Biden Takes on Trump Again Over Mass Shootings: Campaign Update

(Bloomberg) -- Joe Biden said President Donald Trump “may be even worse” than a white supremacist because the president encourages them and speaks to them.

After speaking at the Des Moines Register soapbox at the Iowa State Fair on Thursday afternoon, the former vice president didn’t explicitly call Trump a white supremacist, but said he tries to curry favor with them. 

“He’s afraid to take them on,” Biden said, the latest in his increasingly barbed remarks about the president’s conduct in the lead-up to shooting rampages last weekend in Texas and Ohio. “And if you notice, the one time he used the word white supremacy, talk about sleepy. He was awful sleepy in the way in which he talked about it.”

Biden’s description of Trump as “sleepy” is shot at Trump’s nickname for Biden. Trump often refers to him as “Sleepy Joe.”

Cory Booker’s Climate Plan Seeks 15 Billion Trees (12:12 P.M.)

Cory Booker’s latest proposal to fight climate change calls for planting 15 billion trees by 2050 and spending billions of dollars to help farms cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.
The plan, announced as proposed legislation by the New Jersey senator, includes grants to help farmers install renewable energy systems and funding for agriculture research. It comes as Democratic presidential contenders, including Booker, converge at the Iowa State Fair to win over rural voters.

“After another year of extreme weather, no one understands the impacts of climate change better than our family farmers and ranchers,” Booker said in a statement. “While our farmers face unique impacts from climate change, our farmers are also uniquely positioned to capture and store carbon in the ground, produce clean energy, and to reduce emissions.” -- Ari Natter

Virtual Caucus-goers Could Give Biden Iowa Edge (11:05 A.M.)

Joe Biden is leading the Democratic field in Iowa, with the support of 26% of Democrats who say they’ll participate in the party’s delegate selection process at their local precincts on caucus night, according to a poll released Thursday.
But Biden’s lead increases when considering “virtual” caucus-goers -- people who plan to support a candidate online or over the phone before the Feb. 3 in-person event. Among those Democrats, Biden’s lead is 37%.

Those results from a Monmouth University Poll show that new rules set by the Iowa Democratic Party could have a big influence on how the first contest of the 2020 presidential campaign turns out. Under those new rules, 10% of the state’s delegates will be awarded by participants in six online and phone events before caucus night.

Among both in-person and virtual caucus-goers, Biden’s support is at 28% -- a number that has remained mostly stable since he announced his candidacy. Elizabeth Warren’s support has increased to 19% while Bernie Sanders has dropped to 9%. Kamala Harris has 11% and Pete Buttigieg has 8%.

Monmouth pollster Patrick Murray says the new process adds an element of uncertainty to the already opaque Iowa delegate selection process. While the virtual caucus could boost Biden by attracting older and less-committed Democrats, in-person participants could still have a greater influence because virtual delegates are capped at 10% no matter how many people participate.

How those results are reported could have more of an impact than the delegate count, Murray says. “The importance of Iowa really is about momentum more than delegates.” -- Gregory Korte

Bill de Blasio Violated Donor Limits, Complaint Says (5:30 a.m.)

Bill de Blasio may have broken federal election laws by taking excessive contributions on his way to becoming a presidential candidate, according to a complaint filed by a watchdog group.

The New York City mayor “concocted a shell game” for at least 25 wealthy donors to give more than the $2,800 allowed by law, according to the Campaign Legal Center, which favors greater restrictions on money in politics. Before he launched his long-shot campaign, those donors also wrote $2,500 checks to the Fairness PAC, a federal committee, and NY Fairness PAC, registered in New York. Both were associated with de Blasio.

“We are reviewing the complaint,” de Blasio campaign spokeswoman Olivia Lapeyrolerie said.

The political action committees paid about $344,000 in travel, consulting, video production and other services as de Blasio prepared to formally launch his campaign. Under federal law, all of those expenditures, plus the donations that paid for them, should have been reported to the Federal Election Commission by de Blasio’s campaign, according to the complaint.

But its FEC report omits much of the spending and all of the contributions received by the two PACs, allowing some of de Blasio’s donors to exceed federal contribution limits by 300%, the complaint says.

De Blasio’s campaign reported raising $1.1 million, putting him in 21st place among active Democratic candidates. The mayor is polling nationally at 0.3%, according to a compilation of national polls by RealClearPolitics. -- Bill Allison

Coming Up This Week

The 2020 Democratic field is gathering in Iowa for the showcase Iowa State Fair, a chance for candidates to meet with voters in the first primary contest of the presidential campaign -- and eat fattening food and view butter sculptures.

On Friday, the candidates will participate in the Iowa Wing Ding, a Democratic fund-raiser and “cattle call” for candidates to make their pitches.

--With assistance from Gregory Korte, Bill Allison and Ari Natter.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tyler Pager in Washington at tpager1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Ros Krasny

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