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    Trump Says He Gave NATO Allies Warning: Pay In or He’d Urge Russian Aggression

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    Former President Donald J. Trump said on Saturday that, while president, he told the leaders of NATO countries that he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that had not paid the money they owed to the military alliance.Mr. Trump did not make clear whether he ever intended to follow through on such a threat or what that would mean for the alliance, but his comment at a campaign event in South Carolina — a variation of one he has made before to highlight his negotiation skills — is likely to cause concern among NATO member states, which are already very nervous about the prospect of a Trump return.Mr. Trump’s suggestion that he would encourage Russian aggression against allies of the United States — for any reason — comes as Republicans in Congress have pushed back against more aid for Ukraine in its war against Russia, and as European officials have expressed concerns over possible Russian aggression on NATO’s Eastern side.Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, dismissed those warnings as “threat mongering” in an interview with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, that aired on Thursday. “We have no interest in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else,” Mr. Putin said.But he has also called on the United States to “make an agreement” to end the war in Ukraine by ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia, comments that were seen by some as an appeal to American conservatives to block further involvement in the war.Some European officials and foreign policy experts have said they are concerned that Russia could invade a NATO nation after its war with Ukraine concludes, fears that they say are heightened by the possibility of Mr. Trump returning to the presidency.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

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      Tucker Carlson’s Putin Interview Puts Him Back on Center Stage, for Now

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      Mr. Carlson’s interview with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia put him back on center stage for the first time since his Fox News show was canceled.Last spring, it seemed Tucker Carlson might have reached the end of his fiery path through American media and politics.Fox News canceled his top-rated show, depriving Mr. Carlson of his nightly platform in prime time. But it kept him under a contract, worth more than $15 million a year, that prohibited him from taking a job with a rival.Under the old rules of the legacy media, Mr. Carlson would have been off the air and out of sight through the end of the 2024 election, when his contract runs out. But Mr. Carlson is no typical television star. And what was once normal in his industry is increasingly archaic, shattered by the new rules — or lack thereof — of the fractured online media world.In landing an exclusive interview with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — released on Thursday on the social network X and Mr. Carlson’s own streaming site, Tucker Carlson Network — the host returned, at least for a moment, to the center of American politics.The two-hour interview gave him a bullhorn to an American audience just as many congressional Republicans worked to block a vital lifeline of American military aid to Ukraine.It also accomplished Mr. Carlson’s goal of recapturing the spotlight. For the first time since his defenestration from Fox, his name was once again on the lips of major national and international figures, the kind of buzz on which Mr. Carlson has long thrived.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

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      Putin Calls on U.S. to ‘Negotiate’ on Ukraine in Tucker Carlson Interview

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      In a two-hour interview, President Vladimir Putin of Russia was more direct than usual about how he sees his Ukraine invasion ending: not with a military victory, but a deal with the West.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has worked for decades to win allies in the West, using his spy agencies to interfere in elections and deploying diplomats to build links with Kremlin-friendly politicians.On Thursday, the world witnessed a new, verbose chapter in those efforts: Mr. Putin’s two-hour interview, taped in a gilded hall at the Kremlin, with one of America’s most prominent and most divisive conservative commentators.Speaking to Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, Mr. Putin called on the United States to “make an agreement” to cede Ukrainian territory to Russia in order to end the war. He sought to appeal directly to American conservatives just as Republican lawmakers are holding up aid to Ukraine on Capitol Hill, echoing the talking points of politicians like former President Donald J. Trump who say that the United States has more pressing priorities than a war thousands of miles away.“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Mr. Putin said in response to Mr. Carlson’s question about the possibility of American soldiers fighting in Ukraine. “You have issues on the border, issues with migration, issues with the national debt.”He went on: “Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with Russia?”Much of the interview constituted a familiar Kremlin history lesson about Russia’s historical claim to Eastern European lands, beginning in the ninth century, that Mr. Putin made little effort to distill for American ears. He opined on artificial intelligence, Genghis Khan and the Roman Empire. He also laid out his well-worn and spurious justifications for invading Ukraine, asserting that Russia’s goal was to “stop this war” that he claims the West is waging against Russia.But Mr. Putin was more direct than usual about how he sees his Ukraine invasion ending: not with a military victory, but through an agreement with the West. At the interview’s end, Mr. Putin told Mr. Carlson that the time had come for talks about ending the war because “those who are in power in the West have come to realize” that Russia will not be defeated on the battlefield.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

