2020 Daily Trail Markers: What Pete Buttigieg says about closing Guantanamo Bay
FROM THE CANDIDATES:
BERNIE SANDERS: CBS News Campaign Reporter Nicole Sganga reports Bernie 2020 has released a new campaign video marking the 23rd anniversary of Bernie Sanders' vote against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a law prohibiting same-sex couples from collection of federal benefits. The House vote on DOMA took place over two decades ago on July 12, 1996, passing with 342 yeas. Vermont Sen. Sanders was one of 67 representatives to vote against it. Reflecting on their personal experiences, the video features several members of Sanders' New Hampshire campaign operation: New Hampshire constituency director Mo Baxley, New Hampshire for Bernie Steering Committee member David Holt, and Deputy State Director/Communications Director Carli Stevenson.
PETE BUTTIGIEG: Asked in Dover, New Hampshire if he would close down Guantanamo Bay detention camp, Mayor Pete Buttigieg told CBS News Campaign Reporter Nicole Sganga "Yes." The South Bend Mayor added, "What is going on there is not making America safer right now. And we've got to develop a way to handle this. But more broadly, we've got to make sure that the U.S. lives the values that we preach. And that's true, not only in the way that we deal with threats. It's also true in the way we deal with allies." The South Bend Mayor unveiled his foreign policy vision last month, calling for an end to "endless war," and a diplomatic repair of relationships with United States allies.
ELIZABETH WARREN: Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren thinks Congress should hear from the woman who accused Air Force General John Hyten, the nominee to be vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, of sexual misconduct.
"I think, at a minimum, the Armed Services Committee owes her an obligation to listen to what she says," Warren said in an interview with CBS News correspondent Ed O'Keefe, at the League of United Latin American Citizens conference in Milwaukee.
MICHAEL BENNET: Colorado Senator and 2020 presidential candidate Michael Bennet sees the Democratic primary process as a competition of ideas that will help to define the party in need of direction.
"America doesn't know what the national Democratic Party stands for right now," he said in an interview Friday on CBSN. He cautioned his fellow Democrats to run the primary "in a way that doesn't make us vulnerable to losing to Donald Trump."
"It's important that Democrats not disqualify ourselves running against Donald Trump, or make it easy for him to disqualify us," Bennet said. "We lost to the guy once, we can't lose to him again."
AMY KLOBUCHAR: Sen. Amy Klobuchar unveiled a plan on "CBS This Morning" Friday to provide a cure and treatment options for some of the most aggressive chronic conditions facing the country's elderly population, including Alzheimer's disease, by 2025. The 2020 Democratic presidential candidate considers the issue to be one that hits close to home; her father has struggled with Alzheimer's.
"One of the things you realize when you have someone in your family -- for me, my dad is 91, thankfully it didn't hit him till later -- but you see them growing more and more distant, not in the heart but in the mind, and you realize sometimes they may not even quite know who you are, and that's a hard moment when that happens," Klobuchar said.
STATELY COVERAGE:
UP NORTH: CBS News Campaign Reporter Nicole Sganga has learned South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg's campaign raised over $65,000 at a fundraiser Thursday night in Holderness, New Hampshire. The first-in-the-nation primary state has a history in retail politicking and campaign whistlestops, but little in the way of big-dollar fundraisers. "The conventional wisdom is, you come here for votes, not money," yogurt mogul Gary Hirshberg told CBS News. "We built it and they came."
Even so, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is coming to New Hampshire for the money, too. He raised over $65,000 so far at a fundraiser Thursday night in Holderness, New Hampshire according to Hirshberg, who hosted the event. The co-founder of Stonyfield Farm, Hirshberg, who is the chairman of the world's leading organic yogurt producer, told CBS News he anticipates the fundraiser will bring in even more for Buttigieg. "I'll be surprised if we don't get over 100 thousand," Hirshberg said, adding, "I was pretty wowed."
DOWN SOUTH: President Trump announced Thursday that even though he will not continue to pursue a citizenship question on the 2020 census, he does plan to sign an executive order regarding the collection of citizenship information. As this saga plays out, Democratic candidate Tom Steyer weighed in on the president's persistence in obtaining citizenship information, during a local stop in Charleston, South Carolina. Steyer says "He had no right to do that [and] he was breaking the law to try," according to CBS News Campaign Reporter LaCrai Mitchell, "He pushed it as far as he could until he lost in court and now he's going to try and use his executive power to pursue something that's absolutely wrong."
According to U.S. census data, residents who identify as Hispanic or Latino make up 5.8% of South Carolina's population — some 294,879 people.
Steyer also responded to news of embattled Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta's resignation, telling CBS News Campaign Reporter LaCrai Mitchell, "…the story of his making a sweetheart deal with a sexual predator of underage women was unconscionable. Of course he had to resign," said Steyer. "The point of that story was there's a 2-tier justice system in America—one for the rich and one for everybody else and the idea that someone could run a sex ring for underage girls and get away with it with a slap on the wrist was something that when it became clear that that had happened was unbearable."
