If Buttigieg is the best of the debaters among the top six, then the former vice president is the worst.

Sanders' dismissiveness about Warren's statement that he had told her a woman couldn't win the White House in 2020 -- "I didn't say it," he claimed -- bothered me. Sanders tried to portray the issue as immaterial -- hatched by Republicans and the media to distract voters.

Simply put, the billionaire businessman looked badly out of his depth. He struggled badly to make the case that he was better equipped than his rivals to manage the country's foreign policy -- his answer amounted to the fact that he has traveled a lot internationally (and, no, I am not kidding) -- and things didn't get much better for him from there.

"I called up our people and in 15 minutes got it approved and we will have the first fireworks display at Mount Rushmore, and I will try and get out there if I can," Trump said on Wednesday, amid a signing ceremony for an initial US-China trade deal.

In 2018, Trump unsuccessfully pursued holding a military parade on Veterans Day in Washington in honor of the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended the First World War. The Defense Department postponed the parade, which was supposed to involve US troops in period uniforms as well as US military aircraft but no heavy vehicles like tanks in order to prevent damage to infrastructure.

"What it means is, what Cardi B does, not only is she an enormously popular entertainer, what she is doing is speaking to young people about the important issues that are on their minds and I applaud that very much" Sanders told CNN in July.

"People are not perfect, but he has the perfect intentions. He naturally cares about minorities. He actually cares about people getting Medicare because he knows they can't afford it. I don't feel like he's just saying these things 'cause he want the vote," Cardi B said.

Some likely Iowa caucusgoers also consider themselves woke (39%), centrists (34%) or capitalists (33%). Centrist is on par with 2016 (at 32%) while the number who identify with capitalism has dropped since then (from 38%). Those who live in the suburbs (49%) and those who report an income of $100K or more a year (48%) are more likely to identify as "capitalist."

A little more than a quarter of likely Iowa caucusgoers (28%) identify as "angry at big tech companies" and 24% consider themselves cynical. But through all the complicated feelings surrounding the caucuses, a huge majority of likely Democratic attendees consider themselves optimistic (78%). Even though that's down 10 percentage points from the 2016 survey, majorities across all groups say they're an optimist.

"I'd rather have you voting than sitting here listening to me introduce you, OK?" Trump said by way of dismissal.He reserved some of his highest praise for Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, the billionaire casino owners and Republican mega-donors, and Lou Dobbs, the conservative Fox Business host, who were seated in the front row. He questioned where the owner of Dobbs' network was.

The President veered between various recollections of Republican senators -- Lindsey Graham a "much better golfer than people would understand," Chuck Grassley made James Comey "choke like a dog" -- to an upcoming Mount Rushmore fireworks display he claimed to have saved from cancellation by environmentalists.

Through it all, China's vice premier Liu He stood on stage nearby, mostly stone-faced. Not for the first time, Trump left his foreign visitor to watch awkwardly as he riffed on all manner of grievances and recollections.

Reading a letter from Chinese President Xi Jinping, he said the completed trade deal showed "our two countries have the ability to act on the basis of equality and mutual respect" and that "through dialogue and consultation" issues could be handled and resolved.

"I'd like you to just relax a little while, take it easy, go out, see a movie," he told the vice premier. "Tell President Xi, I said President, go out, have a round of golf."

Since he came to power, Xi's government has shut down scores of golf courses across China and effectively banned the 88 million members of the ruling Communist Party from playing.

2. Here's your debate primer: The last debate before the Iowa caucuses is set for Tuesday night at 9 p.m. Eastern on your favorite network. (That's CNN, if you were wondering!)

1. Race for second choice in Iowa: By now, you've likely seen the new CNN-Des Moines Register poll out of Iowa; it's a statistical four-way tie between Sanders (20%), Warren (17%), Buttigieg (16%) and Biden (15%).

Then there's another detail that destroys the President's defense. He has claimed that the entire Ukraine/Biden operation aimed to combat corruption. The fact that Trump has never cared about corruption anywhere but in Ukraine may not be enough proof for some.But the release confirms what witnesses in the impeachment hearings said: Giuliani and his associates, working to pursue Trump's Ukraine policy, were demanding an announcement of an investigation. There's no evidence that what they wanted was an actual investigation.One of the most intriguing and damning pieces are paper scraps handwritten by Parnas, according to his attorney. "Get Zalensky (sic) to announce that Biden case will be investigated" it starts, moving on to other parts of the plan; also, "Victoria/Joe retained; 100,000 -month." "Begin media campaign."