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      Tucker Carlson Urges Putin to Release American Journalist

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      The Russian president was noncommittal after Mr. Carlson asked about Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who has been held in a Moscow prison for nearly a year.In an interview released on Thursday, Tucker Carlson urged President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to release an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal who has been held in a notorious Moscow prison for nearly a year.Mr. Carlson’s appeal on behalf of the reporter, Evan Gershkovich, was only the second time that Mr. Putin directly addressed a case that has galvanized press freedom groups and strained diplomatic relations with the United States.Large portions of the two-hour interview were taken up by Mr. Putin’s recounting hundreds of years of Russian history. But in the final minutes, Mr. Carlson asked, “as a sign of your decency,” if he “would be willing to release him to us and we’ll bring him back to the United States.” Mr. Carlson added: “This guy’s obviously not a spy. He’s a kid, and maybe he was breaking your law in some way, but he’s not a superspy, and everybody knows that.”Mr. Putin was noncommittal in his response. “We have done so many gestures of good will out of decency that I think we have run out of them,” he said, according to a translation of his remarks by Mr. Carlson’s team.Pressed about the case by Mr. Carlson, Mr. Putin later added: “I also want him to return to his homeland at last. I’m absolutely sincere. But let me say once again, the dialogue continues.”The Russian leader suggested that he wanted additional concessions from American officials before he would consider releasing Mr. Gershkovich. Mr. Putin suggested that he might be willing to trade the reporter for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian citizen sentenced to life in prison in Germany for the 2019 murder of a Chechen former separatist fighter in Berlin.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

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      Pedro Sánchez Secures New Term to Lead a Divided Spain

