**Want FOX News Halftime Report in your inbox every day? Sign up here.**

On the roster: Perez: ‘Enough is enough,’ calls for new Iowa count - Trump revels in win with profane White House speech - Audible: Bye-owa - The cheese may have been worth it

PEREZ: ‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH,’ CALLS FOR NEW IOWA COUNT
AP: “The chairman of the Democratic National Committee called on Thursday for a ‘recanvass’ of the results of Monday’s Iowa caucus, which was marred by technical problems and delays. ‘Enough is enough,’ party leader Tom Perez wrote on Twitter. He said he was calling for the recanvass in order to ‘assure public confidence in the results.’ With 97% of precincts reporting, Pete Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are nearly tied. The technical glitches plaguing the first contest on the 2020 nominating calendar have made an already complicated candidate selection process even more complicated, forcing state officials to apologize and raising questions about Iowa’s traditional prime spot in picking nominees.”

Biden says he was ‘knocked down,’ calls Iowa flizzle a ‘gut punch’- Politico: “Joe Biden is no longer denying his surprisingly weak performance in Iowa. ‘I’m not going to sugarcoat it. We took a gut punch in Iowa,’ Biden said Wednesday, before cracking a joke about Iowa’s botched caucuses. ‘The whole process took a gut punch,’ Biden said. ‘But look this isn’t the first time in my life I’ve been knocked down.’ Biden’s admission marked a sharp departure from the rosy predictions that he and his campaign had been making about Iowa both before and after Monday’s caucus… Biden’s speech was one of the most fiery of his campaign as he went after the nominal winner in Iowa, Pete Buttigieg, the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor whom he accused of having too little experience.”

Bernie bucks boom - Fox News: “Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders hauled in an eye-popping $25 million last month, his campaign announced early Thursday morning. And the populist senator from Vermont who’s making his second straight White House bid will use his expanded war chest to increase his campaign staff and go up with ads in 10 of the 14 states that vote on March 3 on Super Tuesday. The massive haul further cements Sanders’ position as the clear leader in the race for campaign cash among the Democrats running for the White House. For comparison – Sanders brought in more last month than any of his Democratic nomination rivals raised in the final three months of last year. Sanders received $34.5 million in the Oct.-Dec. fourth quarter of 2019 fundraising. … The campaign reported that January’s haul came from $1.3 million donations from nearly 650,000 people, including over $219,000 new contributors.”

Buttigieg and Biden fight for second place in N.H. - Monmouth University: “Bernie Sanders has taken the lead in New Hampshire’s presidential primary, while Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden currently jockey for second place. Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar round out the top five in the final Monmouth University Poll of the 2020 Granite State primary. … Among registered New Hampshire Democrats and unaffiliated voters who are likely to participate in the February 2020 Democratic primary, the race currently stands at 24% for Sanders, 20% for Buttigieg, 17% for Biden, 13% for Warren, and 9% for Klobuchar.”

Nevada Dems scramble ahead of caucus - WSJ: “With its caucuses about two weeks away, Nevada’s Democratic Party is assessing plans for reporting results, scrambling to meet a tight timeline now that it has ditched an app like the one that upended Iowa’s contest. The Nevada State Democratic Party told presidential campaigns Tuesday night that ‘everything is on the table’ and that it is evaluating backup plans. Options could include relying on phones and not using an app, party spokeswoman Molly Forgey said. Earlier Tuesday the party said it wouldn’t use an app commissioned...”

THE RULEBOOK: LAYERING
“If the circumstances of our country are such as to demand a compound instead of a simple, a confederate instead of a sole, government, the essential point which will remain to be adjusted will be to discriminate the OBJECTS, as far as it can be done, which shall appertain to the different provinces or departments of power; allowing to each the most ample authority for fulfilling the objects committed to its charge.” – Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 23

TIME OUT: R.I.P. KIRK DOUGLAS
Hollywood Reporter: “As the 1960s dawned, Hollywood actor Kirk Douglas became a screen legend with a single role, in the historical epic Spartacus. At around the same time, Johnny Cash, a larger-than-life country-music star, would make an inauspicious big-screen debut in Five Minutes to Live, with results that would suggest he was a much more effective singer than actor. By the time their paths crossed onscreen in the 1971 western A Gunfight a decade later, Douglas was a respected film icon and Cash was the star of his own network TV series, as well as one of the most popular musicians on the planet. Kirk Douglas, who died Wednesday at 103, would not only earn a reputation as a fine actor, but also as a savvy film producer. Shooting A Gunfight in Spain, the project was funded by the Jicarilla Apache, the first instance of a Native American tribe financing a major Hollywood production. The film featured the two portraying aging gunslingers in what amounted to a two-character study focused on their inevitable duel, which was staged in a bullfight arena.”

