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      Trump Tells Supporters His Indictments Are ‘For You’ on 2024 Campaign Trail

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      The former president, who has made his 2024 campaign principally about his own personal grievances, is attempting to convince supporters to see themselves in him.As lawyers for Donald J. Trump float various legal arguments to defend him in court against an onslaught of criminal charges, the former president has settled on a political defense: “I’m being indicted for you.”In speeches, social media posts and ads, Mr. Trump has repeatedly declared the prosecutions a political witch hunt, and he has cast himself as a martyr who is taking hits from Democrats and the government on their behalf.“They want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away your freedom,” Mr. Trump told the crowd at a campaign event in New Hampshire on Tuesday. “They want to silence me because I will never let them silence you.”In two previous campaigns, 2016 and 2020, Mr. Trump presented himself to voters as an insurgent candidate who understood their grievances and promised to fight for them. Now, however, Mr. Trump has made his 2024 race principally about his own personal grievances — attempting to convince supporters to see themselves in him. He continues to argue, falsely, that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and to present it as a theft also against his voters. The legal jeopardy he now faces from multiple indictments, he tells followers, is the sort of persecution that they, too, could suffer.There is evidence that the message is resonating.Lorraine Rudd, who attended Mr. Trump’s appearance in New Hampshire, said that after his third indictment last week, in a point-by-point 45-page account of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, she felt that she, too, could be wrongly prosecuted.“If they can do it to him and take him down, they can come for me,” Ms. Rudd, a 64-year old Massachusetts resident, said.She said she firmly agreed with Mr. Trump’s false claim that he won the 2020 election. “What, am I next?” she said.In March, when Mr. Trump announced his candidacy before any indictments, he told supporters, “I am your retribution.” The shift to the recent plaint of “I am being indicted for you” suggests a further tailoring of his campaign pitch, as he paints the criminal cases against him as an effort to prevent him from returning to the White House.In June, after being charged with retaining government secrets, Mr. Trump told a Republican gathering in Michigan: “Essentially, I’m being indicted for you.”On Aug. 3, the day of his third indictment, for seeking to overturn the 2020 election, Mr. Trump posted on his social media site that facing fraud and obstruction charges in Washington was an “honor” because, as he wrote in all caps, “I am being arrested for you.”Portraying himself as a victim of the criminal justice system — and echoing themes from when he faced an investigation over Russian influence in the 2016 campaign and his first impeachment — has served to consolidate Republican support around Mr. Trump.Since his very first indictment in March, in New York on charges related to payments to a porn star, Republican voters have buoyed Mr. Trump in polls. Congressional Republicans, mindful that the party base has largely embraced Mr. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, have leaned into investigations of what they call the “weaponization” of federal law enforcement. And many of Mr. Trump’s 2024 Republican rivals have repeated his pledge to fire the F.B.I. director and end the Justice Department’s traditional independence from the White House.In a New York Times/Siena College poll released last week, before Mr. Trump’s latest indictment, 71 percent of Republican voters said he had not committed serious federal crimes and that Republicans needed to stand behind him.When a long-shot challenger of Mr. Trump, former Representative Will Hurd of Texas, told a Republican gathering in Iowa recently that the former president was running not to represent people who supported him in 2016 or 2020 but “to stay out of prison,’’ Mr. Hurd was booed.In public comments, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have indicated they will mount a free-speech defense in the latest case related to the 2020 election. They have argued that anything Mr. Trump said leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot were merely “aspirational” requests. Those include lying about widespread fraud to voters, pressuring Mr. Pence to ignore the Constitution and asking Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough additional votes to help him win the state.The former president and his allies in the conservative media and in Congress are simultaneously waging a battle for public opinion by accusing Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, of misconduct in business dealings and trying to tie allegations of shady practices to Mr. Biden himself when he was vice president. Investigations led by House Republicans have turned up no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden, but the effort has convinced many Republicans that Mr. Trump’s indictments are part of a conspiracy to divert scrutiny from Mr. Biden and his family.On Tuesday, Mr. Trump promised to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Bidens, his likely political rival should he win the G.O.P. nomination. He also continued his personal attacks on Jack Smith, the special counsel in the federal cases against Mr. Trump, calling him “deranged.”And without referring to her by name, he criticized Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., who is Black, as a “racist.” She is overseeing a separate investigation into alleged efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to interfere with the election in the state, where he lost to President Biden.With Mr. Trump dominating every Republican primary poll, a few 2024 rivals have lately been more direct in challenging him on the subject of the 2020 election.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said this week that “of course” Mr. Trump lost re-election in his most blunt acknowledgment yet of a reality he has tiptoed around for three years. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who could be a star witness in a trial focused on Jan. 6, said that Mr. Trump pushed him to “essentially overturn the election.”Roughly an hour northwest of Mr. Trump’s rally on Tuesday night, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, one of Mr. Trump’s toughest critics in the race, mocked the former president’s proclamations.“As I’m walking around Ukraine, he’s waltzing into a courtroom in Washington, D.C., to tell us that he’s being indicted for us. For us! How lucky are we! That we have such a selfless, magnanimous leader,” Mr. Christie said, prompting laughter and a sprinkling of applause. “Because you know that the government was coming to get you and on their way to get you, lo and behold, they came across Donald Trump and they said, ‘Okay, we won’t get you, we’ll get him, for you.’”The narrative of unfair persecution by the criminal justice system, which Republicans as the party of law and order once staunchly defended, has taken strong root among Mr. Trump’s supporters.Steve Vicere, who drove all the way from his home in Florida to see Mr. Trump in New Hampshire, said the indictments were a “diversion” and represented attempts by Democrats to stop Mr. Trump from regaining power.“Everyday freedoms are being systematically taken away, and nobody ever gets held accountable,” Mr. Vicere, 54, said.Dean Brady, a limo driver from Newmarket, N.H., embraced Mr. Trump’s message that he was taking a hit on behalf of his supporters.“He’s representing us,” Mr. Brady, 60, said. “He’s not in it for himself, he could quit this and just go on with life. He’s up there because he loves America and he cares about us.”But not all Republican voters embrace Mr. Trump’s sense of victimhood. Jean Davis, who attended a barbecue in Iowa on Sunday to hear seven of Mr. Trump’s G.O.P. rivals, said that his latest indictment ought to disqualify him as a candidate.Her husband, Russ Davis, who supports Mr. DeSantis, said that if Mr. Trump were to become the nominee, his chances of defeating Mr. Biden would be “next to nothing.”“There are so many people on the Republican side who just can’t get past his loud mouth,’’ he said. More

