide , they will seek to take on a months ’ or even years ’ -long effort to seek vengeance for Suleimani ’ s death , taking advantage of their presence throughout the region and even beyond , ” Price added .
Additional reporting : Michael Safi in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Baghdad

Daniel Strauss and Julian Borger in Washington

Donald Trump backed away from further military confrontation with Iran on Wednesday after days of escalating tensions, saying Tehran appeared to be standing down following missile attacks on two Iraqi bases hosting US and coalition troops.
Flanked by the vice-president, Mike Pence, the defense secretary, Mark Esper, and other high ranking military officials in uniform, Trump delivered remarks in the Grand Foyer of the White House, hours after Iran declared the attack to be retaliation for the US drone strike last week that killed the senior Iranian Gen Qassem Suleimani.
“Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world,” Trump said, reading from teleprompters. “No American or Iraqi lives were lost because of the precautions taken, the dispersal of forces, and an early warning system that worked very well.”
Later, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Mark Milley, said the nature of the missile damage at the targeted bases suggested the attack was intended to take US and allied lives.
“I believe, based on what I saw and what I know, that they were intended to cause structural damage, destroy vehicles and equipment and aircraft and to kill personnel. That’s my own personal assessment,” Milley said. Satellite images showed the missiles destroyed buildings at al-Asad base in Anbar province.
A few hours after the president spoke, the fortified diplomatic area in Baghdad, the Green Zone, was hit by two rockets. Initial reports suggest they were fired locally, and caused no casualties, but they were a reminder of the threat of Iraqi militias, some with close ties to Tehran.
00:33 Blasts and sirens heard in Baghdad's Green Zone – video
Trump’s speech was notably more sober than his more bellicose statements and tweets in the immediate aftermath of Suleimani’s killing, in which he threatened to bomb Iranian cultural sites, a potential war crime. The United States, in recent days, deployed 3,500 paratroopers to the Middle East and Americans were urged to leave the region over safety concerns.
Trump said the United States would continue evaluating options “in response to Iranian aggression” and that additional sanctions on the Iranian regime would be imposed. He did not elaborate. Iran is already so heavily sanctioned that few experts believe that further US measures would make much economic difference.
The president stressed the considerable power of the United States military but said that his administration did not seek conflict.
“Our missiles are big, powerful accurate lethal and fast. Under construction are many hypersonic missiles,” Trump said. “The fact that we have this great military and equipment, however, it does not mean we have to use it. We do not want to use it.”
The president, who is campaigning for re-election in November, has faced fierce criticism from senior Democrats in recent days over his administration’s handling of the standoff. Joe Biden, the former vice-president seen as the frontrunner for the presidential nomination, accused Trump brought the United States “dangerously close” to war with Iran.
Senior administration officials briefed Congress behind closed doors on the decision to target Suleimani and other aspects of the crisis, but they were castigated on both sides of the aisle for being evasive on major issues.
“There were so many important questions that they did not answer,” said Democratic senator Chuck Schumer. “As the questions began to get tough, they walked out.”
Republican senator Mike Lee called it “the worst briefing I’ve had on a military issue in my nine years” in the Senate, according to CNN. Lee called the administration’s handling of the crisis “un-American” and “completely unacceptable”.
On Thursday, the House of Representatives will vote on a war powers resolution that demands an end to US military action against Iran without congressional approval.
Trump’s address came after Iran launched more than a dozen missiles at Iraqi bases hosting US and coalition troops. Al-Asad airbase in Iraq’s Anbar province was hit 17 times, including by two ballistic missiles that failed to detonate, according to the Iraqi government. A further five missiles were targeted at a base in the northern city of Erbil in the assault, which began at about 1.30am local time on Wednesday.
In a letter to the UN secretary general, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, Majid Takht Ravanchi, described the strikes as a “measured and proportionate” act of self-defence permitted under the UN Charter, adding that Iran “does not seek escalation or war”.
However, while both sides appeared to step back from confrontation in the short term, analysts have warned that the standoff may continue to play out through proxies in the Middle East. Security experts have also warned of possible Iranian cyber attacks on critical infrastructure.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, described the bombings as “a slap in the face” for the US but warned Tehran still had a wider goal of expelling its enemy from the region. The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, said the “final answer” to the assassination would be to “kick all US forces out of the region”.
In his Wednesday address, Trump again vowed that he would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon and urged world powers to quit a 2015 nuclear accord with Iran that Washington abandoned in 2018 and work for a new deal, an issue that has been at the heart of rising tensions between Washington and Tehran. Iran has denied it seeks nuclear weapons, and rejected new talks.
“The time has come for the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia and China to recognize this reality,” Trump said. “They must now break away from the remnants of the Iran deal or JCPOA. And we must all work together toward making a deal with Iran, that makes the world a safer and more peaceful place.”
Trump also said he would ask Nato to “become much more involved in the Middle East process”, without elaborating. Trump in the past has repeatedly criticized the alliance and further alienated his European partners by failing to warn them about the Suleimani killing.
There was no immediate reaction from Iranian officials to Trump’s comments. The semi-official Fars news agency described the US president’s remarks as a “big retreat from threats”.
Ned Price, a former CIA official who also worked on the National Security Council during Barack Obama’s administration, said that the speech had moved the United States somewhat away from the brink of war with Iran.
“President Trump’s reckless approach has created a dangerous reality in which the best case scenario would be avoiding war with Iran,” Price said. “With his address today, Trump may have met that exceedingly low bar, but just barely. At the same time, his actions are not consequence-free. Far from it, as Americans around the world and our partners are now under increased threat from an array of challenges.”
But Price also noted that by authorizing the Suleimani killing, Trump had “galvanized Tehran’s proxy and military forces into action”.
“If history is any guide, they will seek to take on a months’ or even years’-long effort to seek vengeance for Suleimani’s death, taking advantage of their presence throughout the region and even beyond,” Price added.
Additional reporting: Michael Safi in Beirut, Oliver Holmes and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in Baghdad


