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      How G.O.P. Views of Biden Are Helping Trump in the Republican Primary

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      In interviews and polling, many Republican voters believe President Biden is so weak that picking the most electable candidate to beat him no longer matters.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has run into a surprising buzz saw in his bid to sell himself as the Republican Party’s most electable standard-bearer in 2024 — and it has more to do with President Biden than it does with Donald J. Trump.For months, Republican voters have consumed such a steady diet of clips of Mr. Biden stumbling, over words and sandbags, that they now see the 80-year-old Democratic incumbent as so frail that he would be beatable by practically any Republican — even a four-times-indicted former president who lost the last election.As Mr. Trump’s rivals take the stage for the first debate of the 2024 primaries on Wednesday, the perceived weaknesses of Mr. Biden have undercut one of the core arguments that Mr. DeSantis and others have made from the start: that the party must turn the page on the past and move beyond Mr. Trump in order to win in 2024.The focus on “electability” — the basic notion of which candidate has the best shot of winning a general election — was most intense in the aftermath of the disappointing 2022 midterms. Republicans were stung by losses of Trump-backed candidates in key swing states like Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania. And the issue offered a way to convince a Republican electorate still very much in the thrall of Mr. Trump to consider throwing its lot in with a fresh face in 2022. It was a permission slip to move on.But nine months later, interviews with pollsters, strategists, elected officials and Republican voters in early-voting states show that the dim Republican opinion of Mr. Biden’s mental faculties and political skills has complicated that case in deep and unexpected ways.“I mean, I would hope anybody could beat Joe Biden at this point,” said Heather Hora, 52, as she waited in line for a photo with Mr. Trump at an Iowa Republican Party dinner, echoing a sentiment expressed in more than 30 interviews with Iowa Republicans in recent weeks.Mr. Trump’s rivals are still pushing an electability case against the former president, but even their advisers and other strategists acknowledge that the diminished views of Mr. Biden have sapped the pressure voters once felt about the need to nominate someone new. When Republican primary voters in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll were asked which candidate was better able to beat Mr. Biden, 58 percent picked Mr. Trump, while 28 percent selected Mr. DeSantis.“The perception that Biden is the weakest possible candidate has lowered the electability question in the calculus of primary voters,” said Josh Holmes, a Republican strategist and a longtime adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader.Likely Republican voters in Iowa see Donald Trump as “able to beat Joe Biden” more than Mr. DeSantis, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll in the state. Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesThough the urgency of electability has plainly waned, it remains one of the most powerful tools Mr. Trump’s rivals believe they have to peel the party away from him — and some privately hope that Mr. Trump’s growing legal jeopardy will eventually make the issue feel pressing again. For now, the fact that many polls show a razor-thin Biden-Trump contest has made it a tougher sell.Conservative media, led by Fox News, has played a role in shaping G.O.P. views. Fox has often elevated Mr. DeSantis as the future of the Republican Party, coverage that has frustrated the former president. But the network’s persistent harping on Mr. Biden’s frailties may have inadvertently undercut any effort to build up Mr. DeSantis’s campaign.More than two-thirds of Republicans who described Fox News or another conservative outlet as the single source they most often turned to for news thought Mr. Trump was better able to beat Mr. Biden in the Times/Siena College poll, a 40-point advantage over Mr. DeSantis. Those who cited mainstream news outlets also said Mr. Trump was the stronger candidate to beat Mr. Biden, though by less than half the margin.There is little question that Mr. Biden has visibly aged. The president’s slip onstage at an Air Force graduation ceremony in June — his staff subsequently blamed a stray sandbag — is seen as a moment that particularly resonated for Republicans, cementing Mr. Biden’s image as frail, politically and otherwise.Google records show search interest for “Biden old” peaking three times in 2023 — during his State of the Union address in February, when he announced his 2024 run in late April and when he fell onstage in June. The number of searches just for “Biden” was higher after his fall than it was around the time of his re-election kickoff.Interviews with Republican voters in Iowa in recent weeks have revealed a consistent impression of Mr. Biden as weak and deteriorating.“It’s just one gaffe after another,” Joanie Pellett, 55, a retiree in Decatur County, said of Mr. Biden as she settled into her seat in a beer hall at the Iowa State Fair four hours before Mr. Trump was set to speak.“What strength as a candidate? Does he have any?” Rick Danowsky, a financial consultant who lives in Sigourney, Iowa, asked of Mr. Biden as he waited for Mr. DeSantis at a bar in downtown Des Moines earlier this month.“He’s a train wreck,” said Jack Seward, 67, a county supervisor in Washington County, Iowa, who is considering whether to vote for Mr. Trump or Mr. DeSantis.Kevin Munoz, a campaign spokesman for Mr. Biden, said Republican depictions of Mr. Biden as old were “recycled attacks” that had “repeatedly failed.”“Put simply, it’s a losing strategy and they know it,” he said. “Republicans can argue with each other all they want about electability, but every one of them has embraced the losing MAGA agenda.”Some Republicans worry that their voters have been lulled into a false sense of complacency about the challenge of beating a Democratic incumbent president. The last one to lose was Jimmy Carter more than four decades ago.