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      DeSantis Replaces Campaign Manager in Major Shake-Up

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      As Ron DeSantis tries to put his campaign back on track, he is replacing Generra Peck with James Uthmeier, one of the most trusted aides in the governor’s office.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has replaced his campaign manager, Generra Peck, in the latest shake-up in his weekslong attempt to reinvigorate his struggling bid for the White House.The chief of staff in the governor’s office, James Uthmeier, one of Mr. DeSantis’s most trusted aides, will be replacing Ms. Peck, the campaign confirmed in a statement. Mr. Uthmeier previously served as general counsel to the governor and worked in the Trump administration. The Messenger earlier reported the move.Ms. Peck, who will stay on as the campaign’s chief strategist, had drawn heavy criticism from Mr. DeSantis’s allies and donors after heavy spending led to a fund-raising shortfall. In response, the campaign had to lay off more than a third of its staff and start holding smaller events — a leaner operation more suited to a candidate who is trailing well behind the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump.In 2022, Ms. Peck oversaw Mr. DeSantis’s overwhelming re-election as governor. But she had never run a presidential campaign. The changes are the third major shift in the structure of the DeSantis campaign in recent weeks, after the layoffs and the departure of other senior members of his early 2024 team.“James Uthmeier has been one of Gov. DeSantis’s top advisers for years, and he is needed where it matters most: working hand in hand with Generra Peck and the rest of the team to put the governor in the best possible position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden,” Andrew Romeo, the campaign’s communications director, said in a statement.In addition, an adviser working for the main super PAC backing Mr. DeSantis, David Polyansky, who works with the group’s main strategist, Jeff Roe, will join the campaign.Mr. Polyansky, who had been overseeing the super PAC’s early state operations, was on the trail in recent weeks with Mr. DeSantis as the group, Never Back Down, put together a bus tour for the governor. After the campaign’s cash crunch, the super PAC began taking over many of the functions normally associated with a campaign, like organizing retail stops and speaking events.“David Polyansky will also be a critical addition to the team, given his presidential campaign experience in Iowa and work at Never Back Down,” Mr. Romeo said.Ms. Peck had come under fire for building a campaign team so quickly that Mr. DeSantis was forced to lay off aides only two months into his candidacy.The campaign’s finances were so worrying that Mr. Uthmeier, while still chief of staff, received a personal briefing on its finances from Ethan Eilon, now the deputy campaign manager, and then delivered an assessment to the governor.James Uthmeier previously served as general counsel to Mr. DeSantis and worked in the Trump administration.MA and F Collection 2018, via Alamy More

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      Today’s Top News: DeSantis Acknowledges Trump’s 2020 Loss, and More

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes. Hosted by Annie Correal, the new morning show features three top stories from reporters across the newsroom and around the world, so you always have a sense of what’s happening, even if you only have a few minutes to spare.Along with other Republican presidential candidates, Ron DeSantis has been testing new lines of attack against Donald Trump.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesOn Today’s Episode:DeSantis Bluntly Acknowledges Trump’s 2020 Defeat, with Nicholas NehamasWhat’s at Stake in Ohio’s Referendum on Amending the State ConstitutionThe Taliban Won but These Afghans Fought On, with Christina GoldbaumEli Cohen More