theguardian--2020-01-08--EU leaders relieved as Trump steps away from Iran conflict

European leaders have breathed a sign of relief after Donald Trump heeded their public and private pleas to draw a line under his conflict with Iran and not respond militarily to the Iranian missile attacks on US forces in Iraq .
European leaders had been urging a pause to allow for a de-escalation and even the resumption of talks , calls that were helped by the absence of American casualties either due to good fortune or a deliberate decision by the Iranian military not to direct its 22 missiles at a base in which US forces were more vulnerable .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Europe , including a request for Germany , France and the UK to abandon the remnants of the Iran nuclear deal , something European diplomats on balance still regard as a useful mechanism to remain in contact not just with Iran , but also Russia and China .
Trump also demanded in his statement that Nato – by which he predominantly meant Europe – take a greater role in the Middle East .
His remarks reflected his belief that the US should be pulling back from the region , especially given it is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as dependent on oil from the Gulf states .
Although Europe and the US would like to negotiate a new , wider nuclear agreement with Iran , including constraints on Tehran ’ s regional activities in Lebanon , Iraq and Yemen , divisions between Europe and the US remain on how to achieve this .
Trump announced further sanctions on Iran as an alternative to a missile strike , but Europe has argued US economic pressure only entrenches Tehran ’ s hardliners .
Ben Wallace , the UK defence secretary , was explicit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Commons on Tuesday .
The French president , Emmanuel Macron , will have to judge whether the moment is right to launch a further effort at mediation .
He has been pressing Trump to lift sanctions temporarily to open the road to talks , but the US president ’ s demeanour was of a man focused solely on the potential political benefits of killing who he sees as the world ’ s leading terrorist .
Most analysts believe Iran will still interpret the past week as having advanced its goal of driving the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ region .
One British expert said : “ Iran thinks in terms of campaigns , rather than single episodes .
This was a calibrated first response , not sufficiently escalatory to send US Tomahawk missiles towards Tehran , the outcome they wanted to avoid.
” There was also relief in Europe that in his remarks on Wednesday , Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did not discuss further military action , and that the Iranian military spokesman only threatened further action if the US fired back .
Remarks in a tweet and follow-up interviews from Javad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , that the attacks by Tehran were proportionate and had concluded were critical in persuading Trump that he could declare Iran was standing down .
The decision by the Revolutionary Guards to tell Iranians that 80 Americans were killed in the strike added to the sense that Tehran was not looking to mount a further assault .
But European leaders still pleaded with Trump to show restraint .
Hours after the attacks , the UK foreign secretary , Dominic Raab , said Britain condemned the strikes but added that a Middle East war @ @ @ @ @ @ @ State .
The UK prime minister , Boris Johnson , called on all sides to dial down the crisis while defending the right of the US to act in self-defence .
Ursula von der Leyen , the European commission president , said : “ The use of weapons must stop now to give space for dialogue .
We are called upon to do everything possible to rekindle talks.
” The EU ’ s foreign affairs chief , Josep Borrell , said : “ One thing is clear – the current situation puts at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and also has implications for the important work of the anti-Daesh [ Isis ] coalition .
It is in no one ’ s interests to turn up the spiral of violence even further.
” The French foreign minister , Jean-Yves Le Drian , said : “ The priority goes more than ever to de-escalation .
The cycle of violence must end .
France , for its part , remains determined to work to ease tensions .
France recalls the importance of continuing the fight against Daesh , with full respect for the sovereignty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ calls from world leaders , including the Turkish president , Recep Tayyip Erdoğan , to prevent any further official attacks .