As the Senate trial prepares to start, Americans of all parties should ponder, is this what they want from their president? Pressuring a foreign leader to investigate a political rival; having US diplomats tracked and intimidated? Allowing oligarchs with ties to the Kremlin to fund operations aimed at boosting his reelection chances?

Instead, the House rushed its investigation and compounded the problem by stalling the transfer of the articles of impeachment to the Senate. Meanwhile, the public lost interest. The stall time could have been used to test the subpoenas in court and possibly develop a stronger obstruction case.

Yovanovitch, who was recalled from her post in Kiev in May 2019 after a smear campaign led by Trump's allies, has been repeatedly maligned by the US President. He told his Ukrainian counterpart in July 2019 that she was "going to go through some things," according to a rough White House transcript of the presidents' conversation -- a message Yovanovitch said she found threatening.

McEldowney told CNN she believes Pompeo is "derelict in his duty for refusing to speak out about diplomats who are loyally and faithfully and professionally carrying out their responsibilities and who are being slandered by political attacks."The State Department did not reply to a request for comment about the criticism.

Trump's approach to the Iran crisis reveals similar characteristics to the alleged pressure campaign in Ukraine that caused his impeachment.In both cases he wielded power largely unilaterally, unrestrained by experienced foreign policy officials who were purged from his circle for trying to control his wilder impulses. In the case of Ukraine, Trump appears to have used presidential authority for personal political ends. Many opponents believe that his motivation in eliminating Soleimani was also motivated by politics -- a recurring theme throughout his foreign policy.

The way that Trump leads in times of crisis is not just the symptom of an unruly personality. It may also illustrate a shrewd political judgment.The one thing no one can say about Trump is that he went native in Washington. He has been true to the disruptive, glass-shattering persona that wrecked the most promising field of conservative Republican White House hopefuls in a generation and built an impregnable political base.

Impeachment only happened because voters who apparently favored more presidential restraint handed Democrats the House in midterm elections. They will get their chance to weigh in again on Trump's unconstrained vision of politics again in less than 10 months.

The Australian, one of News Corp's papers and a target of critics who say it's been downplaying the link between climate change and the fires, defended itself in an editorial over the weekend, writing "in our coverage, The Australian's journalists report facts about how to tackle bushfires and about how to deal with the impact of climate change. Second, we host debates reflecting the political division that exists in Australia about how to address climate change without destroying our economy."

deniers around, I can assure you."And on Monday, the company announced it was donating $5 million AUD (approximately $3.45 million USD) to the Australian bushfire relief, in addition to the $4 million AUD (around $2.76 million USD) that both Rupert and his older son Lachlan Murdoch have donated to relief efforts.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who will attend the Davos meeting, rejected the idea that the upheaval in American politics is a threat."I don't think it has any impact on the world economy," Mnuchin told reporters on Wednesday, adding that other political issues such as Britain's departure from the European Union and last year's deadlocked elections in Israel were similarly inconsequential.

"In 2020, we have a combination of negative trend lines that we've not experienced in generations. This deteriorating environment is much more likely to produce a global crisis," warned analysts at Eurasia Group.

And the devastating bush fires in Australia have underscored why concerns about the climate dominate in the longer run. According to the World Economic Forum survey, the top five risks over the next decade all relate to the environment, including increased extreme weather events and the collapse of ecosystems.

The World Health Organization released a list of urgent health challenges that the world will be likely to face in the coming decade, and it's a serious reality check.

Sanders on wages of US childcare workersSanders said America's childcare system "is an embarrassment, it is unaffordable," claiming that childcare workers take home lower paychecks than people working at McDonald's. "Childcare workers are making wages lower than McDonald's workers," Sanders said. Facts First: While some childcare workers undoubtedly make less than some McDonald's workers, US government data from 2018 shows that childcare workers took home a higher mean hourly salary than fast food workers.

Biden claimed President Donald Trump "weakened" sanctions against Pyongyang in his pursuit of meetings with North Korea's Kim Jong Un. "The President showed up, met with him, gave him legitimacy, weakened the sanctions we have against him," Biden said. Facts First: Trump has not weakened the sanctions his administration has placed on North Korea to date, and has in fact ratcheted them up from the Obama administration. Although Trump did once spark mass confusion among his aides when he tweeted he was ordering the removal of sanctions on Pyongyang that had not yet been imposed or even announced.