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      DeSantis reconoce la derrota de Trump en 2020

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      “Joe Biden es el presidente”, dijo el gobernador de Florida en una entrevista con NBC News. DeSantis y otros aspirantes republicanos han estado implementando nuevas estrategias contra Donald Trump.Ron DeSantis, el gobernador de Florida, afirmó claramente en una entrevista reciente que Donald Trump perdió las elecciones de 2020, deslindándose así de la ortodoxia de la mayoría de los votantes republicanos. Esto sucede mientras los rivales republicanos del expresidente prueban nuevas estrategias de ataque contra él para reimpulsar sus campañas.“Por supuesto que perdió”, dijo DeSantis en una entrevista con NBC News divulgada el lunes. “Joe Biden es el presidente”.Los comentarios de DeSantis —que, tras tres años de evasivas, constituyen la primera vez que reconoce de manera clara el resultado de las elecciones de 2020— fueron la señal más reciente de que los rivales de Trump tratan de usar sus crecientes problemas legales en su contra. Desde que Trump fue acusado de cargos de conspiración para anular las elecciones de 2020, tanto DeSantis como el ex vicepresidente Mike Pence se han distanciado drásticamente del expresidente por sus acciones que el 6 de enero de 2021 desencadenaron los disturbios en el Capitolio.La crítica ha sido sutil. Ninguno de los candidatos ha atacado a Trump de manera abierta ni ha sugerido que los cargos estén justificados. En sus comentarios más recientes, DeSantis continuó sugiriendo que las elecciones tuvieron problemas, y dijo que no habían sido “perfectas”. Pero ambos parecen estar buscando maneras de usar la acusación para ejercer presión sobre las debilidades del expresidente y formular argumentos a su favor que incluso los partidarios de Trump tomen en cuenta.DeSantis también ha estado tratando de reimpulsar su campaña en declive, y sus donantes lo han presionado para que modere sus posturas con el fin de atraer a una audiencia más amplia.Sin embargo, DeSantis debe encontrar la manera de ganar las elecciones primarias republicanas, en las que Trump tiene una ventaja dominante en las encuestas. Los más recientes comentarios de DeSantis, aunque correctos, podrían enfrentarlo a gran parte de la base republicana: aunque se determinó ampliamente que las elecciones de 2020 fueron seguras, cerca del 70 por ciento de los votantes republicanos afirman que la victoria del presidente Biden no fue legítima, según una encuesta de CNN realizada el mes pasado.A través de un comunicado, Steven Cheung, portavoz de Trump, dijo que “Ron DeSantis debería dejar de ser el mayor animador de Joe Biden”.Hasta el momento, de los candidatos más destacados, el exgobernador de Nueva Jersey, Chris Christie y Pence son los que se han pronunciado de forma más enérgica contra Trump. La plataforma desde la que se está postulando Christie es explícitamente anti-Trump. Pence ha dicho que el exmandatario merece la “presunción de inocencia”, pero también ha afirmado que, de ser necesario, testificaría en el juicio por los hechos del 6 de enero.“El pueblo estadounidense merece saber que el presidente Trump me pidió que lo pusiera por encima de mi juramento a la Constitución, pero mantuve mi juramento y siempre lo haré”, le dijo Pence a CNN en una entrevista que se transmitió el domingo. “Y en parte me postulo a la presidencia porque creo que cualquiera que se ponga por encima de la Constitución nunca debería ser presidente de Estados Unidos”.Pero ninguno de los argumentos parece estar resonando entre los votantes republicanos. Christie tiene alrededor del 2 por ciento de apoyo en las encuestas nacionales, y Pence aún no ha calificado para el primer debate republicano que se celebrará a fines de este mes. En una cena para el Partido Republicano de Iowa a finales del mes pasado, la audiencia abucheó al exrepresentante de Texas Will Hurd, un candidato con pocas posibilidades, luego de que acusó al expresidente de “correr para no ir a prisión”.En la entrevista de NBC, DeSantis dijo que considera que hubo problemas en la forma en que se realizaron las elecciones de 2020. Citó el uso generalizado de boletas por correo, las donaciones privadas a los administradores electorales por parte del fundador de Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, y los esfuerzos de las empresas de redes sociales para limitar la difusión de informaciones sobre la computadora portátil de Hunter Biden.“No creo que hayan sido unas elecciones bien hechas”, dijo DeSantis. “Pero también creo que los republicanos no se defendieron. Tienes que defenderte cuando eso está sucediendo”.DeSantis reconoció el viernes que las falsas teorías conspirativas del exmandatario sobre las elecciones del 2020 argumentando que estuvieron amañadas “no tenían fundamentos”.En el período previo a las elecciones de mitad de mandato del año pasado, DeSantis hizo campaña a favor de escandalosos negacionistas electorales, como Doug Mastriano, quien se postuló para gobernador en Pensilvania, y Kari Lake, quien lo hizo en Arizona.Ambos perdieron, al igual que todos sus homólogos más conocidos, lo que demostró que si bien la negación de los resultados de las elecciones presidenciales puede tener buenos resultados en las primarias republicanas, no funciona tan bien en las elecciones generales en los estados disputados. El 60 por ciento de los votantes independientes en todo el país creen que Biden ganó las elecciones de 2020, según la encuesta de CNN, una señal ominosa para los republicanos que aceptan el negacionismo electoral de cara a 2024.Para los partidarios radicales de Trump, los recientes comentarios de DeSantis sobre las elecciones de 2020 fueron vistos como descalificadores.