Impeach but wrangle over health plan
Biden son: Yes, I made a mistake
ticism about single-payer health care plans.
Asked how he’s recovering from the heart attack, Sanders said he’s “feeling great” and made a tongue-in-cheek retort after Booker joked that legalizing medical marijuana nationally is part of the Vermont senator’s health care plan.
“I’m not on it tonight,” Sanders said, drawing laughs from the crowd.
California Sen. Kamala Harris, who has had a hard time reviving her campaign after hitting high marks in the polls this past summer, slammed her fellow Democrats for not talking about reproductive rights while on the topic of health care.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say women will die — poor women, women of color will die — because these Republican legislatures in these various states who are out of touch with America are telling women what to do with their bodies,” she said.
Warren drew more intraparty fire, as O’Rourke took aim at her over what he called “punitive” policies.
“(She) is more focused on being punitive, or pitting some part of the country against the other, instead of lifting people up and making sure that this country comes together around those solutions,” said O’Rourke, who, like most candidates on stage, struggled to make the case that he still has a fighting chance despite slumping poll numbers.
Warren appeared stunned.
“I’m really shocked than anyone thinks I’m punitive. I don’t have a beef with billionaires,” she said, arguing she’s only seeking to emphasize that extreme wealth is built in part by tax policies that hurt low-income Americans.
More sparks flew as Warren and longshot candidate Andrew Yang butted heads over his signature argument that automation is to blame for U.S. job losses.
“The data shows that we have a lot of problems with losing jobs, but the principle reason has been bad trade policy,” Warren said.
Yang shot back, “Sen. Warren, I’ve been talking to Americans around the country about automation, and they’re smart. They see what’s happening around them.”
Buttigieg and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard — veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively — got into a heated spat while discussing Trump’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria earlier this month and Turkey’s subsequent slaughter of U.S.allied Kurds in the war-torn country.
Gabbard — who has faced criticism over expressing support for Syria’s brutal dictator, Bashar Assad — faulted politicians from “both parties who have supported this ongoing regime change war in Syria that started in 2011, along with many in the mainstream media.”
Buttigieg blasted Gabbard as “dead wrong.”
“The slaughter going in Syria is not a consequence of American presence. It’s a consequence of a withdrawal and a betrayal by this president of American allies and American values,” Buttigieg said.
Tuesday’s debate came just over three months before the 2020 Democratic race officially kicks off with the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3. Hunter Biden on Tuesday for the first time admitted he made a mistake by getting embroiled in the “swamp” of corrupt Ukraine.
But former Vice President Joe Biden’s son insisted he did nothing wrong by accepting a lucrative post on the board of a natural gas company — a gig that President Trump has used to relentlessly smear his Democratic front-runner dad.
“It was poor judgment on my part, [but] I know [I] did nothing wrong at all,” Hunter Biden told ABC News in an interview.
“Was it poor judgment to be in the middle of something that is … a swamp in many ways? Yeah,” Biden, 49, added.
Trump hit back within hours on Twitter, saying the interview would cause “real problems!” for Joe Biden, without elaborating.
The interview is part of a new strategy on the part of Hunter Biden and his famous father to punch back hard at Trump.
The president’s hunt for dirt on Joe Biden led him to enlist Rudy Giuliani and a rogues’ gallery of shady characters to dig for damaging information on both Bidens in the Byzantine and corrupt world of Ukraine business and politics.