Elections

Former President Donald J. Trump talked policy in Las Vegas and seemed almost chipper. In Arizona, he reveled in the endorsement of a former campaign rival, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.It was a moment the political world had been wondering about for weeks.If Vice President Kamala Harris had a good convention, would it knock former President Donald J. Trump further off his game?Would all that positive press for Ms. Harris — the big ratings, celebrity froth and the double-barreled Obama zingers — drive Mr. Trump deeper into his most self-destructive patterns?At a Mexitalian restaurant in Las Vegas on Friday afternoon, we seemed to have our answer: It would not — at least for now.Mr. Trump had turned up at the restaurant to stand among service industry workers and promote his “no tax on tips” policy proposal. He stayed mostly focused — he did not talk all about himself but rather about the plight of waiters and bartenders. He told them it was Ms. Harris who cast a tiebreaking vote to provide the Internal Revenue Service with funds to hire 87,000 people — the very people who would be snatching their hard-earned tips. (The truth is a bit more nuanced than all that.)He did not devolve into any racist tangents about Ms. Harris, or call anyone a fat pig, or pick a fight with a popular governor from his own party, or tell dark tales about young women being raped, strangled and murdered by immigrants.He seemed almost chipper (at least more chipper than the night before, when he called into Fox News with his initial meandering reviews of Ms. Harris’s big speech). He talked about how the restaurant’s owner had started as a dishwasher and worked his way up, and joked with him about how he must have lots of cash now. The owner compared Mr. Trump to Ronald Reagan. “Thank you, Javier,” said Mr. Trump, looking touched.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Fresh from ending his long-shot presidential bid, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared alongside Donald J. Trump at a rally for the former president in Arizona on Friday, a potential headline-grabber that the Trump campaign hopes will help its efforts in battleground states.Mr. Kennedy received almost a rock-star-style reception, walking onstage to fireworks, raucous cheering and the Foo Fighters song “My Hero” at an arena in Glendale, Ariz. But the political impact of his endorsement of Mr. Trump remains uncertain.Still, Mr. Trump’s allies on Friday relished the fact that the former president had won the backing of a member of America’s most storied Democratic family, albeit one who has had many of his relatives denounce him and his endorsement of Mr. Trump. Of all the outlandish political news stories of the summer, mused Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, which helped organize the rally, “maybe most remarkable of all: A Kennedy has endorsed a Republican.”Hours after Mr. Kennedy announced in nearby Phoenix that he was suspending his campaign and throwing his support behind Mr. Trump, he said at the rally — with Mr. Trump standing next to him — that he and the former president had found common ground.“We talked not about the things that separated us — because we don’t agree on everything — but on the values and the issues that bind us together,” Mr. Kennedy told the crowd, recalling a conversation he had with Mr. Trump. “Don’t you want a president that’s going to make America healthy again?”Despite their past conflicts, Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Trump have similar grievances that they could easily weave together on the campaign trail. They both blame a shadowy, bureaucratic deep state for many of the nation’s ills, and they argue that technology companies and Democrats want to suppress free speech.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The attack took place in Solingen during a celebration of the 650th anniversary of the city’s founding.The attack took place in a central square in Solingen, Germany, during a festival celebrating the town’s 650th anniversary.Andreas Rentz/Getty ImagesA person armed with a knife killed at least three people at a city fair in the western German city of Solingen on Friday night, according to the police. The attacker, who escaped, also severely wounded five others. Officers were looking for a suspect.Local news outlets reported that a lone attacker had turned on the crowds during the fair celebrating the 650th anniversary of the city’s founding.“This evening, we are all in shock, horror and great sadness in Solingen,” Tim Kurzbach, the city’s mayor, said in a post on Facebook. “We all wanted to celebrate our city’s anniversary together and now we have to mourn the dead and injured.”So far, the motive for the attack is unclear. More

From left, Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images;J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press Speakers at the Democratic National Convention used more than 109,000 words over four days in Chicago this week. Their choice of words and phrases contrasts the themes and ideas of last month’s Republican National Convention. Excluding common and routine words, the most frequently spoken words at the […] More