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      The Socialist prime minister won a parliamentary vote only after promising amnesty to Catalan separatists, enraging conservatives.Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish progressive leader, secured a second term as prime minister on Thursday after a polarizing agreement granting amnesty to Catalan separatists gave him enough support in Parliament to govern with a fragile coalition over an increasingly divided nation.With 179 votes, barely more than the 176 usually required to govern, Mr. Sánchez, who has been prime minister since 2018, won a chance to extend the progressive agenda, often successful economic policies and pro-European Union posture of his Socialist Party.The outcome was the result of months of haggling since an inconclusive July election in which neither the conservative Popular Party, which came in first, or the Socialist Party, which came in second, secured enough support to govern alone.But the fractures in Spain were less about left versus right and more about the country’s very geographic integrity and identity. Mr. Sánchez’s proposed amnesties have breathed new life into a secession issue that last emerged in 2017, when separatists held an illegal referendum over independence in the prosperous northeastern region of Catalonia.That standoff caused perhaps the worst constitutional crisis for Spain since it became a democracy after the fall of the Franco dictatorship in the 1970s.It has since fueled a Spanish nationalist movement once considered taboo in the wake of Franco’s rule.Even before Mr. Sánchez could be sworn in, the prospect of an amnesty brought hundreds of thousands of conservatives and right-wing hard-liners into the streets in sometimes violent protests that have also drawn the American rabble-rouser Tucker Carlson. Spain’s courts have criticized the proposed amnesty as a violation of the separation of powers. European Union officials are watching nervously.Demonstrators gathered in Barcelona, Spain, on Sunday, to protest the government’s proposed law that would grant amnesty to Catalan separatists.Pau Barrena/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe parliamentary debate leading to Thursday’s vote in a building protected by barricades was particularly bitter as Mr. Sánchez defended the proposed clemency law from conservative accusations of corruption and democratic illegitimacy.“Every time the national dimension enters the arena, emotions grow and the debate is even further polarized,” said José Ignacio Torreblanca, a Spain expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank. Spain was in for “ugly, nasty and dirty” months ahead, he said.The separatism issue has given a “second life” to Carles Puigdemont, former president of the Catalonia region who was the force behind the 2017 secession movement and is now a fugitive in self-exile in Belgium, Mr. Torreblanca said. The hard-right party Vox, which, after a lackluster showing in the elections, has again raised its voice, calling for constant street protests.This seemed very much the situation Spaniards hoped to avoid when they cast most of their votes with mainstream parties in July, signaling that they wanted the stability of a strong center.In the balloting, the Popular Party persuaded many to choose their more mainstream conservatism over Vox but came up short of enough votes to form a government.Mr. Sánchez needed the support of a separatist party to govern — and in return offered amnesties, something he had previously called a red line he would not cross. The alternative was new elections.“The left face a great cost if they go to new elections, so having a government is crucial for them. But pro-independence parties face an important opportunity cost if this government is not in place,” said Pablo Simón, a political scientist at Carlos III University in Madrid. “All of them are very weak, but they need each other.”Carles Puigdemont, who has been in exile in Belgium, speaking by video link at a gathering of his Junts per Catalunya party in 2020.Quique Garcia/EPA, via ShutterstockPolls show that about two-thirds of Spaniards oppose the amnesty, demonstrated by large, and largely peaceful, protests throughout the country, though Vox politicians have attended violent rallies peppered with extremists outside Socialist Party headquarters. This week, Mr. Carlson, the former Fox News celebrity, attended one of the protests in Madrid with the Vox leader, Santiago Abascal, and said anyone willing “to end democracy is a tyrant, is a dictator. And this is happening in the middle of Europe.”Mr. Sánchez and his supporters have pointed out that their coalition — however much the hard right dislikes it — won enough support to govern, as the Constitution dictates. In a lengthy speech on Wednesday, Mr. Sánchez derided the conservatives for their alliance with Vox. He argued that the deal with the Catalan Republican Left and with the more radical Junts per Catalunya, the de facto leader of which is Mr. Puigdemont, was required to promote unity for the country.“And how do we guarantee that unity? You can try the path of tension and imposition, or you can try the path of dialogue, understanding and forgiveness,” Mr. Sánchez said, citing his record of pardoning imprisoned separatist leaders in 2021 as a way to reduce tensions with Catalonia. He said that the conservative hard-line approach had brought the unsuccessful 2017 move for secession in the first place.The conservative Popular Party’s leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, attacked Mr. Sánchez as “the problem.”“You and your inability to keep your word, your lack of moral limits, your pathological ambition,” he said. “As long as you’re around, Spain will be condemned to division. Your time as prime minister will be marked by Puigdemont returning freely to Catalonia. History will have no amnesty for you.”The leader of the conservative Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, center, at a protest against the amnesty bill in Madrid on Sunday.Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut Mr. Sánchez seemed unaffected and instead mocked the conservatives as having a record of corruption and for being motivated by sour grapes over losing the election, laughing at Mr. Feijóo, who sat in front of him.“I don’t understand why you’re so keen to hold a new election if you won the last one,” Mr. Sánchez said.Mr. Sánchez also took direct aim at the leader of Vox, Mr. Abascal, saying, “The only effective barrier to the policies of the far right is our coalition government.”The amnesty bill would cancel “penal, administrative and financial” penalties against more than 300 people involved in the independence movement from Jan. 1, 2012, to Nov. 13, 2023.But Mr. Sánchez’s Socialists had also agreed to relieve millions of euros in debt to Catalonia, a demand of the separatists, and to give it some control over commuter train services. Mr. Puigdemont’s party had demanded that Catalonia, which is a wealthy region, keep more of its tax revenues, and that referendum talks should restart, though this time abiding by the demands of the Spanish Constitution.Conservatives have vowed to fight the law, which will take many months to work its way through Parliament and must overcome serious hurdles, not least of them the objection of Spanish judges. There is the risk that if the separatists are stymied by the courts, which they consider politically motivated, they could drop out of the coalition, essentially paralyzing Mr. Sánchez’s legislative agenda.“Probably this government will be stuck in Parliament,” said Mr. Simón, the political scientist, adding that grievances over the amnesties in regional governments controlled by conservatives would hurt cooperation and governance as well.There is also the question of whether Mr. Puigdemont could once again pursue an illegal referendum, recreating the trauma of 2017. That would probably embolden the nationalist Vox, whose grave warnings about the destruction of Spain would seem legitimized.“If you activate this extinction or survival mode of Spanish nationalists, then the conservative party may not be the best option because you are frustrated and angry,” said Mr. Torreblanca, the analyst.He added that Spain could be entering a risky scenario in which “those who lose the elections do not accept that they have lost, not so much because the vote was rigged, but because the government is doing things which they considered outrageous.” More