“Cualquier político que diga que Donald Trump perdió esas elecciones y que Biden realmente ganó, está acabado”, afirmó Mike Lindell, el fundador de una compañía de almohadas que ha sido un gran promotor de las teorías de conspiración sobre las máquinas electorales, en una entrevista con The New York Times el lunes. “Su campaña básicamente se acaba cuando hacen un comentario como ese”.Sin embargo, el cambio de DeSantis sirve para reforzar su argumento general contra Trump: que bajo su liderazgo, los republicanos han tenido un mal desempeño en tres elecciones seguidas.Además, podría ayudar a calmar los temores de algunos de los grandes donantes de DeSantis. Robert Bigelow, quien contribuyó con más de 20 millones de dólares a un súper PAC (sigla en inglés que designa al comité de acción política) que respaldaba a DeSantis, le dijo a Reuters la semana pasada que no dará más dinero a menos que el candidato adopte un enfoque más moderado. La campaña del gobernador está experimentando un déficit de recaudación de fondos y el mes pasado despidió a más de un tercio de su personal.Como parte del “reimpulso” de su campaña, DeSantis ha salido de su zona de confort mediática en la que solo conversaba con analistas conservadores y presentadores de opinión en Fox News para darle más acceso a los principales medios de comunicación, por lo que ha concedido entrevistas a CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC y The Wall Street Journal. También ha respondido más preguntas de los periodistas en los actos de campaña electoral.DeSantis ha utilizado esas plataformas para criticar a Trump por su edad, su incapacidad de “drenar el pantano” durante su mandato y por la “cultura de la derrota” que, según DeSantis, se ha apoderado del Partido Republicano bajo el liderazgo de Trump.“Creo que soy el único candidato actual que puede ganar las primarias, derrotar a Joe Biden y luego cumplir con todas estas cosas que sabemos que deben hacerse”, dijo DeSantis en un evento de la estación televisiva WMUR con votantes de Nuevo Hampshire, la semana pasada.Sin embargo, también ha defendido sistemáticamente a Trump por los cargos penales. Ha afirmado que representan el uso del gobierno federal como un arma contra un rival político de Biden.En conjunto, los comentarios de DeSantis sobre el expresidente sugieren que en vez de apresurarse, está avanzando poco a poco hacia una confrontación más directa con Trump. El gobernador nunca lo menciona por su nombre en los discursos de campaña dirigidos a los votantes, y prefiere abordar el tema solo cuando los asistentes a los eventos de su campaña o los periodistas se lo preguntan.Algunos candidatos que se están postulando para la candidatura republicana ya han confirmado la legitimidad general de las elecciones de 2020.En una conversación con los votantes el mes pasado, el senador Tim Scott de Carolina del Sur —quien actualmente ocupa el tercer lugar en Iowa, detrás de Trump y DeSantis, según la encuesta más reciente de The New York Times/Siena College— dijo que no creía las elecciones hubieron sido “robadas”.“Hubo trampa, pero ¿se robaron las elecciones?”, preguntó Scott. “Hay una diferencia”.Nikki Haley, exgobernadora de Carolina del Sur, ha rechazado las afirmaciones falsas de Trump de que las elecciones fueron robadas, pero ha oscilado entre las críticas y la defensa del expresidente.Antes de los disturbios en el Capitolio, Haley se negó a reconocer que Trump estaba actuando de manera imprudente o que fue irresponsable al negarse a aceptar la derrota. Pero inmediatamente después criticó de forma severa a Trump y predijo erróneamente que había caído tan bajo que iba a perder cualquier viabilidad política.En cuestión de meses, Haley volvió a respaldar a Trump, asegurando que el Partido Republicano lo necesitaba. Después de que se hiciera pública la acusación sobre el 6 de enero contra Trump, Haley dijo en un programa de radio de Nuevo Hampshire que de forma premeditada se había abstenido de publicar una declaración porque estaba “cansada de comentar sobre todos los dramas de Trump”.Vivek Ramaswamy, el millonario de la biotecnología que ha sido un firme defensor de Trump, declaró a través de un comunicado: “Joe Biden prestó juramento como el presidente número 46 de Estados Unidos y, como dije poco después de la toma de posesión, acepto ese resultado”.Pero agregó: “En realidad, no creo que Joe Biden esté liderando el país. Creo que es un títere de facto de la clase gerencial en el Estado administrativo que lo utiliza como instrumento para lograr sus propios objetivos”.Al señalar, como lo hizo DeSantis, las quejas sobre la difusión del caso de la computadora portátil de Hunter Biden, Ramaswamy afirmó: “Las grandes empresas de tecnología se robaron las elecciones de 2020”.Ruth Igielnik More