During an exchange about electability and whether a woman can win the presidency, Warren compared the political careers of the men on the debate stage with the women. "Can a woman beat Donald Trump?" Warren said. "Look at the men on this stage. Collectively, they have lost ten elections. The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they've been in are the women. Amy and me." Facts First: Warren has the facts right. She and Klobuchar are undefeated, and their male opponents have lost a total of 10 elections during their political careers. But Warren's talking point ignores the fact that Sanders, Biden and Buttigieg have also prevailed in more than two dozen elections since 1970.

Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg asserted during the debate on Tuesday that the Trump administration admitted that the Iran nuclear deal was working before pulling out of it. Buttigieg said, "By gutting the Iran nuclear deal, one that, by the way, the Trump administration itself admitted was working, certified that it was preventing progress toward a nuclear Iran, by gutting that, they have made the region more dangerous and set off the chain of events that we are now dealing with as it escalates even closer to the brink of outright war." Facts First: This is basically true. By repeatedly recertifying the nuclear deal and waiving sanctions against Tehran as a result, the Trump administration effectively acknowledged that Iran was abiding by the terms of the deal even as the President publicly criticized it.

Sanders repeated his claim that NAFTA and permanent normal trade relations with China have cost the US "some 4 million jobs." "I am sick and tired," said Sanders as he drew a contrast with former Vice President Joe Biden, pointing to large multinational corporations that he says have reaped the benefits.Facts First: This is likely an overestimate of the impact trade agreements can have on the country's employment.

Biden repeated his false claim that he opposed the war in Iraq from the moment the war began. Biden said he made a "mistake" in casting a 2002 vote, as a senator from Delaware, to give President George W. Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq. But he said he cast the vote because the Bush administration had said "they were just going to get inspectors" into Iraq to check for weapons of mass destruction -- and that, once Bush actually went to war, he became immediately opposed: "From that point on, I was in the position of making the case that it was a big, big mistake." Facts First: As fact checkers have repeatedly noted, Biden did not oppose the war in Iraq from the point it started in March 2003. He did begin calling his 2002 vote a "mistake" in 2005, two years into the war, but he was a vocal public supporter of the war in 2003 and 2004. And he made clear in 2002 and 2003, both before and after the war started, that he had known he was voting to authorize a possible war, not only to try to get inspectors into Iraq

Biden said that President Donald Trump "flat-out lied" when he claimed the US killed Iran's top military general because he was targeting four US embassies. "Quite frankly, I think he's flat-out lied about saying that the reason he went after -- the reason he made the strike was because our embassies were about to be bombed," Biden said. Facts First: Trump has yet to provide evidence backing up his claim that Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani was actively planning new attacks against four US embassies and top administration officials have struggled to defend the President's comments. But there is no way to know if Trump "flat-out lied" without seeing the underlying intelligence, which remains classified.

And that is true no matter what the two principals say (or don't say) about that now-famous December 2018 meeting and/or the no-handshake moment in Tuesday night's debate. What happened Tuesday night seems likely to reverberate not just through the Iowa caucuses in 19 days' time but the broader fight over who emerges as the liberal choice and whether -- or not -- the left is willing to rally around that person.

"I don't want to waste a whole lot of time on this because this is what Donald Trump and maybe some of the media want," Sanders said. "But anybody who knows me, knows that it's incomprehensible that I would think that a woman could not be president to the United States. Go to YouTube today. They have some video of me 30 years ago talking about how a woman could become president of the United States."

Tuesday night brought the most substantive foreign policy debate of the Democratic race to date, with tensions flaring in the Middle East bringing the issue to the forefront.

Klobuchar needed a star turn in Tuesday's debate to catapult her out of fifth place in Iowa -- the state on which her hopes for the nomination swing.

A short, but direct, debate between Warren and Buttigieg on health care highlighted not only their key differences in the race, but how the two candidates are likely to go after each other in the coming months.

The former vice president has arguably the single most important asset of any Democratic 2020 candidate: Deep, consistent support from black voters -- the constituency that will decide the South Carolina primary and tip a large share of the delegates on Super Tuesday.

Buttigieg was asked directly about his struggle to win over black voters and said that "the black voters that know me best are supporting me," pointing to backers in South Bend.

"The biggest mistake we can make is take black votes for granted. I never will," he said.