Politics this weekend

Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, who is currently in the exploratory phase of running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, expanded on stark comments he made on Twitter Saturday calling out Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for saying he would begin annexing the West Bank if re-elected in Israel’s upcoming elections. 

“It’s simply that I believe that support for Israel means making sure that there’s going to be peace,” Buttigieg told CNN Sunday in Washington. “I believe peace comes by way of a two-state solution, and I believe that Netanyahu’s decision, which seems to be a political one, to abandon the two-state solution is bad for Israel, bad for the alliance, bad for the Palestinian people and ultimately bad for American interests.”

In a tweet Saturday, Buttigieg said, “This provocation is harmful to Israeli, Palestinian, and American interests. Supporting Israel does not have to mean agreeing with Netanyahu‘s politics. I don’t. This calls for a president willing to counsel our ally against abandoning a two-state solution.” 

Buttigieg was responding to a report from Haaretz that quoted Netanyahu, “A Palestinian state will endanger our existence and I withstood huge pressure over the past eight years, no prime minister has withstood such pressure. We must control our destiny.”

Netanyahu, who is up for re-election, went on to say, “I will extend sovereignty but I don't distinguish between the settlement blocs and the isolated ones, because each settlement is Israeli and I will not hand it over to Palestinian sovereignty." 

Buttigieg continued Sunday to say that the relationship between Israel and the United States needs stronger leadership to navigate the complexities. 

“Supporting an ally like Israel means that if they’re doing something that’s not in our interest or theirs, you put your arm around them and try to guide them to a different place,” he said. “And I think America ought to have a president capable of doing that.”

Pete Buttigieg called for a new generation and a “new vocabulary for our values” Sunday.

While speaking at the LGBTQ Victory Fund National Champagne Brunch in Washington, DC, Buttigieg, the only millennial in the 2020 presidential race, called for a return to conversations about freedom in the Democratic party.

Referencing the generation’s relationship to climate change, the economy, mass shootings and marriage equality, Buttigieg said his generation is uniquely equipped to start that conversation.

“Everybody in our generation knows that politics isn’t theoretical it is personal,” Buttigieg said. “It’s at that personal level that politics can make a difference in your life.”

In his speech, the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, reflected on his personal struggles with his sexuality and his decision to come out in 2015. Buttigieg said that, although growing up he wished he wasn’t gay, his marriage to Chasten Buttigieg has made him a better person and has brought him closer to God. He went on to call out Vice President Mike Pence for his religious stance against gay marriage.

“If me being gay was a choice, it was a choice made far, far above my pay grade,” Buttigieg said. “And that’s the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand. If you have a problem with who I am, your problem is not with my morals sir, it is with my creator.”

CNN's Amanda Golden contributed to this report.

Sen. Cory Booker took on the issue of climate change Sunday at a campaign stop in Bedford, New Hampshire, telling supporters that if action isn’t taken to mitigate climate change, Americans may face an “unstable planet.”

“If you want to talk about how much of a crisis it is, don’t listen to politicians, look at the reports the US military are putting out. If we don’t do something rapidly, just 25 years from now, when I’m about the age of the current president, then we will have a nation where we are dealing with an unstable planet,” said Booker.

“Famines, refugee crises, and unfortunately, extremism that will rise. Our military is planning for -- I don’t want to use the word Armageddon -- but planning for planetary crisis. You want to hear what’s going on, talk about people who set insurance rates, flood insurance, fire insurance,” he added.

Earlier in the event, the New Jersey senator said that if elected, his first act as president would be to re-add the US to the Paris climate agreement, from which President Donald Trump announced last year that he was withdrawing the US.  

Sen. Bernie Sanders said Sunday that he supports former convicted felons being able to vote after they have served their sentences.

When asked by a voter in Muscatine, Iowa, whether he would support such a policy on a national scale, Sanders replied, "I think that is absolutely the direction we should go."

Sanders said that the 2 million incarcerated people nationwide have varying voting rights depending on the state, referencing how his home state of Vermont separates voting rights from criminals' punishment and how Florida recently passed a referendum to follow suit.

"I believe in that, yes I do," Sanders added.

2020 candidate Julian Castro thinks that he can win California -- and even become the Democratic frontrunner by the time the Iowa caucuses roll around in February 2020, he told CNN Saturday after an event in east Los Angeles.

"I believe that I can win California. California will become much more important this year because it's on Super Tuesday," Castro said, adding that "I'm going to be out here in California a lot. This was one of the first events that we had."