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      Haley Slams Trump and Ramaswamy Over Israel Remarks

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      Nikki Haley on Friday knocked two of her Republican presidential rivals, Donald J. Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy, over their recent comments on Israel, underscoring the deepening divide within the party around the “America First” anti-interventionist stance that Mr. Trump made a core part of his first campaign.Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley suggested, lacks moral clarity and has not left “the baggage and negativity” of the past behind, an apparent reference to Mr. Trump’s still-simmering animosity toward Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over events that include his congratulating President Biden on winning the 2020 election. Mr. Ramaswamy, meanwhile, sounds more like a liberal Democrat than a Republican, Ms. Haley said.“To go and criticize the head of a country who just saw massive bloodshed — no, that’s not what we need in a president,” Ms. Haley said of Mr. Trump, the former president and current Republican front-runner, in a news conference in Concord, N.H., after filing to get on the state’s primary ballot.Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump who has been running on her foreign policy experience, said the next president of the United States needed to be someone who “knows the difference between good and evil, who knows the difference between right and wrong.”“You don’t congratulate or give any credit to murderers, period,” she said. Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, accused Ms. Haley of using Democratic talking points and said that “there has been no bigger defender and advocate for Israel than President Trump.” But Mr. Trump has drawn scorn from both sides of the political aisle for referring to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, as “very smart” while criticizing Israel’s prime minister and Israeli intelligence.His tone shifted on Friday, though, as he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he had “always been impressed by the skill and determination of the Israeli Defense Forces.” A second post said simply: “#IStandWithIsrael #IStandWithBibi.”Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Ramaswamy campaign, dismissed Ms. Haley’s remarks on Friday — including Ms. Haley’s accusation that he sounded like a member of the group of progressives known as “the squad” — as a scripted attack from a candidate whom Ms. McLaughlin sought to portray as beholden to special interests.“Pre-canned quip brought to you by the Boeing squad,” she said in an email, invoking Ms. Haley’s tenure of less than a year on the corporate board of Boeing.Ms. Haley’s dig at Mr. Ramaswamy on Friday escalated an ongoing feud between the G.O.P. rivals that has pitted those with more traditional conservative positions, who believe the United States should play a major role abroad, against those espousing anti-interventionist views, who want Americans to focus on issues at home.Mr. Ramaswamy was sharply rebuked by his opponents over his conversation with Tucker Carlson on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, earlier this week.He called the Republican response to Hamas’s attacks on Israel another example of “selective moral outrage” and argued that politicians on both sides of the aisle had largely ignored other atrocities, citing fentanyl deaths in the United States and the accusations of genocide of ethnic Armenians by Azerbaijan.“It comes down in most cases — some people do have ideological commitments that are outdated that are earnest — but a lot of it comes down to money, the corrupting influence of super PACs on the process,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.In a statement on Friday, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, another Republican candidate in the race, condemned Mr. Ramaswamy’s remarks, saying that he was “pulling out the oldest and most offensive antisemitic tropes possible.”He added: “To say that outrage is fueled by donor money and the media is beyond offensive. It is morally wrong and it is dangerous.”Mr. Ramaswamy accused critics and even conservative media outlets of taking his words out of context. Ms. McLaughlin, his campaign spokeswoman, said in an email on Friday that he was talking about Azerbaijan, not Israel.But Sean Hannity, the Fox News commentator, was not persuaded. In a tense exchange between the two men on Thursday night, Mr. Hannity said that Mr. Ramaswamy had a history of retreating from his incendiary statements and had made wild claims without backing them up.“What are the financial corrupting influences that Nikki Haley is taking a position on?” he said. “We’ve got pictures of dead babies decapitated, burned babies’ bodies. We’ve got the equivalent of what would be, population-wise in the U.S., over 37,000 dead Americans. So, how much more evidence do you need? What are you talking about?”Mr. Trump, during his time in the White House, virtually did not challenge Israel on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.As his United Nations ambassador, Ms. Haley forcefully spoke out in support of the president’s formal recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, as well as his decision to cut American funding to Palestinian refugees. She has since made her foreign policy credentials and staunch support for Israel pillars of her campaign. Her sparring with Mr. Ramaswamy over foreign policy on the national debate stage in particular helped to boost her in the polls, propelling her to the second position behind Mr. Trump in New Hampshire.On the trail and on the Republican media circuit this week, Ms. Haley has been talking up her on-the-ground experience in the Middle East and calling for the elimination of Hamas. In town halls in New Hampshire on Thursday, she ratcheted up her criticism of Mr. Trump for his reaction to the Israel-Hamas war, saying the former president was too focused on himself.In a small room crowded with reporters at the New Hampshire State House on Friday, Ms. Haley again pitched herself as “a new generational conservative leader” who knew how to negotiate with world leaders.“I know what it takes to keep Americans safe,” she said. She later added: “You don’t just have Israel’s back when they get hit. You need to have Israel’s back when they hit back, too.” More