European leaders have breathed a sign of relief after Donald Trump heeded their public and private pleas to draw a line under his conflict with Iran and not respond militarily to the Iranian missile attacks on US forces in Iraq.
European leaders had been urging a pause to allow for a de-escalation and even the resumption of talks, calls that were helped by the absence of American casualties either due to good fortune or a deliberate decision by the Iranian military not to direct its 22 missiles at a base in which US forces were more vulnerable.
But the Trump statement contained difficulties for Europe, including a request for Germany, France and the UK to abandon the remnants of the Iran nuclear deal, something European diplomats on balance still regard as a useful mechanism to remain in contact not just with Iran, but also Russia and China.
Trump also demanded in his statement that Nato – by which he predominantly meant Europe – take a greater role in the Middle East. His remarks reflected his belief that the US should be pulling back from the region, especially given it is now self-sufficient in energy and no longer as dependent on oil from the Gulf states.
Although Europe and the US would like to negotiate a new, wider nuclear agreement with Iran, including constraints on Tehran’s regional activities in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, divisions between Europe and the US remain on how to achieve this.
Trump announced further sanctions on Iran as an alternative to a missile strike, but Europe has argued US economic pressure only entrenches Tehran’s hardliners. Ben Wallace, the UK defence secretary, was explicit on this point in the House of Commons on Tuesday.
02:45 'We eliminated the world’s top terrorist,' Trump says as he imposes fresh sanctions on Iran – video
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, will have to judge whether the moment is right to launch a further effort at mediation. He has been pressing Trump to lift sanctions temporarily to open the road to talks, but the US president’s demeanour was of a man focused solely on the potential political benefits of killing who he sees as the world’s leading terrorist.
Most analysts believe Iran will still interpret the past week as having advanced its goal of driving the US out of Iraq and eventually the region. One British expert said: “Iran thinks in terms of campaigns, rather than single episodes. This was a calibrated first response, not sufficiently escalatory to send US Tomahawk missiles towards Tehran, the outcome they wanted to avoid.”
There was also relief in Europe that in his remarks on Wednesday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did not discuss further military action, and that the Iranian military spokesman only threatened further action if the US fired back.
Remarks in a tweet and follow-up interviews from Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, that the attacks by Tehran were proportionate and had concluded were critical in persuading Trump that he could declare Iran was standing down. The decision by the Revolutionary Guards to tell Iranians that 80 Americans were killed in the strike added to the sense that Tehran was not looking to mount a further assault.
But European leaders still pleaded with Trump to show restraint. Hours after the attacks, the UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said Britain condemned the strikes but added that a Middle East war would only be of benefit to Islamic State.
The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, called on all sides to dial down the crisis while defending the right of the US to act in self-defence.
Ursula von der Leyen, the European commission president, said: “The use of weapons must stop now to give space for dialogue. We are called upon to do everything possible to rekindle talks.”
The EU’s foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, said: “One thing is clear – the current situation puts at risk the efforts of the last years and also has implications for the important work of the anti-Daesh [Isis] coalition. It is in no one’s interests to turn up the spiral of violence even further.”
The French foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said: “The priority goes more than ever to de-escalation. The cycle of violence must end. France, for its part, remains determined to work to ease tensions. France recalls the importance of continuing the fight against Daesh, with full respect for the sovereignty of Iraq.”
Zarif was inundated with calls from world leaders, including the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to prevent any further official attacks.