“Electability is more than just beating Biden — Republicans need to choose a candidate who can build a majority coalition, especially with independents, to win both the House and Senate,” said Dave Winston, a Republican pollster.There were always structural challenges to running a primary campaign centered on electability. For more than a decade, Republican voters have tended to care little about which candidate political insiders have deemed to have the best shot at winning — and have tended to revolt against the preferences of the reviled party establishment.Then there are the hurdles specific to Mr. Trump, who was portrayed as unelectable before he won in 2016, and whose 2020 loss has not been accepted by many in the party.In a sign of how far electability has diminished, Republican voters today say they are more likely to support a candidate who agrees with them most on the issues over someone with the best chance to beat Mr. Biden, according to the Times/Siena College poll. They are prioritizing, in other words, policy positions over electability.Mr. DeSantis has sharpened his own electability argument heading into the first debate, calling out Mr. Trump by name. “There’s nothing that the Democratic Party would like better than to relitigate all these things with Donald Trump,” Mr. DeSantis said in a recent radio interview. “That is a loser for us going forward as a party.”The picture is brighter for Mr. DeSantis in Iowa, according to public polling and voter interviews, and that is where he is increasingly banking his candidacy. More than $3.5 million in television ads have aired from one anti-Trump group, Win it Back PAC. Those ads are explicitly aimed at undermining perceptions of Mr. Trump with voter testimonials of nervous former Trump supporters.“For 2024, Trump is not the most electable candidate,” one said in a recent ad. “I don’t know if we can get him elected,” said another.Likely Republican voters in Iowa see Mr. Trump as “able to beat Joe Biden” more than Mr. DeSantis despite that advertising onslaught, according to a separate Times/Siena College Iowa poll. But the margin is far smaller than in the national poll, and a larger share of Iowa Republicans say they would prioritize a candidate who could win.Mr. DeSantis’s improved standing in the state when it comes to electability is heavily shaped by the views of college-educated Republicans. Among that group, Mr. DeSantis is seen as better able to beat Mr. Biden by a 14-point margin compared with Mr. Trump.Republican voters say they are more likely to support a candidate who agrees with them most on the issues over someone with the best chance to beat Mr. Biden — a sign of how far electability has diminished.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis faces his own electability headwinds. Some of those same party insiders who are worried about Mr. Trump topping the ticket have expressed concerns that the hard-line stances the governor has taken — especially signing a six-week abortion ban — could repel independent voters.Mr. Danowsky, the financial consultant who was at the bar in downtown Des Moines, worried that Mr. DeSantis was “a little extreme,” including on transgender rights.But more Iowa Republicans volunteered concerns about Mr. Trump’s viability as the top reason to move on from him, even as they saw Mr. Biden as weak.“I might be one out of 1,000, but I don’t think he can beat Biden,” Mike Farwell, 66, a retired construction worker in Indianola, said of Mr. Trump. He added that Mr. Biden “would be an easy president right now to beat” if he faced a strong enough opponent.Don Beebout, 74, a retiree who lives in Sheraton and manages a farm, was worried about Mr. Trump as the party nominee as he waited to hear Mr. DeSantis speak at the state fair. But he also was not sold on any particular alternative.“He may be easy to beat,” he said of Mr. Biden, “if we get the right candidate.”Maggie Haberman More

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      The Education of Ron DeSantis: 5 Takeaways

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      Mr. DeSantis, the Republican governor and presidential candidate, leaned heavily on his Ivy League schooling before using it as fodder in the culture wars. Here are key findings from a Times examination.As Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida seeks the Republican presidential nomination, he has molded his campaign and political persona around a war on the country’s supposed ruling class: an incompetent, unaccountable elite of bureaucrats, journalists, educators and other “experts” whose pernicious and unearned authority the governor has vowed to vanquish. Despite his struggles on the campaign trail, Mr. DeSantis has become captain of a new conservative vanguard that views public schools and universities as the chief battleground of the culture wars — and his Florida education policies as a model for red states around the nation.Yet Mr. DeSantis is both a member of the ruling class and a critic of it. Educated at Yale and Harvard Law, he spent his early adulthood energetically climbing into the American elite. An examination by The New York Times reveals how Mr. DeSantis, genuinely embittered by his experiences at elite institutions, also astutely grasped how they could be useful to him. He now offers voters a revisionist history of his own encounters with the ruling class to buttress his arguments for razing it — and for remaking public education itself.Here are five takeaways from the Times article.He reaped the benefits of an elite education.On the campaign trail, Mr. DeSantis often describes his years at Yale and Harvard Law as a period behind enemy lines, painting both institutions as places where students and teachers were anti-American. But his overall experience was more mixed than he acknowledges.At Yale, he joined St. Elmo, one of the school’s “secret societies,” long known as breeding grounds of future senators and presidents. Though he says Harvard was gripped by left-wing “critical legal studies,” the doctrine was long on the wane by the time he arrived, and the school provided entree to the power brokers of the conservative Federalist Society.When he went into politics, his elite résumé helped him court wealthy donors, raise money and garner introductions to prominent Republicans. As he acknowledged in a panel discussion back in Cambridge, Mass., shortly before he first ran for governor, “Harvard opens a lot of doors” for aspiring politicians.His fraternity brothers recalled hazing rituals and an early comfort with power.Echoing Mr. DeSantis’s own account of culture shock at Yale, former classmates recounted the future governor, who hailed from the middle-class, suburban Gulf Coast city of Dunedin, as bewildered and soon alienated by the more cosmopolitan, diverse Yale campus.He found his tribe on the baseball team and in the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, where he participated in the frat’s brutal hazing rituals — an early illustration, in the view of some former frat brothers, of his comfort with power and bullying.On one occasion, Mr. DeSantis and other brothers played a prank that involved turning on a blender between the legs of a blindfolded pledge. During the frat’s wintertime “hell week,” Mr. DeSantis required a pledge to wear a pair of baseball pants with the back and thighs cut out, exposing his buttocks and genitals, former brothers and pledges said. Mr. DeSantis denied these accounts through his spokesman, who called them “ridiculous assertions and completely false.”He was a latecomer to the culture wars.Mr. DeSantis is now indelibly associated with policies that take on what he considers left-wing ideology in Florida’s public schools and universities: