OnPolitics: Batten down the hatches

Posted by Anonymous on August 30, 2019

FROM WASHINGTON AND BEYOND

Friday, August 30

French President Emmanuel Macron and President Donald Trump shake hands and pose as they hold a press conference on the closing day of the G7 summit in Biarritz, France, Aug. 26, 2019.

OnPolitics: Batten down the hatches

From nuking hurricanes to Japan's apparent love of corn, here's what made waves in politics this week.

Global trade talks, hurricanes and the shifting presidential field, oh my!

Welcome to OnPolitics, I'm your guest host Annah Aschbrenner. Let's get to it.

The eyes of the world turned to Biarritz, France for a few days as President Trump and members of the Gang of 7 (the G7, if you will) met for their annual summit. The leaders of the world's seven largest economies weren't there for a leisurely seaside vacation: The meetings came amid rising fears of a global recession as well as disputes over trade and climate change. For the most part, any discord was kept mostly behind closed doors. Then ... French President Emmanuel Macron said the G-7 had agreed to send a joint message to Iran . But Trump said he never signed off on it. And then Iran's Foreign Minister reportedly showed up. There was a lot going on.

But in what appeared to be good news for American farmers: Japan is probably going to buy a bunch of corn from them. A bunch as in $7 billion worth. C'est beaucoup!

The G7 ended with Trump confirming he skipped a meeting on climate change, and saying he's not going to lose the nation's wealth to "dreams and windmills." (Trump and wind turbines are not on friendly terms; they have drawn his ire frequently.)

Richard Hensen and his uncle Peter Henson, prepare their grandmothers house, on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2019, where they live on Greenwood Drive in Fort Pierce, for the arrival of Hurricane Dorian.

ERIC HASERT/TCPALM

This week in Talking About the Weather

Can we use a nuclear bomb to stop a hurricane? Short answer: No. Hurricanes are way more powerful. But why do we ask? Well, Trump found himself pushing back on a report that he wanted to do just that, raising the idea to Homeland Security as then-Tropical Storm Dorian pounded the Caribbean. He called the reporting "ridiculous." Dorian is expected to make landfall in Florida over the holiday weekend as a hurricane. (Please stay safe, Florida friends.) It's serious enough that Trump cancelled his planned weekend trip to Poland to commemorate the start of World War II.

This week in Trump

•	The Space Force is coming.
•	The U.S. is drawing down its presence in Afghanistan.
•	There was some confusion over a new executive order regarding children of U.S. military and government workers abroad.
•	Who's Joe Walsh? Trump has another GOP primary challenger
•	Trump slammed Fox News, saying the network isn't "working for us anymore!"
•	Elizabeth Warren got a crowd of 15,000, and Trump had something to say

This week in 2020

•	Kirsten Gillibrand is the latest Dem to leave the race. And then there were 20.
•	Joe Biden said racism is institutional in the U.S. and "a white man's problem"
•	A new USA TODAY/Suffolk poll says voters are feeling dread about 2020 election.
•	We know who's on the September debate stage, and it's not 20 people.
•	It's not a debate, but CNN will have a 7-hour climate town hall.
•	Stacey Abrams isn't running for the Senate in 2020.