theguardian--2020-01-08--Love is in the Brooklyn air as Elizabeth Warren gives campaign a shot in the arm

In recent weeks , Elizabeth Warren has tumbled from frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination to fourth in the polls , prompting questions about whether she peaked too soon in what has been a tumultuous race .
But if the mood at a raucous rally in New York on Tuesday is anything to go by , talk of the Massachusetts senator ’ s demise is premature .
Warren took the stage at Kings Theatre , a grand 1920s venue in Brooklyn , following a rousing speech from Julián Castro , who ended his own presidential campaign on Thursday and endorsed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s first appearance as a Warren surrogate , and amid chants of “ Warren !
Warren !
” he recalled that during his own campaign he would run into the same problem when trying to win over voters : they had already decided to vote for the woman he has now endorsed .
Warren had jogged to the stage from the back of the theater , high-fiving people as she passed , like a triumphant athlete .
She was forced to start her speech on a sombre note , however , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forces had broken minutes earlier .
“ This is a reminder why we need to de-escalate tension in the Middle East , ” she said .
“ The American people do not want a war with Iran.
” According to the response in the theater , she was right .
Warren has had a difficult couple of months , which has seen her drop back in the polls .
At the beginning of October , Warren was , briefly , in the lead nationwide .
That brought its own problems : at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ repeatedly by her rivals , as they sought to boost their own profiles .
The clumsy rollout of Warren ’ s universal healthcare policy – she spent weeks avoiding explaining how she would pay for Medicare for All – didn ’ t help , and as her national numbers have suffered , her ideological companion Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg , the precocious centrist , have nibbled away at her support .
With less than a month until the first vote , in Iowa , Warren and her supporters could be forgiven for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ showing it , though .
“ She ’ s the best candidate out of all of them , ” said Antonius Wiriadjaja , a 36-year-old professor of interactive media .
“ She ’ s considered to be trailing , but people also didn ’ t think Donald Trump was going to win , and here we are.
” There are bright spots for Warren .
Although she raised less money in the fourth quarter of 2019 than she had previously , her small-donor-enthused total of $ 21.2m wasn ’ t far behind Buttigieg @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 34.5m , way ahead of the other candidates . )
On Tuesday , Warren was fresh from an appearance on The View , where she had sparred with Meghan McCain , the daughter of John McCain and a faithful rightwing voice .
McCain ’ s resolute defense of Republican talking points has tripped up other Democrats who have appeared on the show , but Warren tuned her out to give a thorough explanation of what she would do as president .
It was a performance that brought positive coverage .
“ That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Wiriadjaja said .
“ If she continues to do things like that – remind people that what she ’ s doing is not punishing the rich , she ’ s making sure that we ’ re getting the benefits of what had made them rich in the first place – as long as she continues on that path she ’ s gon na be back to the frontrunner.
” Warren has embarked on a spirited media tour this week , in an effort to give her campaign a shot in the arm @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has appeared on five national television shows , and her supporters were in agreement that if Warren is given time to sell her ideas , people will buy .
“ I ’ ve noticed her doing a lot more national press .
I think that helps , ” said Kim Maynard , a 53-year-old television producer who lives in Brooklyn .
“ I think when people see her and see her passion and energy , that really resonates .
But I think as a whole in this race people are looking for who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ candidate .
The thing is , not everyone agrees on who is most electable.
” Indeed , there are plenty of people seem to believe a candidate with more centrist , or perhaps less ambitious , plans on climate change , healthcare and education would be the better opponent for Trump : someone like Biden , or even Buttigieg .
Warren is aware of this argument , and slipped in a dig at those two rivals on Tuesday .
“ You can look oh-so-sophisticated , oh-so-smart , by backing off from the big @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hard !
We can ’ t do this !
’ ” she said .
Just in case anyone was in danger of missing the message , one wag in the crowd shouted “ Mayor Pete !
” as Warren was talking .
The resulting laughter added to the feelgood mood as the rally drew to a close in Warren ’ s usual fashion .
Her commitment to taking photos with supporters is notorious – her campaign manager has said Warren would consider an event a failure if “ even a single person ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get their wish – and on Sunday Warren apparently took her 100,000th “ selfie ” with a supporter .
Everyone was going to get a photo on Tuesday , too , Warren said .
But with a twist .
“ We ’ re gon na do something historic , ” she told the crowd .
“ Julián and I , for the first time in history , we ’ re gon na stand here and do double selfies.
” Whether the double selfie is actually historic or not , the offer clearly appealed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hundreds of people lined up all the way to the back of the theater , through the lobby , and into the rain outside .
If that level of commitment is anything to go by , Warren will be around for a while yet .