his takeover of the liberal arts school New College; efforts that make it easier for parents to challenge books available in elementary and high schools; a law prohibiting classroom discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity that are not viewed as “age appropriate”; and bans against teaching ideas like “systemic racism” in core classes at public universities.Yet his emergence as his party’s chief culture warrior was anything but preordained, The Times found. For much of his political career, including his early years as Florida governor, he was neither closely identified with education policy nor deeply engaged in the debates over race and gender. (When a Florida lawmaker first proposed abolishing New College entirely, Mr. DeSantis replied, “What is New College?”)It took the coronavirus pandemic — and the intertwined backlashes against mask mandates, school lockdowns and the spread of “anti-racist” and “equity” curriculums — to both awaken Mr. DeSantis to the political power of education issues and cement his suspicions of academic and scientific experts.He’s found common cause with a new crop of conservative academics.As he battled against critical race theory and bureaucratic elites, Mr. DeSantis became entwined with a rising movement of conservative academics and activists outside Florida, notably at Hillsdale College in Michigan and the Claremont Institute in California.At a recent donor retreat, Mr. DeSantis featured a Claremont panel intended to “define the ‘Regime’ which illegitimately rules us” and lay out a strategy to “make states more autonomous from the woke regime by ridding themselves of leftist interests,” according to planning emails obtained by The Times.In a report calling for Florida to abolish diversity programs, one of the experts — who argued in a 2021 speech that feminism makes women “more medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome” — urged Mr. DeSantis to “order civil rights investigations of all university units in which women vastly outnumber men” and root out “any anti-male elements of curriculum.”His policies have changed course on academic freedom.In Florida, Mr. DeSantis has turned sharply away from an earlier commitment to academic freedom. Even as he calls to dismantle “woke” orthodoxy, he has imposed another, with a sweeping ban on the teaching of “identity politics” in required classes at Florida’s public colleges and universities. In the name of “parental rights,” DeSantis-backed policies have given conservative Floridians a veto over books and curriculums favored by their more liberal neighbors.One DeSantis appointee, the conservative activist Chris Rufo, has argued that “the goal of the university is not free inquiry.” In court, lawyers for the DeSantis administration have argued that the concept of academic freedom does not apply to public university teachers, whose instruction is merely “government speech,” controllable by duly elected officials. More

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      If DeSantis Defends Trump At Debate, He Should Drop Out, Christie Says

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      Mr. Christie needled his higher-polling rivals while campaigning in their home state of Florida.If Gov. Ron DeSantis follows political consultants’ advice to defend former President Donald J. Trump during the first Republican presidential debate next week, then he should “get the hell out of the race,” former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said on Friday, poking Mr. DeSantis from his home state of Florida.“He should do Donald Trump a favor and do our party a favor, come back to Tallahassee and endorse Donald Trump,” Mr. Christie said to applause before a friendly crowd in South Miami. “The only way to beat someone,” he added, “is to beat him.”Mr. Christie mocked a strategy memo, internal polling and other data published online by a firm associated with a super PAC that has effectively taken over Mr. DeSantis’s campaign. With unusual bluntness, the documents suggested that Mr. DeSantis defend Mr. Trump against Mr. Christie’s expected debate attacks. The documents advised Mr. DeSantis to credit Mr. Trump for his accomplishments, but add that it is time for a new standard-bearer.Mr. Christie stepped up his criticisms of Mr. DeSantis in a pair of South Florida campaign appearances, as it seemed increasingly likely that he would not get the debate-stage confrontation with Mr. Trump he had been spoiling for — and that he would instead have to settle for the next highest-polling rival. Mr. DeSantis, though leading Mr. Christie and the rest of the field, has appeared weakened heading into Wednesday.When asked by a reporter about the memo on Friday, Mr. Christie said the guidance showed that Mr. DeSantis lacked the authenticity and principles to be president.“If you’re running for president of the United States, are you really going to let some other group of people tell you what to say?” he said. “This campaign of his has gone from up here to down here because people are really beginning to wonder what the hell he stands for.”Mr. DeSantis has been cautious about upsetting Trump supporters for fear of alienating the Republican primary base, a strategy that has hampered the Florida governor’s ability to contrast himself with Mr. Trump, the party’s front-runner.On Friday, over more than 90 minutes of remarks and answers to questions, sprinkled with colorful language and jokes, Mr. Christie repeatedly jabbed Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump, the two Floridians who have dominated the state’s politics and rarely faced criticism from anyone in their own party.The receptive, bipartisan crowd sipping Cuban coffee and nibbling on pastries seemed a throwback to Republican politics before the Trump era.One man, a self-described “liberal Democrat,” said he would be open to supporting Mr. Christie. Another woman who said she was a lifelong Democrat said that she was dissatisfied with her party’s direction and unhappy with the possibility of having to choose between Mr. Trump and President Biden again, an opinion shared by many voters on the campaign trail.Mr. Christie, who trails Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis in the polls, said that was why he was “not conceding” the political conversation to his rivals.“Some people would say, ‘Why bother coming to Florida if two of the other candidates already live here?’” Mr. Christie said. “I’m here because we need to talk about these things.”At first, his criticism of Mr. DeSantis was indirect: He did not refer to Mr. DeSantis by name when he mentioned an opponent who had dismissed the war in Ukraine as a “territorial dispute.” (Mr. DeSantis later walked back that comment.) But then Mr. Christie brought up concerns about Mr. DeSantis’s zeal for divisive cultural issues involving transgender people and Disney.“I don’t understand your governor,” he said, also name-checking Mr. Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy, another Republican presidential hopeful who has also campaigned against “woke” policies. “Maybe today you like what they’re going after, but tomorrow maybe they’re going to go after something you like.”Andrew Romeo, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign manager, said in a statement Friday that it had no knowledge of the memo before it was reported publicly.“We are well accustomed to the attacks from all sides as the media and other candidates realize Ron DeSantis is the strongest candidate best positioned to take down Joe Biden,” he added.Later, Mr. Christie swung by Versailles, Miami’s famous Cuban restaurant and a frequent stop for politicians, where he did not order anything but instead worked the lunch crowd, shaking hands and posing for selfies, especially with tourists from New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia. “We’re having fun,” he told one group.In a gaggle with reporters, Mr. Christie dismissed polls that showed negative ratings for him among Republican voters — “Those numbers change,” he said — as well as Mr. Trump’s rising popularity with the G.O.P. base after each of the four criminal indictments against him.“Whether you believe what he did was criminal or not is much less important than the idea that the conduct is awful,” he said, “and beneath, in my view, the office of the president.”Mr. Trump’s decision to skip the debate, he added, is insulting to voters.“Not showing up is completely disrespectful to the Republican Party, who has made you their nominee twice,” he said. 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      For DeSantis, Release of Debate Strategy Amplifies a Daunting Challenge

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      Newly revealed strategy advice from his super PAC seemed to leave the already struggling Florida governor in a no-win situation just days before the first Republican debate.The first Republican presidential debate next week was already looking like a stern test for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is battling to overcome sagging national poll numbers, a fund-raising crunch and an overhaul of his top campaign staff.Now his tall task appears towering.On Thursday, key details about how he might approach the crucial debate were revealed in a report from The New York Times about a trove of documents posted online by a political consulting firm associated with Never Back Down, the super PAC that has in many ways taken over his campaign.The advice on display, which included potential attack lines and debate tactics, could be somewhat condescending — reminding Mr. DeSantis, for example, that he should be “showing emotion” when discussing his wife and children. Other parts were perhaps too revealing: suggesting that the governor attack the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who has been gaining on him in the polls but had otherwise not been widely seen as a candidate on Mr. DeSantis’s level.The disclosure of the documents seemed to leave Mr. DeSantis in something of a no-win situation. Follow the advice too closely, and he risks walking into a political buzz saw, with his rivals painting him as overly rehearsed, inauthentic or beholden to political consultants. Ignoring it may be the likelier route — but could also leave Mr. DeSantis open to criticisms that he failed to meet expectations, for instance, by not taking down Mr. Ramaswamy.“I don’t think anybody is going to have a harder job at the debate than Ron DeSantis,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who worked on the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. “He’s fighting a lot of skepticism and a lot of hungry challengers.”As for the documents, Mr. Conant described their exposure as an unforced error: “The less you say about your strategy ahead of a debate, the better off you’re going to be.”Mr. DeSantis’s campaign suggested late Thursday that Never Back Down’s advice had revealed nothing about his debate strategy.“This was not a campaign memo and we were not aware of it prior to the article,” Andrew Romeo, the campaign’s communications director, said in a statement. “We are well accustomed to the attacks from all sides as the media and other candidates realize Ron DeSantis is the strongest candidate best positioned to take down Joe Biden.”Onstage on Wednesday, those attacks, and Mr. DeSantis’s response to them, could be the gravest risk: He has appeared prickly in past debates and had gaffes exploited by his opponents. Current rivals like former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a notoriously pugnacious debater, could pose a threat.So could other challengers seeking to dethrone Mr. DeSantis as the race’s No. 2, including Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the smooth-talking Mr. Ramaswamy or even former Vice President Mike Pence, a longtime conservative talk radio host accustomed to verbal sparring.Mr. DeSantis’s allies still hope that the governor will use the debate in Milwaukee to break out from the wide field of contenders who have prevented him from coalescing broader support. The debate, they say, is the first time that many Americans will tune in to the 2024 campaign, allowing Mr. DeSantis to tell his story to the largest audience he has ever faced.Mr. DeSantis has been preparing for the debate with practice sessions at least once a week. He is expected to highlight his policy proposals on immigration, the economy and countering China. He has also been doing a steady round of interviews with mainstream news outlets, where he has faced tougher questions.Much depends on whether former President Donald J. Trump, the spotlight-grabbing showman, shows up. So far, he has not committed one way or the other, although he has said it is unlikely he will attend the event, which is being hosted by Fox News.And taking on Mr. Trump remains a problem.The documents from Never Back Down advise Mr. DeSantis to defend Mr. Trump when Mr. Christie, a Trump critic, attacks him but to tell voters that he is the candidate “who will keep the movement that Donald Trump started going.”Former President Donald J. Trump has suggested that it is unlikely he will attend the first debate. Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis has walked a similarly fine line in his criticisms of Mr. Trump this summer, chiding him for not debating and failing to “drain the swamp” as president. But he has also been careful not to offend the former president’s legion of supporters.Without Mr. Trump onstage, Mr. DeSantis will be the de facto front-runner, meaning he could face a barrage of attacks.Wearing the bull’s-eye could prove uncomfortable for Mr. DeSantis, a 44-year-old Harvard-trained lawyer known to bristle under criticism. His opponents will hope to score viral moments highlighting his defensiveness and casting him as awkward and robotic. A meme-able gaffe, no matter how transitory, runs the risk of overshadowing any strength he might project as a policy expert or a decisive young leader.Mr. DeSantis’s most prominent debates — in his contests for governor against Charlie Crist, a former Republican governor of Florida turned Democratic member of Congress, and Andrew Gillum, at the time the mayor of Tallahassee — do not necessarily offer hope to his supporters. They are now largely remembered for encounters that left Mr. DeSantis angry or tongue-tied.Last year, as Mr. DeSantis ran for re-election with his sights already set on the presidential race, Mr. Crist asked his rival if he would “look in the eyes of the people of the state of Florida” and pledge to serve a full term.