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      G.O.P. Contenders Feed Voter Distrust in Courts, Schools and Military

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      As Donald J. Trump has escalated his attacks on the justice system and other core institutions, his competitors for the Republican nomination have followed his lead.Ron DeSantis says the military is more interested in global warming and “gender ideology” initiatives than in national security.Tim Scott says the Justice Department “continues to hunt Republicans.”Vivek Ramaswamy has vowed to “shut down the deep state,” borrowing former President Donald J. Trump’s conspiratorial shorthand for a federal bureaucracy he views as hostile.As Mr. Trump escalates his attacks on American institutions, focusing his fire on the Justice Department as he faces new criminal charges, his competitors for the Republican nomination have followed his lead.Several have adopted much of Mr. Trump’s rhetoric sowing broad suspicion about the courts, the F.B.I., the military and schools. As they vie for support in a primary dominated by Mr. Trump, they routinely blast these targets in ways that might have been considered extraordinary, not to mention unthinkably bad politics, just a few years ago.Yet there is little doubt about the political incentives behind the statements. Polls show that Americans’ trust in their institutions has fallen to historical lows, with Republicans exhibiting more doubt across a broad swath of public life.The proliferation of attacks has alarmed both Republicans and Democrats who worry about the long-term impact on American democracy. Public confidence in core institutions — from the justice system to voting systems — is fundamental to a durable democracy, particularly at a time of sharp political division. Former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign says he is fighting “abuse, incompetence, and corruption that is running through the veins of our country at levels never seen before.”Doug Mills/The New York Times“We’ve had these times of division before in our history, but we’ve always had leaders to bridge the gaps who have said we need to build respect, we need to restore confidence in our institutions — today we have just the opposite,” said Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas and a moderate whose campaign for the Republican presidential nomination has so far gained little traction.“That defines the course of 2024,” he added. “We’re going to have a leader that brings out the best of America, which is the first job of being president. Or you’re going to have somebody that increases distrust that we have in our institutions.”Mr. Trump is still the loudest voice. As he blames others for his defeat in 2020 and, now, after being charged in three separate criminal cases, he has characterized federal prosecutors as “henchmen” orchestrating a “cover-up.” After he was indicted last week on charges related to his attempts to overturn the election, his campaign cited “abuse, incompetence and corruption that is running through the veins of our country at levels never seen before.”Mr. DeSantis, however, has echoed that view, making criticisms of educators, health officials, the mainstream news media, “elites” and government employees central to his campaign, and even, at times, invoking violent imagery.“All of these deep-state people, you know, we are going to start slitting throats on Day 1,” Mr. DeSantis said during a New Hampshire campaign stop late last week. The governor, a Navy veteran, used similar language about the Department of Defense late last month, saying that if elected he would need a defense secretary who “may have to slit some throats.”Other candidates, too, have keyed into voters’ trust deficit. Mr. Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur, wants to shut down the F.B.I. and the I.R.S. as part of his fight against the so-called deep state. Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations, has said she opposes red-flag gun laws because “I don’t trust that they won’t take them away from people who rightfully deserve to have them.”Even Mike Pence, who has criticized Mr. Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election at the heart of the charges filed late week, has suggested the Justice Department is politically motivated in its prosecution, warning of a “two-tiered system of justice,” with “one set of rules for Republicans, and one set of rules for Democrats.”Running against the government is hardly new, especially for Republicans. For decades, the party called for shrinking the size and reach of some federal programs — with the exception of the military — and treated President Ronald Reagan’s declaration that “government is the problem” as a guiding principle.But even some Republicans, largely moderates who have rejected Trumpism, note the tenor of the campaign rhetoric has reached new and conspiratorial levels. Familiar complaints about government waste or regulatory overreach are now replaced with claims that government agencies are targeting citizens and that bureaucrats are busy enacting political agendas.“Does anyone believe the IRS won’t go after Middle America?” Nikki Haley tweeted in April.Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations, tweeted in April, “Does anyone believe the IRS won’t go after Middle America?” Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesNone of the candidates responded to requests for interviews about these statements.Casting doubt on the integrity of government is hardly limited to Republican candidates. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-shot candidate for the Democratic nomination, has made questioning public health officials on long-established science a focus of his campaign. In her quixotic bid for the nomination, Marianne Williamson has declared that she is “running to challenge the system.”And President Biden, whose resistance to institutional change has often frustrated the left wing of his party, has mused about his skepticism of the Supreme Court — “this is not a normal court,” he said after the court’s ruling striking down affirmative action in college admissions.A Gallup poll released in July found that public confidence in major American institutions is at record low levels, with historic levels of distrust in the military, police, schools, big business and technology. Several other institutions — including the presidency, the Supreme Court and the criminal justice system as well as newspapers and broadcast news, are just slightly above the record low they hit last year.There is an unmistakable partisan divide: Republicans are far less likely to express confidence in a majority of institutions in the survey, including the presidency and public schools. Democrats have far more doubt about the Supreme Court and the police. (There is bipartisan distrust in the criminal justice system, with less than one in four voters expressing confidence in the system.)The military has seen an especially steep decline in trust from Republican voters, with 68 percent saying they have confidence in the armed forces, compared with 91 percent three years ago. Mr. DeSantis in particular has spoken to that shift on an institution that Republicans were once loath to criticize.“When revered institutions like our own military are more concerned with matters not central to the mission — from global warming to gender ideology and pronouns — morale declines and recruiting suffers,” he said when he announced his bid. “We need to eliminate these distractions and get focused on the core mission.”In a Fox News interview, he recently said, “The military that I see is different from the military I served in.”Feeding on voters’ already deeply embedded skepticism might have once been seen as politically risky, but social media and the right-wing media have helped change that, said Sarah Longwell, a Republican consultant who conducts weekly focus groups with her party’s voters.Ms. Longwell says these forces have created a “Republican triangle of doom,” with the party’s voter base, politicians and partisan media creating a feedback loop of complaints and conspiracy theories.“The lack of trust has become a defining feature of our politics,” she said. “Voters feel like there is an existential threat any time that someone who doesn’t share your politics is in charge of something. We’ve lost the sense that neutral is possible.”But that does not explain the whole picture. The public’s trust in government institutions has been slipping for decades, first declining in the wake of the Vietnam War and then again after Watergate and yet again after the war in Iraq and the Great Recession.Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur, wants to shut down the F.B.I. and the I.R.S.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesFormer Gov. Jerry Brown of California noted that he ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 1992 by attacking Washington institutions as corrupt, but the argument never caught fire in the way it has with Republicans, he said, in part because his party’s base generally trusted government.Today he sees the country as more polarized. Notions that would have once been seen as being on the fringe, such as Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, are mainstream. Many Republican voters expect to hear candidates attack election results routinely, undermining the system they depend on for power.“Democracy does depend on trust,” even if “politics depends on fear,” Mr. Brown said in a recent interview. “The world is getting more dangerous, and at home it’s getting less governable.”The impact of the lack of trust was particularly apparent in the pandemic, when many Americans blamed public authorities for inconsistent guidance and unpopular lockdowns. Ultimately, that distrust fed the anti-vaccination campaigns.Questioning public health officials has been essential to the rise of Mr. DeSantis, who more than two years ago wrote an essay in The Wall Street Journal with the headline: “Don’t Trust the Elites.”Mr. Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur, has also taken aim at the government. In another era, he might have been an unlikely hero for the anti-establishment — a Harvard-educated businessman who has lent more than $15 million to his own campaign.Still, as the disdain for the elites has metastasized deeper and further into the party, Mr. Ramaswamy has embraced the pugilistic language of Mr. Trump, frequently on social media.“Shut down the FBI & IRS,” he posted this month. “Pardon defendants of politicized prosecutions. Replace civil service protections with 8-year term limits. Punish bureaucrats who violate the law. Get aggressive.”Kitty Bennett More