In recent weeks, Elizabeth Warren has tumbled from frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination to fourth in the polls, prompting questions about whether she peaked too soon in what has been a tumultuous race. But if the mood at a raucous rally in New York on Tuesday is anything to go by, talk of the Massachusetts senator’s demise is premature.
Warren took the stage at Kings Theatre, a grand 1920s venue in Brooklyn, following a rousing speech from Julián Castro, who ended his own presidential campaign on Thursday and endorsed Warren on Monday.
It was Castro’s first appearance as a Warren surrogate, and amid chants of “Warren! Warren!” he recalled that during his own campaign he would run into the same problem when trying to win over voters: they had already decided to vote for the woman he has now endorsed.
Warren had jogged to the stage from the back of the theater, high-fiving people as she passed, like a triumphant athlete. She was forced to start her speech on a sombre note, however, as news of Iran launching missiles at US forces had broken minutes earlier.
“This is a reminder why we need to de-escalate tension in the Middle East,” she said. “The American people do not want a war with Iran.” According to the response in the theater, she was right.
Warren has had a difficult couple of months, which has seen her drop back in the polls. At the beginning of October, Warren was, briefly, in the lead nationwide. That brought its own problems: at the Democratic debate that month she was attacked repeatedly by her rivals, as they sought to boost their own profiles.
The clumsy rollout of Warren’s universal healthcare policy – she spent weeks avoiding explaining how she would pay for Medicare for All – didn’t help, and as her national numbers have suffered, her ideological companion Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, the precocious centrist, have nibbled away at her support.
With less than a month until the first vote, in Iowa, Warren and her supporters could be forgiven for being worried. They aren’t showing it, though.
“She’s the best candidate out of all of them,” said Antonius Wiriadjaja, a 36-year-old professor of interactive media. “She’s considered to be trailing, but people also didn’t think Donald Trump was going to win, and here we are.”
There are bright spots for Warren. Although she raised less money in the fourth quarter of 2019 than she had previously, her small-donor-enthused total of $21.2m wasn’t far behind Buttigieg. (Sanders hauled in a mighty $34.5m, way ahead of the other candidates.)
On Tuesday, Warren was fresh from an appearance on The View, where she had sparred with Meghan McCain, the daughter of John McCain and a faithful rightwing voice. McCain’s resolute defense of Republican talking points has tripped up other Democrats who have appeared on the show, but Warren tuned her out to give a thorough explanation of what she would do as president. It was a performance that brought positive coverage.
The actor Maggie Gyllenhaal among the crowd at the Elizabeth Warren rally in Brooklyn. Photograph: Joel Sheakoski/Barcroft Media
“That was a great moment for her,” Wiriadjaja said. “If she continues to do things like that – remind people that what she’s doing is not punishing the rich, she’s making sure that we’re getting the benefits of what had made them rich in the first place – as long as she continues on that path she’s gonna be back to the frontrunner.”
Warren has embarked on a spirited media tour this week, in an effort to give her campaign a shot in the arm. In the past three days she has appeared on five national television shows, and her supporters were in agreement that if Warren is given time to sell her ideas, people will buy.
“I’ve noticed her doing a lot more national press. I think that helps,” said Kim Maynard, a 53-year-old television producer who lives in Brooklyn.
“I think when people see her and see her passion and energy, that really resonates. But I think as a whole in this race people are looking for who they really think is the most electable candidate. The thing is, not everyone agrees on who is most electable.”
Indeed, there are plenty of people seem to believe a candidate with more centrist, or perhaps less ambitious, plans on climate change, healthcare and education would be the better opponent for Trump: someone like Biden, or even Buttigieg.
Warren is aware of this argument, and slipped in a dig at those two rivals on Tuesday.
“You can look oh-so-sophisticated, oh-so-smart, by backing off from the big ideas. ‘Not now! Too hard! We can’t do this!’” she said.
Just in case anyone was in danger of missing the message, one wag in the crowd shouted “Mayor Pete!” as Warren was talking.
The resulting laughter added to the feelgood mood as the rally drew to a close in Warren’s usual fashion. Her commitment to taking photos with supporters is notorious – her campaign manager has said Warren would consider an event a failure if “even a single person” who wanted a photo didn’t get their wish – and on Sunday Warren apparently took her 100,000th “selfie” with a supporter.
Everyone was going to get a photo on Tuesday, too, Warren said. But with a twist.
“We’re gonna do something historic,” she told the crowd. “Julián and I, for the first time in history, we’re gonna stand here and do double selfies.”
Whether the double selfie is actually historic or not, the offer clearly appealed. At the end of the night hundreds of people lined up all the way to the back of the theater, through the lobby, and into the rain outside. If that level of commitment is anything to go by, Warren will be around for a while yet.