“Yes or no?” Mr. Crist said, turning to Mr. DeSantis, who stood silent and stone-faced, refusing to answer.“Yes or no, Ron?” Mr. Crist asked again, taking advantage of the dead air.(By the debate rules, candidates were not allowed to question each other directly — a prohibition Mr. Crist ignored.)Finally, Mr. DeSantis spoke. “Is it my time?” he asked the moderator.“It’s a fair question,” Mr. Crist continued. Then he turned to the audience. “He won’t tell you.”By the time Mr. DeSantis broke the awkwardness to deliver a seemingly rehearsed counterpunch, calling Mr. Crist a “worn-out old donkey,” the damage had been done.It was exactly the kind of moment the Crist campaign had been gunning for.“DeSantis doesn’t take punches well,” said Joshua Karp, a Democratic strategist who led Mr. Crist’s debate preparations. “And his fundamental problem as a communicator is that he’s either attacking or explaining. He’s never telling a story. He’s never reaching people from the heart.”Mr. DeSantis’s most prominent debates — including one last year against Charlie Crist — are largely remembered for encounters that left Mr. DeSantis angry or tongue-tied.Pool photo by Crystal Vander WeitMr. Karp, who also led Mr. Gillum’s debate preparations four years earlier, said Mr. DeSantis struggled with a challenging aspect of debating: “Listening to what your opponent has to say and then deploying the right amount of warmth and strength and dexterity to counter it.”That weakness was on display against Mr. Gillum in 2018.At the time, Mr. DeSantis was under fire for having said that voters should not “monkey this up” by electing Mr. Gillum, who is Black. His comments were widely criticized as racist.Confronted by the debate moderator, Mr. DeSantis angrily interrupted, his voice rising as he said he had stood up for people of all races as a military lawyer and prosecutor. “I am not going to bow down to the altar of political correctness,” he added. “I am going to not let the media smear me.”Mr. Gillum, known as a gifted public speaker, seized on the opportunity.“My grandmother used to say ‘a hit dog will holler,’ and it hollered through this room,” he said of Mr. DeSantis, before landing a strong blow: “Now, I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist. I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.”Mr. DeSantis visibly winced and scoffed.He had prepared for the confrontation, according to tapes of his debate practice sessions that were leaked this year and first reported by ABC News. One of his advisers, Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, a Republican and DeSantis ally who has since endorsed Mr. Trump, had urged him to express regret to those who had been offended. (Mr. Donalds is Black.)But Mr. DeSantis insisted on an aggressive response.“If I show any weakness on that, I think I lose my base, I think that I appear to be less than a leader,” he said. “And so, I just think I’ve got to come at it full throttle and say that’s wrong.”Separately, in an echo of the advice offered by Never Back Down, the tapes show an adviser telling Mr. DeSantis that he should write the word “likable” in capital letters at the top of his notebook as a reminder.Despite the debate stumbles, Mr. DeSantis won both elections, squeaking past Mr. Gillum and then crushing Mr. Crist four years later. And his showing in the 2018 Republican primary debates, when he was able to cast himself as a Trump-backed insurgent, received better reviews.Next week, Mr. Trump’s campaign will be paying close attention to the most minute aspects of Mr. DeSantis’s performance.“There will be an entire war room team that will be watching and highlighting each awkward thing DeSantis does,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign. “He needs to be on his best behavior.” More

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      Vivek Ramaswamy Rises in Polls and Draws Attacks From GOP Rivals

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      Surging poll numbers and newly revealed concerns from Ron DeSantis’s super PAC underscore that Vivek Ramaswamy is having a well-timed political moment.For months now, Vivek Ramaswamy has been crisscrossing the early primary states of the 2024 presidential cycle, attracting good crowds with offbeat proposals and a penchant for the media spotlight while gaining little serious attention from his Republican rivals.But after a recent surge in the polls — and a newly revealed debate strategy memo from allies of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida that singles him out — he is having a well-timed moment, before next week’s first Republican primary debate.The staying power of the Ramaswamy Rise will now be tested by rival candidates loath to see a political novice elevated as the alternative to Donald J. Trump, the front-runner whose legal troubles have snowballed.Polling at this stage of a primary campaign can be fickle, but in polling averages, Mr. Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and author, has grabbed third place, behind Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump, the former president now facing four criminal indictments.More telling, Mr. Ramaswamy’s national poll numbers are rising while Mr. DeSantis’s slide, putting him just behind the candidate most often seen as the strongest Trump challenger. In a new Fox News poll, support for Mr. Ramaswamy more than doubled since the previous poll, to 11 percent, compared with Mr. DeSantis’s 16 percent and Mr. Trump’s 53 percent. And Mr. Ramaswamy closed the gap between himself and Mr. DeSantis from 17 percentage points to 5.