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      Republicans Agree on Foreign Policy — When It Comes to China

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      At first glance, last week’s Republican presidential debate revealed a party fractured over America’s role in the world. Ron DeSantis said he wouldn’t support additional aid to Ukraine unless Europe does more. Vivek Ramaswamy said he wouldn’t arm Ukraine no matter what. Chris Christie, Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, all staunch defenders of Kyiv, pounced. Within minutes, the altercations were so intense that the moderators struggled to regain control.But amid the discord, one note of agreement kept rising to the surface: that the true threat to America comes from Beijing. In justifying his reluctance to send more aid to Ukraine, Mr. DeSantis said he’d ensure that the United States does “what we need to do with China.” Mr. Ramaswamy denounced aiding Ukraine because the “real threat we face is communist China.” Ms. Haley defended such aid because “a win for Russia is a win for China.” Mr. Pence said Mr. Ramaswamy’s weakness on Ukraine would tempt Beijing to attack Taiwan.Regardless of their views on Ukraine, Republicans are united in focusing on China. They are returning to the principle that many championed at the beginning of the last Cold War. It’s neither internationalism nor isolationism. It’s Asia First.When Americans remember the early Cold War years, they often think of Europe: NATO, the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, which justified aiding Greece and Turkey. But for many leading Republicans at the time, those commitments were a distraction: The real menace lay on the other side of the globe.Senator Robert Taft, nicknamed “Mr. Republican” because of his stature in the party, opposed America’s entrance into NATO and declared in 1948 that “the Far East is ultimately even more important to our future peace and safety than is Europe.” The following year, Senator H. Alexander Smith, a Republican on the Foreign Policy and Armed Services Committee, warned that while the Truman administration was “preoccupied with Europe the real threat of World War III may be approaching us from the Asiatic side.” William Knowland, the Senate Republican leader from 1953 to 1958, was so devoted to supporting the Nationalist exiles who left the mainland after losing China’s civil war that he was called the “senator from Formosa,” as Taiwan was known at the time.Understanding why Republicans prioritized China then helps explain why they’re prioritizing it now. In her book “Asia First: China and the Making of Modern American Conservatism,” the historian Joyce Mao argues that Cold War era Republicans’ focus on China stemmed in part from a “spiritual paternalism that arguably carried over from the previous century.” In the late 19th century, when the United States was carving out a sphere of influence in the Pacific, China, with its vast population, held special allure for Americans interested in winning souls for Christ. The nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, who were Christians themselves, used this religious connection to drum up American support — first for their war against Communist rivals on the Chinese mainland and then, after they fled to the island of Taiwan, for their regime there.Many of America’s most influential Asia Firsters — like the Time magazine publisher Henry Luce — were either the children of American missionaries in China or had served as missionaries there themselves. The John Birch Society, whose fervent and conspiratorial brand of anti-Communism foreshadowed the right-wing populism of today, took its name from an Army captain and former missionary killed by Chinese communists at the end of World War II.Today, of course, Americans don’t need religious reasons to put Asia first. It boasts much of the world’s economic, political and military power, which is why the Biden administration focuses on the region, too. In Washington, getting tough on China is now a bipartisan affair. Still, the conservative tradition that Ms. Mao describes — which views China as a civilizational pupil turned civilizational threat — is critical to grasping why rank-and-file Republicans, far more than Democrats, fixate on the danger from Beijing.In March, a Gallup poll found that while Democrats were 23 points more likely to consider Russia a greater enemy than China, Republicans were a whopping 64 points more likely to say the reverse. There is evidence that this discrepancy stems in part from the fact that while President Vladimir Putin of Russia casts himself as a defender of conservative Christian values, President Xi Jinping leads a nonwhite superpower whose regime has spurned the Christian destiny many Americans once envisioned for it.In a 2021 study, the University of Delaware political scientists David Ebner and Vladimir Medenica found that white Americans who expressed higher degrees of racial resentment were more likely to perceive China as a military threat. And it is white evangelicals today — like the conservative Christians who anchored support for Chiang in the late 1940s and 1950s — who express the greatest animosity toward China’s government. At my request, the Pew Research Center crunched data gathered this spring comparing American views of China by religion and race. It found that white non-Hispanic evangelicals were 25 points more likely to hold a “very unfavorable” view of China than Americans who were religiously unaffiliated, 26 points more likely than Black Protestants and 33 points more likely than Hispanic Catholics.This is the Republican base. And its antipathy to China helps explain why many of the right-wing pundits and politicians often described as isolationists aren’t isolationists at all. They’re Asia Firsters. Tucker Carlson, who said last week that American policymakers hate Russia because it’s a “Christian country,” insisted in 2019 that America’s “main enemy, of course, is China, and the United States ought to be in a relationship with Russia aligned against China.” Mr. Ramaswamy, who is challenging Mr. DeSantis for second place in national polls, wants the United States to team up with Moscow against Beijing, too.And of course, the Republican front-runner for 2024, former President Donald Trump — deeply in tune with conservative voters — has obsessed over China since he exploded onto the national political stage eight years ago. Mr. Trump is often derided as an isolationist because of his hostility to NATO and his disdain for international treaties. But on China his rhetoric has been fierce. In 2016, he even said Beijing had been allowed to “rape our country.”Republicans may disagree on the best way forward in Ukraine. But overwhelmingly, they agree that China is the ultimate danger. And whether it’s Mr. Trump’s reference earlier this year to his former secretary of transportation as “Coco Chow” or House Republicans implying that Asian Americans in the Biden administration and Congress aren’t loyal to the United States, there’s mounting evidence that prominent figures on the American right see that danger in racial terms.That’s the problem with Republicans’ return to Asia First. Many in the party don’t only see China’s rise as a threat to American power. They see it as a threat to white Christian power, too.Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) is a professor of journalism and political science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is also an editor at large of Jewish Currents and writes The Beinart Notebook, a weekly newsletter.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Who Are Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, the Debate Moderators?