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      DeSantis Bluntly Acknowledges Trump’s 2020 Defeat: ‘Of Course He Lost’

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      “Joe Biden’s the president,” the Florida governor said in an interview with NBC News. He and other Republican presidential candidates have been testing new lines of attack against Donald Trump.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida clearly stated in a new interview that Donald J. Trump lost the 2020 election, diverging from the orthodoxy of most Republican voters as the former president’s struggling G.O.P. rivals test out new lines of attack against him.“Of course he lost,” Mr. DeSantis said in an interview with NBC News published on Monday. “Joe Biden’s the president.”The comments came after Mr. DeSantis, who is polling well behind Mr. Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, acknowledged on Friday that the former president’s false theories about a rigged 2020 election were “unsubstantiated.”For years, Mr. DeSantis dodged direct answers to questions about whether he believed the election was stolen. During the 2022 midterms, he also campaigned for Republican candidates nationwide who vehemently denied the 2020 results.Now, Mr. DeSantis’s increasingly aggressive stance suggests that Mr. Trump’s legal problems have sent his Republican competitors looking for some way to take advantage. While none of his top rivals are openly attacking him over his latest criminal charges, they are trying to press on his weaknesses — acknowledging reality and bursting the bubble of denial that he and many Republicans live in.Mr. DeSantis’s latest answer, while accurate, may put him at odds with much of the Republican base. Although the 2020 election was widely found to have been secure, roughly 70 percent of Republican voters say that President Biden’s victory was not legitimate, according to a CNN poll conducted last month. Mr. Trump continues to insist that he was the rightful winner.So far, of the most prominent candidates, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and former Vice President Mike Pence have spoken out most strongly against Mr. Trump. Mr. Christie is running on an explicitly anti-Trump platform. Mr. Pence has said that Mr. Trump deserves the “presumption of innocence” but has also said he would testify in the former president’s trial over Jan. 6, 2021, if called to do so.“The American people deserve to know that President Trump asked me to put him over my oath to the Constitution, but I kept my oath and I always will,” Mr. Pence told CNN. “And I’m running for president in part because I think anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.”But neither argument appears to be resonating with Republican voters. Mr. Christie is polling at about 2 percent in national surveys, and Mr. Pence has not yet qualified for the first Republican debate later this month. At a dinner for the Republican Party of Iowa late last month, the audience booed former Representative Will Hurd of Texas, a long-shot candidate, after he accused the former president of “running to stay out of prison.”In the NBC interview, Mr. DeSantis still said he saw problems with how the 2020 election was conducted, citing the widespread use of mail-in ballots, private donations to election administrators from the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and efforts by social media companies to limit the spread of a report about Hunter Biden’s laptop.“I don’t think it was a good-run election,” Mr. DeSantis said. “But I also think Republicans didn’t fight back. You’ve got to fight back when that is happening.”Still, his more forceful response to the 2020 question serves as a reminder to Republican voters that under Mr. Trump, the party has performed poorly in three elections in a row.His remarks may help assuage the fears of some big-money donors. Robert Bigelow, who contributed more than $20 million to a super PAC backing Mr. DeSantis, told Reuters last week that he would not give more money unless Mr. DeSantis adopted a more moderate approach. The governor’s campaign is experiencing a fund-raising shortfall and last month laid off more than a third of its staff.Mr. DeSantis has also had more opportunities to address sensitive subjects like 2020 in recent weeks. As part of a “reboot” of his campaign, he has opened himself up to more interviews with mainstream news outlets, retreating from the safety of sitting down only with hosts from Fox News and conservative pundits. He has recently given one-on-one interviews to CNN, CBS, ABC and The Wall Street Journal, in addition to NBC, and has also taken far more questions from reporters on the campaign trail.He has used those platforms to dig at Mr. Trump for his age, his failure to “drain the swamp” during his term in office, and the “culture of losing” that Mr. DeSantis says has overtaken the Republican Party under Mr. Trump’s leadership.But he has also defended Mr. Trump over the criminal charges, saying they represent the “weaponization” of federal government against a political rival of Mr. Biden. Taken together, Mr. DeSantis’s comments on the former president suggest he is inching, rather than running, toward more direct confrontation.In the NBC interview, Mr. DeSantis also stated his belief that Republicans must move their focus beyond the indictments against Mr. Trump to challenging Mr. Biden, and continued to defend Florida’s new standards on how slavery is taught in schools.And he provided more of an explanation for his campaign-trail promise that migrants suspected of smuggling drugs across the southern border would be shot. Mr. DeSantis has often said that smugglers who try to break through the border wall would be left “stone-cold dead,” usually to thunderous applause at campaign events. But he has not said how U.S. law enforcement would identify them.“Same way a police officer would know,” Mr. DeSantis replied when asked to explain the mechanics of his policy. “Same way somebody operating in Iraq would know. You know, these people in Iraq at the time, they all looked the same. You didn’t know who had a bomb strapped to them. So those guys have to make judgments.”Ruth Igielnik More

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      DeSantis Takes His Iowa Push To a New Venue: Weddings