“Those numbers, no matter how you weigh polling, speak for themselves,” said Fred Doucette, a member of the New Hampshire State House and Mr. Ramaswamy’s state party chairman.The DeSantis campaign dismisses those numbers, saying that Mr. DeSantis has weathered more attack advertising than any other candidate, but is still standing in second place. “This primary is a two-man race,” said Bryan Griffin, the DeSantis campaign press secretary, “but only Ron DeSantis can beat Joe Biden.”But documents posted by Axiom Strategies, a company owned by Jeff Roe, the chief strategist of the DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down, make clear that Mr. Ramaswamy is viewed as a threat. The memos detail how Mr. Ramaswamy has attacked Mr. DeSantis and outline key vulnerabilities for Mr. Ramaswamy now that he is gaining prominence.Some of those attack lines focus on his past: support in his 2022 book for “very high” inheritance taxes with “real teeth”; a business partnership in 2018 with a Chinese state-owned firm; and economic and social positions no longer in favor with most Republican voters, including free trade and transgender rights. His business ventures, which made him a wealthy man but left others financially smarting, are only now beginning to garner attention.Other vulnerabilities are more current. Mr. Ramaswamy raised eyebrows this week by saying to Hugh Hewitt, the conservative radio host, that under a Ramaswamy presidency, the United States would defend Taiwan militarily against Chinese aggression, but “only as far as 2028” when the United States is less reliant on Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturing.It is not unusual for political newcomers to have their moments early in primary campaigns. In the 2012 Republican primary cycle, then-Representative Michele Bachmann traded polling leads with the pizza executive Herman Cain before Republican voters settled on the safest choice, Mitt Romney.Mr. Ramaswamy did not mention the DeSantis memos during a nearly hourlong foreign policy speech at the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, Calif., on Thursday evening. But he emphasized his age — 38 — and pointed out that he is the youngest Republican to run for president.“What’s going on with the millennials? We are hungry for a cause. We are starved for purpose and meaning and identity,” Mr. Ramaswamy said, adding, “That is our opportunity to step up and to fill that void with a vision of what it means to be an American.”Mr. Ramaswamy’s youth, creativity and enthusiasm are making an impression, especially in the early states. Internal polling by Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC had him at 1 percent in New Hampshire in April — and 11 percent in an early August survey.Debbie O’Leary, a 66-year-old from Des Moines, said at the Iowa State Fair that she had voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 but would “prefer someone more gracious” as the Republican nominee. Mr. Ramaswamy is top of mind.“He’s refreshing, he’s articulate, he’s obviously smart and he’s not tied to any political machine,” she said.But Mr. Ramaswamy has a potential liability that the DeSantis campaign appears ready to exploit with the heavily white, Christian conservative voting base of the G.O.P. — his background. His parents are immigrants from India. He maintains his Hindu faith, and as the DeSantis super PAC memo put it, he “was very much ingrained in India’s caste system” — his family is Brahmin, the highest caste in the Hindu hierarchy.Even voters who like him sometimes find his name a mouthful. At the Iowa State Fair this week, Pete Dallman of Iowa City said he was interested in “that Indian guy,” and paused for a moment, before adding, “I can’t say his name even.”Anjali Huynh More

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      DeSantis Super PAC Memo Singles Out Ramaswamy’s Hindu Faith

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      An opposition research memo suggests that Vivek Ramaswamy, who has been gaining on Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in some polls, “was very much ingrained in India’s caste system.”An opposition research memo about the Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy that was written by the super PAC supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida invokes the entrepreneur’s Hindu faith and family visits to India.The document’s first paragraph, addressing Mr. Ramaswamy’s past support for inheritance taxes, draws a link between that policy position and his Hindu upbringing as the son of Indian immigrants. “Ramaswamy — a Hindu who grew up visiting relatives in India and was very much ingrained in India’s caste system — supports this as a mechanism to preserve a meritocracy in America and ensure everyone starts on a level playing field,” the document states.Mr. Ramaswamy is the only candidate joining Mr. DeSantis on the debate stage whose national or religious backgrounds were mentioned in any of the documents posted on the Axiom Strategies website. Highlighting a minority candidate’s ethnicity or faith is historically a dog whistle in politics, a way to signify the person is somehow different from other Americans.The documents suggest that Mr. DeSantis’s allies view Mr. Ramaswamy as a threat as the Florida governor fights to remain in second place behind former President Donald J. Trump. With six months until the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Ramaswamy has been gaining on Mr. DeSantis in some public polls. In a separate debate strategy memo, Never Back Down officials advised Mr. DeSantis to take a “sledgehammer” to Mr. Ramaswamy in the debate as a way to create a “moment” for media coverage. They suggested that Mr. DeSantis call him “Fake Vivek” or “Vivek the Fake.”Mr. Ramaswamy’s 2022 book, which the super PAC document quotes, makes a brief mention of Indian’s caste system in a passage about inheritance taxes: “India’s ancient caste system — at least the pre-British form of it — contains a similar vision.” He also refers to the economist Thomas Piketty, the philosopher John Rawls, Plato and ancient Rome.The document was part of an extensive trove published on the company website of a political consulting firm working for the super PAC, Never Back Down, advising Mr. DeSantis of strategy that he could use in the debate in Milwaukee on August 23.Asked to comment on the reason for highlighting Mr. Ramaswamy’s religion and background, the super PAC’S chief executive, Chris Jankowski, said in a statement: “We are highlighting that his philosophy of government is a direct reflection of his life experience. When his parents moved here from India, they had an 85 percent inheritance tax. In fact, his support of the inheritance tax is connected to the argument he makes in his book against meritocracy.”A spokeswoman for Mr. Ramaswamy, Tricia McLaughlin, said: “Vivek has traveled this country and is very grateful for the warm support he has received from Christian voters across the country. The one-off attacks on his faith do not represent the views of most Christians who respect Vivek’s forthrightness and honesty about his own faith.”She added, “When they get to know him, they see that Vivek shares and lives by the same Judeo-Christian values that this nation was founded on — and that the way Vivek lives his family life offers a positive example for their own children and grandchildren.” More

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      A Majority of Americans Support Trump Indictments, Polls Show