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      The role of debate moderator carries prestige, but it also brings exacting demands and inherent risks: personal attacks by candidates, grievances about perceived biases and, for the two moderators of Wednesday’s Republican primary debate, a tempestuous cable news network’s reputation.Enter Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, the Fox News Channel mainstays who drew that assignment and will pose questions to the eight G.O.P. presidential candidates squaring off for the first time, absent former President Donald J. Trump.The party’s front-runner, Mr. Trump will bypass the debate in favor of an online interview with Tucker Carlson, who was fired from Fox News in April.But that doesn’t mean the debate’s moderators will be under any less of a microscope.Here’s a closer look at who they are:Bret BaierHe is the chief political anchor for Fox News and the host of “Special Report With Bret Baier” at 6 p.m. on weeknights. Mr. Baier, 53, joined the network in 1998, two years after the network debuted, according to his biography.Mr. Baier, like Ms. MacCallum, is no stranger to the debate spotlight.In 2016, he moderated three G.O.P. primary debates for Fox, alongside Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace, who have since left the network. He was present when Ms. Kelly grilled Mr. Trump about his treatment of women during a 2015 debate, an exchange that drew Mr. Trump’s ire and led him to boycott the network’s next debate nearly six months later.During the 2012 presidential race, Mr. Baier moderated five Republican primary debates.At a network dominated by conservative commentators like Sean Hannity and the departed Mr. Carlson and Bill O’Reilly, Mr. Baier has generally avoided controversy — but not entirely.After Fox News called Arizona for Joseph R. Biden Jr. on election night in 2020, becoming the first major news network to do so and enraging Mr. Trump and his supporters, Mr. Baier suggested in an email to network executives the next morning that the outlet should reverse its projection.“It’s hurting us,” he wrote in the email, which was obtained by The New York Times.Mr. Baier was also part of a witness list in the defamation lawsuit that Dominion Voting Systems brought against Fox News over the network’s role in spreading disinformation about the company’s voting equipment. Fox settled the case for $787.5 million before it went to trial.Martha MacCallumShe is the anchor and executive editor of “The Story With Martha MacCallum” at 3 p.m. on weekdays. Ms. MacCallum, 59, joined the network in 2004, according to her biography.During the 2016 election, Ms. MacCallum moderated a Fox News forum for the bottom seven Republican presidential contenders who had not qualified for the party’s first debate in August 2015. She reprised that role in January 2016, just days before the Iowa caucuses.She and Mr. Baier also moderated a series of town halls with individual Democratic candidates during the 2020 election, including one that featured Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.Before joining Fox, she worked for NBC and CNBC.When Fox projected Mr. Biden’s victory over Mr. Trump in Arizona, effectively indicating that Mr. Biden had clinched the presidency, Ms. MacCallum was similarly drawn into the maelstrom at the network.During a Zoom meeting with network executives and Mr. Baier, she suggested it was not enough to call states based on numerical calculations — the standard by which networks have made such determinations for generations — but that viewers’ reactions should be considered.“In a Trump environment,” Ms. MacCallum said, according to a review of the phone call by The Times, “the game is just very, very different.” More

