i m fredricka whitfield. thank you so much for joining us. new today, iraq is now summoning a top u.s. diplomatic official in protest of a barrage of punishing u.s. air strikes in the middle east. the u.s. says those strikes hit 85 targets linked to iran s islamic revolutionary guard quds force and affiliated militia groups in iraq and syria. the strikes a response to a drone attack in jordan which killed three american soldiers on sunday. iraq is claiming the explosions that just happened involving the u.s. killing 16 people, including civilians. u.s. defense secretary lloyd austin says the strikes are just the beginning of the u.s. response. iran says the u.s. has made a strategic mistake, while iraq and syria say the u.s. actions could inflame more conflict in the region. cnn has teams around the globe covering all of these developments. let s go first to cnn s ben wedeman in jordan. ben, these strikes were sudden, devastating. how are officials on the ground? how are thos
billionaire, maybe not so much, whether or not that s literally true, and none of this, by the way is filed until the judge signs off on all of it. that it has not stopped yet the former president for making hay of it politically. he went on social media with one of his favorite charges, the phrase, say it with me now, witchhunts, and claiming that our legal system is being used as a political weapon but here s the thing, do damages that are vastly bigger than any we expected allow him to frame all of this as an attack against him and frankly will it help him politically, after all, more than half of voters in our new hampshire exit poll said donald trump would be fit for presidency, even if he is convicted of a crime. i ve got to get your reaction to this, gwen, thinking about the fact that this is and $83 million verdict. this is not the $5 million from last year and this is not a trial about whether sexual abuse occurred, that s already been decided but what was your react
registered republicans. do you know that trump only received a little over 56,000 votes? and iowa, iowa is lily white. it s unrepresentative of the country at large. we re a diverse nation of over 335 million, a small number of iowa voters should not determine our destiny. and besides, the iowa field was still too crowded. when nikki haley finally got him one-on-one in new hampshire, she was able to keep it close and received about 43% of the vote. and worse for trump the independents in new hampshire supported haley in huge numbers showing that trump could never win a general election, so why should haley drop out? candidates only drop out when they run out of money and nikki has the money. she s raised 2.6 million since the new hampshire primary, and the super pac backing haley raised 50.1 million in the last signature months, that s about 5 million more than the pac backing trump. and don t forget. he s four times indicted, anything can happen. after all, just yesterday a
is the war in gaza beginning to slip away from israel? and are we seeing the start of a wider middle east conflict? for all of the words and all of the warnings, here we are, months on, and so many red lights are flashing across the region. after its involvement with the three hs hamas, hezbollah and the houthis is iran getting an inflated sense of its own importance? the iranian authorities felt overconfident in projecting their power in the middle east and they felt that they can get away with doing the same in pakistan. and prime minister modi of india inaugurates the hugely controversial hindu temple in ayodhya. does it represent the start of his election campaign? there was definitely a sense of political colour in that event. it is something the government will deny. they will say this is a religious ceremony, this was something that millions of hindus have wanted. israel s long serving prime minister, benjamin netanyahu, is for the umpteenth time fighting for his p