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      Recent polls conducted before the Georgia indictment showed that most believed that the prosecutions of the former president were warranted.Former President Donald J. Trump’s blistering attacks on prosecutors and the federal government over the cascade of indictments he faces do not appear to be resonating much with voters in the latest polls, yet his grip on Republicans is further tightening.A majority of Americans, in four recent polls, said Mr. Trump’s criminal cases were warranted. Most were surveyed before a grand jury in Georgia indicted him over his attempts to subvert the 2020 election, but after the federal indictment related to Jan. 6.At the same time, Mr. Trump still holds a dominant lead over the crowded field of Republicans who are challenging him for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who continues to slide.The polls — conducted by Quinnipiac University, The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, ABC News/Ipsos and Fox News — showed that Americans remain divided along party lines over the dozens of criminal charges facing Mr. Trump.The takeaways aligned with the findings of a New York Times/Siena College poll last month, in which 22 percent of voters who believed that Mr. Trump had committed serious federal crimes said they still planned to support him in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup with Mr. DeSantis.Here are key findings from the recent polling:Most say a felony conviction should be disqualifying.In the Quinnipiac poll, 54 percent of registered voters said Mr. Trump should be prosecuted for trying to overturn the 2020 election. And seven out of 10 voters said that anyone convicted of a felony should no longer be eligible to be president.Half of Americans, but only 20 percent of Republicans, said that Mr. Trump should suspend his presidential campaign, according to the ABC News/Ipsos poll. This poll, which surveyed American adults, was the only one of the four surveys conducted entirely after Mr. Trump’s indictment in Georgia.When specifically asked by ABC about the Georgia case, 63 percent said the latest criminal charges against Mr. Trump were “serious.”Republicans, by and large, haven’t wavered.The trends were mixed for Mr. Trump, who is a voracious consumer of polls and often mentions them on social media and during campaign speeches. He has continually argued that the indictments were politically motivated and intended to short-circuit his candidacy.In a hypothetical rematch of the 2020 election, Mr. Trump trailed President Biden by a single percentage point in the latest Quinnipiac poll, 47 to 46 percent. Mr. Biden’s advantage was 5 percentage points in July.At his campaign rallies, Mr. Trump has frequently boasted how the indictments have been a boon for his polling numbers — and that rang true when Republicans were surveyed about the primary race.In those polls that tracked the G.O.P. nominating contest, Mr. Trump widened his lead over his challengers, beating them by nearly 40 points. His nearest competitor, Mr. DeSantis, had fallen below 20 percent in both the Fox and Quinnipiac polls.Mr. DeSantis, who earlier this month replaced his campaign manager as he shifts his strategy, dropped by 6 to 7 percentage points in recent months in both polls.Trump participated in criminal conduct, Americans say.About half of Americans said that Mr. Trump’s interference in the election in Georgia was illegal, according to the AP/NORC poll.A similar share of Americans felt the same way after Mr. Trump’s indictments in the classified documents and the Jan. 6 cases, but the percentage was much lower when he was charged in New York in a case related to a hush-money payment to a porn star.Fewer than one in five Republicans said that Mr. Trump had committed a crime in Georgia or that he broke any laws in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.When asked by Fox News whether Mr. Trump had engaged in illegal activity to overturn the 2020 election, 53 percent of registered voters said yes.But just 13 percent of Republicans shared that view.A plurality of those surveyed by ABC (49 percent) believed that Mr. Trump should be charged with a crime in Georgia.Support for the Justice Department’s charges.Fifty-three percent of U.S. adults said that they approved of the Justice Department’s decision to bring charges against Mr. Trump for his attempts to reverse his electoral defeat in 2020, The A.P. found.At the same time, the public’s confidence in the Justice Department registered at 17 percent in the same poll. More

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      Defend Trump and ‘Hammer’ Ramaswamy: DeSantis Allies Reveal Debate Strategy

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      Hundreds of pages of blunt advice, memos and internal polling were posted online by the main super PAC backing the Florida governor, offering an extraordinary glimpse into his operation’s thinking.Ron DeSantis needs “to take a sledgehammer” to Vivek Ramaswamy, the political newcomer who is rising in the polls. He should “defend Donald Trump” when Chris Christie inevitably attacks the former president. And he needs to “attack Joe Biden and the media” no less than three to five times.A firm associated with the super PAC that has effectively taken over Mr. DeSantis’s presidential campaign posted online hundreds of pages of blunt advice, research memos and internal polling in early nominating states to guide the Florida governor ahead of the high-stakes Republican presidential debate next Wednesday in Milwaukee.The trove of documents provides an extraordinary glimpse into the thinking of the DeSantis operation about a debate the candidate’s advisers see as crucial.“There are four basic must-dos,” one of the memos urges Mr. DeSantis, whom the document refers to as “GRD.”“1. Attack Joe Biden and the media 3-5 times. 2. State GRD’s positive vision 2-3 times. 3. Hammer Vivek Ramaswamy in a response. 4. Defend Donald Trump in absentia in response to a Chris Christie attack.”The documents were posted this week on the website of Axiom Strategies, the company owned by Jeff Roe, the chief strategist of Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down.The New York Times was alerted to the existence of the documents by a person not connected to the DeSantis campaign or the super PAC. After The Times reached out to Never Back Down for comment on Thursday, the group removed from the website a key memo summarizing the suggested strategy for the debate.Super PACs are barred by law from strategizing in private with political campaigns. To avoid running afoul of those rules, it is not unusual for the outside groups to post polling documents in the open, albeit in an obscure corner of the internet where insiders know to look.Posting such documents online is risky — the news media or rivals can discover them, and the advice can prove embarrassing. But super PACs often decide the risk is justified to convey what they consider crucial nonpublic information to the candidate without violating the law.But it is unusual, as appears to be the case, for a super PAC, or a consulting firm working for it, to post documents on its own website — and in such expansive detail, down to the exact estimate of turnout in the Iowa caucuses (“now 216,561”), and including one New Hampshire poll with more