WTF Just Happened Today

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

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1/ Trump will deliver his State of the Union address tonight at 9 p.m. ET before a joint session of Congress. Trump is expected to talk about the stock market and the economy. It’s not clear if Trump plans to mention the impeachment trial or the upcoming 2020 election. The theme of Trump’s speech will be “the Great American Comeback.” (New York Times / USA Today / Associated Press / CBS News / Washington Post)

• What to expect: New York Times / CNN

• CNN anchors were excluded from the annual pre-State of the Union lunch with the president. The White House typically invites anchors from all the major broadcast news networks to a traditional lunch on the day of the SOTU speech, but the Trump administration revoked CNN’s invitations. (CNN)

2/ Results for the Iowa presidential caucuses were delayed after the state Democratic Party said it found “inconsistencies” in the reporting. The Iowa Democratic Party had opted to use an app this year to help calculate and share precinct results, but precinct captains experienced technical difficulties with reporting their results through the app due to a “coding issue in the reporting system.” The Iowa Democratic Party Chair added: “We have every indication that our systems were secure and there was not a cyber security intrusion.” The app was reportedly built in the past two months and not properly tested at a statewide scale. Nevada’s Democratic Party, meanwhile, said it will not use the app for their caucus on Feb. 22. [Editor’s note: Partial results were released as I published this. With 62% of precincts reporting, Buttigieg (26.9%) leads Sanders (25.1%) and Warren (18.3%).] (NBC News / CBS News / CNN / ABC News / NBC News / FiveThirtyEight / New York Times / HuffPost / New York Times / Wall Street Journal /