Overall, TV viewership of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago was up 14 percent from the Republicans’ event last month.Maybe it was curiosity about the untested candidate who took command of the ticket at the last minute, or the cameos by TV-ready celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Mindy Kaling and Kerry Washington. The runaway (and ultimately misguided) speculation that Beyoncé might make an appearance certainly did not hurt.Whatever the reason, Democrats notched a victory this week in one of the year’s biggest media bouts: Which party’s political convention would attract more viewers?The four-day celebration in Chicago of Vice President Kamala Harris was watched on TV by an average of 21.8 million viewers across four nights, Nielsen said on Friday. That was 14 percent more than the Republicans’ jamboree last month in Milwaukee, a four-day tribute to former President Donald J. Trump.The gap between the conventions, however, narrowed on the final day, when the presidential nominees delivered their climactic remarks. On Thursday, the night of Ms. Harris’s acceptance speech, 26.2 million people tuned in. On the evening in July when Mr. Trump spoke, in his first extensive address since surviving an assassination attempt, 25.4 million watched — a difference of only 3 percent.On its own, Ms. Harris’s 40-minute speech averaged 28.9 million TV viewers, according to Nielsen. The audience for Mr. Trump’s 92-minute address last month fell short of that figure, peaking early at 28.4 million viewers and then dwindling as the former president spoke long into the night.Live TV ratings are a useful metric of the nation’s attention economy, but they are not all-encompassing. The Nielsen data did not capture viewers who streamed the conventions on their phones or laptops. Democrats, in particular, encouraged podcasters and social media influencers to post short videos from Chicago in the hopes of reaching voters who do not watch traditional TV.This year’s convention ratings also underscored the continuing flight toward partisanship in television news.Just as Fox News crushed its network rivals in the ratings race during the Republican convention — beating MSNBC and CNN combined — the Democratic convention had one clear winner: MSNBC. The cable home of Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid, which has a fervent liberal fan base, beat every network (including ABC, CBS, and NBC) in total convention viewership.This year marked MSNBC’s largest audience for a Democratic convention since the network’s founding in 1996, a milestone achieved despite the cord-cutting that has drastically reduced the number of people who subscribe to cable in the first place.CNN has endured a tough stretch in the ratings, but its Democratic convention coverage attracted more viewers in the most coveted demographic — adults 25 to 54 years old — than any other network. (MSNBC fell just short, losing to CNN in the category by a margin of roughly 1 percent.)CNN’s new leadership is trying to appeal to more casual, and less partisan, consumers of news. It has already played a central role in this year’s campaign: It was CNN’s presidential debate in June that set off the head-spinning series of events that led to Ms. Harris’s prime-time speech on Thursday. More

The most rural of the battleground states this year is North Carolina. About 3.4 million people, or roughly a third of the state’s population, reside in a rural area, more than in any other state besides Texas. Democrats have seen their support slip in rural areas, ceding ground to Republicans. As such, rural voters in […] More

Former President Donald J. Trump on Friday fumed over the fact that when it comes to exempting tips from being taxed, he and his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, are on the same page.Mr. Trump, before a gathering of supporters at a Las Vegas restaurant, complained that Ms. Harris had stolen his idea and sought to cast her as an opportunist who was pandering to service industry workers by cribbing from one of his signature proposals.“She’s a copycat,” Mr. Trump said. “She’s a flip-flopper, you know. She’s the greatest flip-flopper in history. She went from communism to capitalism in about two weeks.”A Harris campaign spokesman declined to comment. This month, while in Las Vegas herself, Ms. Harris said she would seek to end federal income taxes on tips if she were elected. Mr. Trump first floated the idea in June, and it quickly garnered bipartisan support.He has publicly stewed over her embrace of the plan, especially in Nevada, a battleground state that Mr. Trump lost in 2016 and 2020.Before President Biden withdrew from the race in late July, Mr. Trump had appeared to be on a trajectory to end his electoral drought in the desert — where one of his hotels towers over the Strip. Mr. Biden, whose campaign called the “no tax on tips” overture a “wild campaign promise,” had been trailing Mr. Trump by an average of seven percentage points in Nevada.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Here’s my road map to the campaign’s remaining 74 days. If you blink, you might miss it.When Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage at the Democratic National Convention last night, she did not linger on her party’s bliss over the events of the past month. She used the opening words of the biggest speech of her life to change the subject.“OK,” Harris said. “Let’s get to business.”Harris’s crisp opening reflected the urgency of the clock, but also the hard reality of a hyper-compressed political calendar: Her presidential campaign is almost over, even though it has just begun, and both she and former President Donald Trump have hardly a second to waste in a close race.Because Harris has been atop her party’s ticket for only about a month, she and Trump have sprinted in a matter of days through campaign elements that normally take months. Harris has raced to define herself and her candidacy, running a campaign heavy on rallies and light on policy and taking questions from the press. Trump, who built a campaign premised on defeating President Biden, has struggled to change up his attacks. And now, with both conventions done and dusted, comes everything else.Much will be packed into the next 74 days, and much can change in that time. If your head is spinning, dear reader, I get it. Mine too! Here’s my road map to the rest of the campaign. If you blink, you might miss it.Coming up next: the summer doldrums.Ah, finally. The presidential race is set. It’s summertime. Candidates and voters can take a minute to breathe before the fall campaign ramps up.For like, two days.Harris is heading home to Washington this weekend, my colleagues Reid Epstein and Katie Rogers report. Trump, who is campaigning today in Las Vegas and Glendale, Ariz., also has no campaign rallies planned for Saturday and Sunday. That might be all the peace and quiet we get before …We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More