than 400 pages of detailed findings.The DeSantis super PAC and campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Notably missing from the debate materials is a document focused on Mr. Trump. The former president, who has said he is unlikely to participate in the debate, is also not among the candidates whose previous attacks against Mr. DeSantis were highlighted by the super PAC, in a preview of what he might expect onstage.Key among the documents is one entitled “Debate Memo,” dated Aug. 15, which cynically describes how Mr. DeSantis — who has been battered by critical coverage and has struggled to capture attention in the face of Mr. Trump’s indictments — could wring the most favorable media attention from the debate.Addressed simply to “interested parties,” the memo describes “Roger Ailes’ Orchestra Pit Theory,” quoting the now-deceased Fox News executive and political strategist’s well-known maxim that a candidate who lays out a comprehensive plan on foreign policy will draw less coverage than the one who accidentally falls off the debate stage.To that end, the memo lists “potential Orchestra Pit Moments,” beginning with one drama-making opportunity, complete with a recommendation for a Trump-style insult: “Take a sledgehammer to Vivek Ramaswamy: ‘Fake Vivek’ Or ‘Vivek the Fake.’”Related documents — one runs nearly 5,000 words across 17 pages — show that the DeSantis operation advises portraying Mr. Ramaswamy as an inauthentic conservative.Internal polling contained in the trove of documents shows Mr. Ramaswamy surging in New Hampshire, which may have inspired the attack line. Mr. Ramaswamy was at 1 percent in New Hampshire in April but rose to 11 percent in an early August survey, according to the documents.A key memo from Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC describes in cynical fashion how he could wring the most favorable media attention from the debate.Christopher (KS) Smith for The New York TimesThe debate-prep memo also urges Mr. DeSantis to “defend Trump when Chris Christie attacks him,” with a specific suggestion for an attack line accusing Mr. Christie, the former New Jersey governor, of appealing mainly to Democrats: “Trump isn’t here, so let’s just leave him alone. He’s too weak to defend himself here. We’re all running against him. I don’t think we want to join forces with someone on this stage who’s auditioning for a show on MSNBC.”The strategy memo also highlights one of Mr. DeSantis’s long-running political vulnerabilities, his reputation for awkwardness or aloofness on the campaign trail, by suggesting that he “invoke a personal anecdote story about family, kids, Casey, showing emotion.”Mr. DeSantis is keenly aware of his vulnerability in this regard: Leaked videos of his preparation for a 2018 debate for governor, obtained by ABC News, included an adviser telling him that as a reminder to himself, he should write in capital letters at the top of his notepad: “LIKABLE.” Mr. DeSantis, then a congressman, nodded.The documents published on the Axiom Strategies website also address the delicate way in which Mr. DeSantis should handle Mr. Trump, who remains by far the most popular figure in the Republican Party. They suggest saying that Mr. Trump’s time has passed, and that Mr. DeSantis should be seen as “carrying the torch” for the movement he inspired.The strategy memo provides Mr. DeSantis with an elaborate script with which to position himself in relation to Mr. Trump.He could say that Mr. Trump was “a breath of fresh air and the first president to tell the elite where to shove it,” then add that the former president “was attacked all the time, provoked attacks all the time, and it was nonstop.”Mr. DeSantis could then argue that Mr. Trump, who has now been indicted four times, faces “so many distractions that it’s almost impossible for him to focus on moving the country forward,” and that “this election is too important. We need someone that can fight for you instead of fighting for himself.”Mr. DeSantis, the memo urges him to conclude, is the only candidate who can keep the Trump movement going.The memo then supplies a YouTube link as “inspiration.” It’s an ad produced by Win It Back PAC, a group linked to the anti-tax organization the Club for Growth that has been spending heavily to run the ad in Iowa. The spot features a man describing himself as a disillusioned former Trump voter, expressing concerns about Mr. Trump’s electability — effectively creating a permission structure for voters to move on from him.Taken together, the documents reveal the remarkable extent to which the financially struggling DeSantis campaign is relying upon the resources of his super PAC, which raised $130 million in the first half of the year. The outside group is paying for research on Mr. DeSantis’s rivals, strategic insights and polling — all traditionally the work of campaigns themselves.The documents include detailed research showing how each candidate expected to be on the debate stage has been attacking Mr. DeSantis. They even include a dossier on the low-polling governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum, warning that he might attack Mr. DeSantis over the “Book Ban Hoax” — a reference to a law the Florida governor signed last year that allows parents to challenge books they deem inappropriate for school libraries.Some of the lengthiest documents in the trove center on Mr. Ramaswamy, Mr. Christie and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina — underscoring the idea that they are the candidates that the super PAC is most focused on. .Mr. Ramaswamy, who has been creeping close to Mr. DeSantis in some public polling, is the only candidate about whom two separate documents described vulnerabilities that Mr. DeSantis could attack. One lays out Mr. Ramaswamy’s past statements about abortion, immigration policy and Covid masks, among a long list of subjects. The other is a lengthy opposition-research document on his positions and past actions.The polling, conducted by WPA Intelligence in early August, shows Mr. DeSantis in second place in New Hampshire, with 16 percent support, and Mr. Trump ahead but at only 34 percent. Mr. Ramaswamy was in third with 11 percent and Mr. Christie fourth with 8 percent.But there were other warning signs for Mr. DeSantis in the private poll. His net favorability among Republicans — the difference between the percentage of voters who view him favorably and the percentage who view him unfavorably — had dropped from 65 percentage points in March to 26 points in August. Mr. Scott was seen far more favorably, with a 49-point net favorability.Importantly, Mr. DeSantis has also declined in terms of serving as Republican voters’ second choice, dropping from 32 percent in March to 17 percent in August, tied with both Mr. Scott and Mr. Ramaswamy.The internal polling included in the documents about Iowa was less detailed, but appeared to show Mr. Trump leading in the state with 40 percent support, while Mr. DeSantis was at 19 percent and Mr. Scott at 12 percent. More