Joe Biden takes aim at Donald Trump's 'alternative facts' during campaign rally
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Donald Trump has taken to Twitter to threaten Iran and harangue Republican congressman Justin Amash for suggesting he had engaged in “impeachable conduct” while also criticising Fox News for “wasting airtime” by covering his 2020 Democratic challengers.
“If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!” the president wrote in response to heated rhetoric from Tehran and the firing of a rocket close to the US embassy in Iraq as tensions over sanctions and the US military presence in the Gulf continue.
Mr Trump was annoyed by a Twitter thread written by Representative Amash in response to his reading of the Mueller report and Fox for broadcasting a town hall event with Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg, rare examples of him turning on his allies.
Mr Buttigieg has mounted a surprisingly strong candidacy, but would still need to beat Joe Biden if he hopes to take Mr Trump on during the 2020 election.
Meanwhile in the 2020 election, Mr Biden saw some troubling polls in Iowa, where Bernie Sanders tied up with him in the state.
The Democrat challengers to Trump in 2020
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Elizabeth Warren followed behind those two men, but posted the best favourability ratings in the poll that was released.
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Ahead of Memorial Day, Trump is reportedly considering issuing pardons for several US military members accused or convicted of war crimes, including high-profile cases of murder, attempted murder and desecration of a corpse.
One request is for special operations chief Edward Gallagher of the Navy SEALs, who is scheduled to stand trial in the coming weeks on charges of shooting unarmed civilians and killing an enemy captive with a knife while deployed in Iraq.
The others are believed to include the case of a former Blackwater security contractor recently found guilty in the deadly 2007 shooting of dozens of unarmed Iraqis; the case of Major Mathew Golsteyn, the Army Green Beret accused of killing an unarmed Afghan in 2010; and the case of a group of Marine Corps snipers charged with urinating on the corpses of dead Taliban fighters.
Trump is out of bed and predicting the imminent demise of The New York Times. He clearly didn't like that Deutsche Bank story.
Very shouty, even for him. Accuses The NYT of inventing quotes and sources and claims he doesn't "need or want money", which would be a laughable claim from anyone, let alone Donald J Trump.
Trump has just posted and deleted a follow-up tweet blaming Twitter for screwing up his thread.
"No time for a redo! Only the Dems get redos!" he jested, alluding to the ongoing congressional investigations into his affairs in the wake of the Mueller report.
Here's the latest from Joe Biden on the campaign trail.
"Will we be the ones to let the government of, by, and for the people perish from the face of the earth?" he asked his audience in Philadelphia on Saturday, quoting Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address.
"Dare we let that happen? Dare we let that happen? Absolutely not. We will not."
The Democratic 2020 hopefuls are reportedly studying Jimmy Carter's triumphant 1976 run for the White House in search of inspiration ahead of next year's race.
Carter, 94 and still going strong, defeated Gerald Ford that year but later admitted he made a better ex-president than he had a president, having devoted his subsequent work to humanitarian endeavors and peace projects.
Mayor Pete, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar have all visited Carter at home in Plains, Georgia, for words of advice.
Hopefully Carter persuaded Booker against posting lame tweets like this.
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