Trump to Counter-Program Next Democratic Debate: Campaign Update

(Bloomberg) -- Democrats seeking to replace Donald Trump in the White House will have some competition for television viewers during their next debate: The incumbent president himself.

Trump’s campaign announced Monday that his next rally would be in Milwaukee on Jan. 14. That’s the same day as the Democratic candidates’ seventh debate, in Des Moines, Iowa.

Trump’s impeachment could complicate matters. It’s unclear whether the Democratic debate will proceed if the Senate is holding a trial on articles of impeachment the U.S. House passed earlier this month. Three senators -- Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota -- have qualified for the debate so far.

The Milwaukee rally would be the second of the new year for the president. He is to hold a rally Jan. 9 in Toledo, Ohio. Trump won both of the Midwestern states in 2016 and his campaign regards them as critical for his re-election next year.

A Trump campaign spokesman, Tim Murtaugh, said the timing wasn’t an accident. “What better counter-programming could there be?” he said.

Sanders in ‘Good Health’ Despite Heart Attack

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is in good health and fit to lead the U.S. despite suffering a heart attack in October, according to letters from his doctors that his campaign released on Monday.

Sanders, 78, suffered “modest heart muscle damage” after the Oct. 1 heart attack, one of his doctors said, but “has been doing very well since.” Congress’s attending physician Brian Monahan pronounced Sanders “in good health currently,” and his campaign said in a statement that he is “fit and ready to serve as president of the United States.”

The Vermont senator’s heart attack was caused by a blockage in the midportion of his left anterior descending coronary artery, Monahan’s letter said. But since then, his “heart muscle strength has improved” and the senator doesn’t have symptoms of congestive heart failure, a life-threatening condition, Monahan wrote.

Sanders’s campaign didn’t immediately disclose that he had suffered a heart attack, at first describing the episode as a fleeting episode of chest pain. The more serious diagnosis was revealed three days afterward, though even then the campaign did not describe the severity of the heart attack.

Monday’s brief report, consisting of three letters from his physicians, didn’t divulge Sanders’s ejection fraction, a measure of how much damage was done by the heart attack. His ability to exercise was 50% higher than other men his age with a “similar diagnosis” and comparable to men his age without heart disease, according to a letter by a doctor at the University of Vermont Medical Center’s cardiac rehabilitation department. -- Mario Parker

Bloomberg Touts Plan to Improve Maternal Health

Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg is calling for measures including a free health insurance plan for low-income women and standardizing data collection to improve maternal health and reduce deaths, especially among women of color.

The former New York mayor released his plan Monday during a campaign stop in Alabama, which he said has one of the highest maternal- and infant-mortality rates in the U.S.

Bloomberg would require training for doctors to address any racial bias in maternal care and centralize collection of maternal mortality data at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to facilitate treatment programs. He said he would also provide a free public-option insurance plan for low-income women, especially in Alabama and other states that did not expand Medicaid under Obamacare. The campaign said it can’t yet provide a formal cost estimate.

Bloomberg said he also would seek to encourage better care options in rural areas, repeal the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortions, and support other abortion-rights measures opposed by President Donald Trump.

Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News. -- Mark Niquette

COMING UP:

Joe Biden is campaigning in New Hampshire on Monday. He will attend community events in Exeter and Derry.

Pete Buttigieg is in Iowa through Monday.

Cory Booker will return to northern Nevada Monday for an event at the California Building in Reno and then for a roundtable with Latino community leaders in Sparks.

On Tuesday, Elizabeth Warren will deliver a New Year’s Eve address from Boston’s historic Old South Meeting House about fighting corruption.

Five Democratic candidates -- Warren, Bernie Sanders, Biden, Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar have qualified for the next debate, on Jan. 14, in Iowa.

(Michael Bloomberg is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Mario Parker in Washington at mparker22@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Alex Wayne, John Harney

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