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      Trump Allies May Be Kept Out of Fox News Spin Room After Trump Shuns Debate

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      Fox News, which is hosting the event, will allow aides only for the candidates on the stage.Former President Donald J. Trump’s plan to have prominent surrogates make his case in Milwaukee without attending the debate himself may already be hitting a snag as he clashes with Fox News.Mr. Trump’s campaign had previously arranged for prominent supporters to visit the “spin room,” where candidates and their allies interact with members of the media after the debate.But Fox News, which is hosting the matchup, will grant access to the spin room only to aides of candidates who are participating, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times. Aides of nonparticipating candidates will have access only if they are invited as guests of media organizations.“In addition to the (5) Spin Room credentials referenced in a previous email, we’ll also issue (1) Media Row credential to any participating candidate/campaigns,” the memo says. “Any non-participating candidate/campaign is welcome in the Spin Room or Media Row as a guest of one of the media organizations with positions in those locations, using one of their credentials.”The memo, which was first reported by Axios, does not mention Mr. Trump, and the restrictions apply to all candidates who aren’t participating — a category that also includes those who didn’t meet the donor and polling thresholds to qualify. In practice, though, it will affect Mr. Trump more significantly than anyone else, since he is the front-runner in the Republican primary and is actively trying to snub the debate while still getting its benefits.Mr. Trump’s decision to skip the first Republican National Committee-sanctioned debate of the 2024 race was a slap in the face to both the party and Fox News. Mr. Trump has frequently complained about Fox News’s coverage of him. He has recorded an interview with Tucker Carlson, who was fired from the network this year, that will post on X, formerly known as Twitter, during the debate.At least three senior members of Mr. Trump’s campaign — Chris LaCivita, Jason Miller and Steven Cheung — plan to attend the debate in person, The Times has reported.Among the prominent Trump backers planning to attend Wednesday’s debate are Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor in Arizona who lost last year and has loudly echoed Mr. Trump’s election lies; Mr. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr.; and Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Byron Donalds of Florida.“Kari Lake looks forward to attending the debate, and if Fox thinks otherwise, they’re welcome to call her,” a senior adviser to Ms. Lake, Caroline Wren, told NBC News on Monday.The Fox News memo does not describe any restrictions on audience members, however, only restricting access to the spin room where reporters will be doing the bulk of their post-debate interviews. More