Flag on the play? - Email us at HALFTIMEREPORT@FOXNEWS.COM with
your tips, comments or questions.

SCOREBOARD
DEMOCRATIC 2020 POWER RANKING
Biden: 27.6 points (↓ 0.4 points from last wk.)
Sanders: 22.4 points (↓ 0.8 points from last wk.)
Warren: 14.2 points (no change from last wk.)
Bloomberg: 8.4 points (↑ 0.6 point from last wk.)
Buttigieg: 6.2 points (↓ 0.6 point from last wk.)
[Averages include: NBC News/WSJ, IBD, Quinnipiac University, ABC News/WaPo and Fox News.]

TRUMP JOB PERFORMANCE
Average approval: 45 percent
Average disapproval: 51 percent
Net Score: -6 percent
Change from one week ago: ↑ 1.2 points
[Average includes: Gallup: 49% approve - 50% disapprove; NBC News/WSJ: 46% approve - 51% disapprove; CBS News: 43% approve - 51% disapprove; IBD: 44% approve - 51% disapprove; Quinnipiac University: 43% approve - 52% disapprove.]

WANT MORE HALFTIME REPORT?
You can join Chris and Brianna every day on Fox Nation. Go behind-the-scenes of your favorite political note as they go through the must-read headlines of the day right from their office – with plenty of personality. Click here to sign up and watch!

TRUMP REVELS IN WIN WITH PROFANE WHITE HOUSE SPEECH
Business Insider: “President Donald Trump on Thursday declared the Russia investigation to be ‘bull---t’ in a speech on his acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial, which was less a formal address than a campaign rally-style rant. ‘We were treated unbelievably unfairly. You have to understand, we first went through 'Russia, Russia, Russia'. It was all bull---t,’ Trump said to an audience in the East Room of the White House, while speaking on live TV. Trump said that Thursday's event was more of a ‘celebration’ than a speech, and he used it as an opportunity to decry critics and praise Republicans he viewed as loyal. ‘Adam Schiff is a vicious, horrible person. Nancy Pelosi is a horrible person,’ Trump said, referencing the lead House impeachment manager and the House Speaker. ‘They're vicious as hell.’ Without using his name, Trump excoriated Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, the only GOP senator who voted in favor of convicting him for abuse of power.”

Gloats, taunts at prayer breakfast - Fox News: “President Trump hit back against the impeachment trial as ‘a terrible ordeal by some very dishonest and corrupt people’ on Thursday at the 68th annual National Prayer Breakfast in his first remarks since being acquitted by the Senate. Trump held up a newspaper with the headline ‘Acquitted’ in front of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., with applause and laughter from the 3,500 guests gathered from more than 100 countries at the faith-filled event in Washington. ‘When they impeach you for nothing...it's not easy,’ Trump said regarding loving his enemies.”

Barr looks to limit investigations of 2020 candidates - NYT: “Attorney General William P. Barr issued new restrictions on Wednesday over the opening of politically sensitive investigations, an effort meant to avoid upending the presidential election as the F.B.I. inadvertently did in 2016 when its campaign inquiries shaped the outcome of the race. The order by Mr. Barr, announced in a memo reviewed by The New York Times, comes after a scathing report by the inspector general that showed how F.B.I. agents did not follow protocols and falsified information in their bid to investigate Carter Page, a former Trump campaign associate. … The memo said that the F.B.I. and all other divisions under the department’s purview must get Mr. Barr’s approval before investigating any of the 2020 presidential candidates.”

Senate GOPers target Biden family - USA Today: “Two Republican senators have said they are continuing to look into ‘potential conflicts of interest’ with Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine and China, shortly after President Donald Trump was acquitted by the Senate on articles of impeachment for his own conduct in Ukraine. Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., sent a letter to Secret Service Director James Murray on Wednesday asking for clarification on ‘whether Hunter Biden used government-sponsored travel to help conduct private business’ and details of his travel records. In defending Trump from accusations that he improperly pressured Ukraine to open investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Republicans have sought to shift the focus onto their claim that Biden conducted foreign policy in order to benefit his son's business interests in Ukraine, for which there is no evidence.”