theguardian--2020-01-08--Iraq says it received warning from Tehran about strikes on airbases – as it happened

Boris Johnson has told parliament that Qassem Suleimani had the “ blood of British troops on his hands ” .
Answering a question from the Labour leader , Jeremy Corbyn , during the first prime minister ’ s questions since the British general election , Johnson said the US had the right to defend its bases .
During exchanges that were interpreted as a further move by Britain towards the US position on the killing of the Iranian general last week , Johnson also sidestepped questions from Corbyn about the legality of the killing .
“ Clearly the strict issue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to determine since it was not our operation , ” said Johnson .
“ But I think most reasonable people would accept that the United States has the right to protect its bases and its personnel.
” He added that the senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards figure had supplied “ improvised explosive devices to terrorists , which I ’ m afraid killed and maimed British troops ” .
He added : “ That man had the blood of British troops on his hands.
” Johnson also left open the question of whether Britain would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ British troops to withdraw from the country if the government followed through on a vote taken by the Iraqi parliament .
He added that Britain would work to secure the security of people in Iraq from Isis .

Frances Perraudin (now), Kate Lyons,Maanvi Singh and Joan E Greve (earlier)

8 Jan 2020 13.51 GMT The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has condemned Iran’s missile strike against US forces in Iraq, while a Nato official says there were no casualties among the military alliances personnel in the country. The Iraqi mission consists of several hundred staff from allied nations and non-Nato countries. In a message to the Associated Press, the Nato official who was not authorised to speak publicly said they were “keeping the situation under close review”. Meanwhile, in a message posted on Twitter, Stoltenberg urged Iran to refrain from further violence.
I condemn the Iranian missile attacks on US & @coalition forces in Iraq. #NATO calls on Iran to refrain from further violence. Allies continue to consult & remain committed to our training mission in Iraq. pic.twitter.com/6PdXMZxSNB — Jens Stoltenberg (@jensstoltenberg) January 8, 2020
Updated at 13.57 GMT
8 Jan 2020 13.10 GMT French citizens in the Israeli city of Haifa should exercise caution in light of the tensions in the Middle East, the French Foreign Ministry has said in an update to security advice on its website. “Following the recent escalation in tensions in the region, the city of Haifa has been the subject of explicit threats,” it said in a statement, without giving any more precise details. Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office doesn’t specifically mention Haifa, but advises visitors to the travel section of its website: “There is a possibility of an increased threat against western interests and the security situation could worsen with little warning.”
Updated at 13.41 GMT
8 Jan 2020 12.38 GMT Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, said: “Isn’t the truth, Mr Speaker, that this prime minister is unable to stand up to President Trump because he has hitched his wagon to a trade deal with the United States and that prioritises everything else that he ought to be considering?” Johnson replied: “This is absolute fiction. But what I will say is that the UK will continue to work for de-escalation in the region.” A video grab from footage broadcast by the UK Parliament’s Parliamentary Recording Unit (PRU) shows Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he speaks during Prime Minister’s Question time (PMQs) in the House of Commons in London on January 8, 2020. Photograph: HO/PRU/AFP via Getty Images
Updated at 13.00 GMT