He told reporters that while he isn't well known now, he can feel his campaign advancing and has his sights set on leading the pack come the caucuses.

"And I'm not a frontrunner now -- I wasn't born a frontrunner, I didn't grow up a frontrunner," he added. "But I'm working hard, I'm doing what our families do, which is to work hard and to scrap. And I'm confident that by the time Iowa caucuses, I will be the frontrunner."  

President Donald Trump mocked people who seek asylum in the United States during his speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas.

“The asylum program is a scam,” the President said on Saturday.

“Some of the roughest people you’ve ever seen, people that look like they should be fighting for the UFC,” he added, describing what he believes many asylum seekers look like. "They read a little page, given to them by lawyers that are all over the place, you know lawyers, they tell them what to say. You look at this guy and you say, 'Wow, that’s a tough cookie.'

"‘I am very fearful for my life. I am very worried that I will be accosted if I am sent back home,'" Trump said, pretending to be an asylum seeker.

"No, no, he'll do the accosting!” Trump continued. “Asylum, oh give him asylum! He’s afraid!"

"We don't love the fact that he's got tattoos on his face that's not a good sign. We don't love the fact that he's carrying the flag of Honduras or Guatemala or El Salvador, only to say he’s petrified to be in his country.”

While speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, President Donald Trump singled out Rep. Ilhan Omar, the Democrat from Minnesota who has been criticized by pro-Israel activists, for some of her comments.

Trump started off his remarks by thanking and lauding several Congressional Republicans by name, before going on to jokingly thank Omar.

“And a special thanks to Representative Omar of Minnesota," Trump said on Saturday. "Oh, oh, I forgot she doesn’t like Israel. I forgot. I’m so sorry. Oh. Oh no, she doesn’t like Israel, does she? Oh please, I apologize."

Trump's comments came after reports that a New York man had been arrested and charged with threatening to assault and murder Omar because of her Muslim faith.

Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan kicked off his 2020 presidential campaign in Youngstown, Ohio, today, saying that he's running for president to "try and bring this country back together."

"Things go up and things go down," the Democratic congressman told the crowd. "But if we’re not united, we’re are not going to be able to fix these structural problems that we have in the United States."

He argued that there's "politicians and leaders today that want to divide us."

"They want to put us in one box or the other. You can’t be for business and for labor. You can’t be for border security and immigration reform. You can’t be for cities and rural America. You can’t be for the north and the south. You can’t be for men and women. I’m tired of having to choose. I want us to come together as a country. I want us to seize the future of this country. We are a great country. And we can do it ---And we can do it if we come together," Ryan said.

At a campaign stop in Polk City, Iowa, two girls asked 2020 candidate Beto O'Rourke how he would guarantee that all children had access to adequate food and water.

"It makes me sad that some kids don’t have enough to eat," a five-year-old girl named Leyla told O'Rourke. "If you are president, how will you make sure that all kids have food?"

O’Rourke thanked her for the question, saying, “Thank you Leyla, and thank you for caring about other kids."

"We’re going to make sure that they get the help they need, the food they deserve, because you asked a great question,” he added, before going on to call for SNAP reform and increased salaries for teachers.

The second child, an 8-year-old girl named Morgan wearing a Beatles t-shirt, told O'Rourke that she had learned during a school project that roughly 740 million people worldwide lack clean water access.

"Some of those people are ... in places in our country right now, Flint, Michigan, mostly, so what do you think we should do so kids like me can have clean water access in our country?" she asked, referencing the city's contaminated drinking water crisis.

O'Rourke replied, "Thank you, Morgan, for being here, I share both your concern and your love of the Beatles," adding that while campaigning in Texas, he had been concerned to learn that nearly 50 of the state's water systems were unsafe to drink from.

"This is a problem we see all over the country," O'Rourke added. "And it has something to do with the way we extract resources out of the ground, the way that we treat our soil, the fact that we have an administration where the leaders of the EPA and the Interior Department do not believe in the functions they oversee, and prioritize corporations and those who want to extract over people who will eat what comes out of the soil, drink what flows through their community, breathe what is in the air."

He also referenced Flint saying, "some communities that have born the brunt of the climate change we have already seen, the pollution that we are already emitting, more than others, who have rates of MS or cancer or asthma that are far greater than other parts of the country."

"So you’re so right to bring this up," he added, "because it’s literally a life or death issue for our fellow Americans, our fellow human beings on this planet."