And Hillary’s emails - WashEx: “A top Republican senator asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for information about the State Department’s administrative review of the handling of classified information on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server. …Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, sent a letter to Pompeo on Wednesday with several information requests. It noted the State Department's report ‘states that ‘the unprecedented nature and scale of this event posed many significant challenges’ for the Department’s investigation.”

The Judge’s Ruling: Despite acquittal, was there a high crime? - This week Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano explains his argument as to why President Trump is guilty of a high crime: “The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump ended not with a bang but a whimper. What different outcome could one expect from a trial without so much as a single witness, a single document, any cross-examination or a defendant respectful enough to show up? Law students are taught early on that a trial is not a grudge match or an ordeal; it is a search for the truth. Trial lawyers know that cross-examination is the most effective truth-testing tool available to them. But the search for the truth requires witnesses, and when the command from Senate Republican leaders came down that there shall be no witnesses, the truth-telling mission of Trump's trial was radically transformed into a steamroller of political power.” More here.

AUDIBLE: BYE-OWA
“This was a major, corn-fed f--- up.” – An unnamed Democratic elected official said on Tuesday in Portsmouth, N.H. per Politico.

FROM THE BLEACHERS
“Your assertions that ‘fear leads to (a species of) paralysis which leads to resentment which leads to anger which leads to hate’ and ‘we don't hate anything we do not first fear’ both seem more than a little dubious to me. Were they rhetorical flourishes or did you find them in a college textbook or ancient text? I am genuinely interested and imagine others might be as well. As a separate question: If your assertions are true, then it seems reasonable to suspect that, as long as fear offers a survival advantage we will be stuck with hate. That is unless we can discover an equally reflexive intervening variable. Does your source (or muse) have anything to offer on what this reflexive variable might be?” – Eric Hutchins, Santa Barbara, Calif.

[Ed. note: From Seneca to Lao Tzu to Augustine to Eric Hoffer to Yoda, philosophers have long explored the connection between fear, anger and hate (and the Dark Side). But you don’t need to look in a book to find the connection. You can look inside yourself. Is there anything you truly hate? What makes you angry? What or whom do you resent? I would hazard that in all of these things, fear – reasonable or unreasonable – is present. You wouldn’t bother hating something that you didn’t think could harm you or deprive you of something you love. And it most certainly is rooted in an instinctual response. Our “fight or flight” response is about escaping real perils and facing fearsome threats. But what about things that you can’t fight or flee? What happens when fear, rather than spurring an autonomic response, becomes our constant companion? The remedy for me is in shifting my focus away from my fears and toward the things for which I am grateful. I am a Christian, so I do my best to surrender my fears to God’s will and then pray for wisdom, courage and strength to face the fearsome things in life. Then I try to remember first the things for which I am so grateful. It is hard for fear to keep its hold in that environment. But, that’s just how I try to approach it.]

“You have such a way with words that even when I have no time to do so, I still read Halftime Report. Thank you for making me think, making me smile, and making me consider others before I go on Twitter. Keep up the good work; eventually, you may get me off Twitter.” – Stephen J. Tock, Dwight Ill.

[Ed. note: Thank you so much, Mr. Tock! We know our readers’ time is valuable and try always to bear it in mind.]

Share your color commentary: Email us at
HALFTIMEREPORT@FOXNEWS.COM and please make sure to include your name and hometown.

THE CHEESE MAY HAVE BEEN WORTH IT
KING5: “A man who police say was hiding for weeks in the rafters of an Auburn [Washington] grocery store has been arrested. Last month, police released surveillance video of the man to help track him down. At the time, police believed the man was living in the rafters of the Haggen Northwest Fresh Market for weeks. The man would only emerge after hours to steal items from the store, like cigarettes. The man was identified and arrested by Auburn police on Wednesday after detectives served a search warrant. During the arrest on Wednesday, police said they also found some ‘very expensive’ cheese that was missing from the store, as well as cigarettes. Auburn police did not say where or how the man was located, they also did not release his name.”

AND NOW, A WORD FROM CHARLES…
“Which is why my default view of espionage is to never believe anyone because everyone is trained in deception. This is not a value judgment; it’s a job description.” – Charles Krauthammer (1950-2018) writing in the Washington Post on March 9, 2017.

Chris Stirewalt is the politics editor for Fox News. Brianna McClelland contributed to this report. Want FOX News Halftime Report in your inbox every day? Sign up here.