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      The Florida governor, who has struggled at times to connect with voters, is looking for every opportunity to show he is all-in with Iowa Republicans.Two great traditions converged in Des Moines on Saturday night when wedding crashing came to Iowa politics.Iowa State Representative Taylor Collins welcomed an unexpected guest to his wedding reception: Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Mr. DeSantis and his wife, Casey, strode just behind the newlyweds into the event, held at a Beaux-Arts-style building in the state’s capital, to cheers and a standing ovation, according to videos posted on social media and confirmed by an attendee. They then spent an hour mingling with roughly 150 guests.The last-minute table-grabbers had been invited by the bride, Savannah Collins, to the surprise of her husband, who had previously endorsed Mr. DeSantis’s presidential bid, according to two people familiar with the event. Several other state legislators who have endorsed Mr. DeSantis were also in attendance.For the governor, who is struggling to gain ground on former President Donald J. Trump, according to recent polls, the appearance was a clear attempt to demonstrate that he possessed the interpersonal touch that has sometimes seemed lacking in his presidential campaign.Mr. DeSantis’s allies said he saw a path to victory in Iowa’s January caucus through an aggressive plan to visit each of the state’s 99 counties, meet voters in person and win endorsements from local officials. As of Saturday, Mr. DeSantis had visited nearly 30 counties.After making fewer visits to the state than some of his lower-polling rivals for the Republican nomination, Mr. DeSantis recently started to step up his appearances in Iowa, where polling shows he is performing better than he is nationally. His campaign recently has focused on the state as he has worked to position himself as the Trump alternative after losing ground earlier this year.Before dropping in on the wedding, Mr. DeSantis had spent Friday and Saturday on a bus tour of northeast and central Iowa, where he made frequent stops to address voters in small groups, answer questions and engage in the retail politics that Iowa voters expect, such as scooping ice cream for locals at a dairy store.“You’ve got to show up in people’s communities and you’ve got to be able to make the case about why you should be the nominee of the party and the 47th president of the United States,” Mr. DeSantis told a group of several dozen voters at a Pizza Ranch restaurant in Grinnell, Iowa, on Saturday afternoon.The comments were a thinly veiled attack on Mr. Trump, who has skipped events hosted by prominent evangelical Christian leaders and who recently picked a fight with Iowa’s popular Republican governor, Kim Reynolds. “I think anybody who’s not willing to do that is basically telling you that they don’t think they have to earn your vote,” he continued. “And I think that’s a mistake.”Both Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis, as well as the rest of the presidential field, are set to attend the Iowa State Fair, a major event on the political calendar that begins this week.Polling shows that Mr. DeSantis’s efforts are playing better in Iowa than in other parts of the country. Iowa Republicans are more likely than voters nationwide to see Mr. DeSantis as “moral,” “likable” and “able to beat Joe Biden,” although he still lags Mr. Trump in the state by 24 percentage points overall, according to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll.While Mr. DeSantis has had success attracting endorsements from state lawmakers like Mr. Collins, Mr. Trump has much more backing from members of Congress, in part because of the former president’s attention to personal relationships, which has included reaching out to lawmakers when they or their family members fall ill and hosting them for dinners.Mr. Trump is also known to drop in at weddings held at Mar-a-Lago, the exclusive Palm Beach social club that serves as his home, as well as at his Bedminster golf resort in New Jersey.This was not Mr. DeSantis’s first attempt at surprising Iowa voters.In May, after a busy day of campaigning around the state, he made an unscheduled evening stop at a barbecue restaurant in Des Moines, not far from where Mr. Trump had canceled an earlier rally (because of bad weather, according to Mr. Trump’s campaign).After Mr. DeSantis’s unexpected entrance to the wedding, Mr. Collins celebrated on social media, saying: “You never know who will crash your wedding reception during caucus season! An honor to be on #TeamDeSantis.”In response to an email seeking comment, he wrote: “It was great for our family and friends from across the country to experience firsthand what it’s like to be in Iowa during caucus season. I can’t think of a better way to end the night than seeing everyone spend time with the governor.”Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York. More

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      Republican Attacks on ‘Woke’ Ideology Falling Flat With G.O.P. Voters

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      New polling shows national Republicans and Iowa Republican caucusgoers were more interested in “law and order” than battling “woke” schools, media and corporations.When it comes to the Republican primaries, attacks on “wokeness” may be losing their punch.For Republican candidates, no word has hijacked political discourse quite like “woke,” a term few can define but many have used to capture what they see as left-wing views on race, gender and sexuality that have strayed far beyond the norms of American society.Gov. Ron DeSantis last year used the word five times in 19 seconds, substituting “woke” for Nazis as he cribbed from Winston Churchill’s famous vow to battle a threatened German invasion in 1940. Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, speaks of a “woke self-loathing” that has swept the nation. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina found himself backpedaling furiously after declaring that “‘woke supremacy’ is as bad as white supremacy.”The term has become quick a way for candidates to flash their conservative credentials, but battling “woke” may have less political potency than they think. Though conservative voters might be irked at modern liberalism, successive New York Times/Siena College polls of Republican voters nationally and then in Iowa found that candidates were unlikely to win votes by narrowly focusing on rooting out left-wing ideology in schools, media, culture and business.Instead, Republican voters are showing a “hand’s off” libertarian streak in economics, and a clear preference for messages about “law and order” in the nation’s cities and at its borders.The findings hint why Mr. DeSantis, who has made his battles with “woke” schools and corporations central to his campaign, is struggling and again show off Mr. Trump’s keen understanding of part of the Republican electorate. Campaigning in Iowa in June, Mr. Trump was blunt: “I don’t like the term ‘woke,’” he said, adding, “It’s just a term they use — half the people can’t even define it, they don’t know what it is.”It was clearly a jab at Mr. DeSantis, but the Times’s polls suggest Mr. Trump may be right. Social issues like gay rights and once-obscure jargon like “woke” may not be having the effect many Republicans had hoped“Your idea of ‘wokeism’ might be different from mine,” explained Christopher Boyer, a 63-year-old Republican actor in Hagerstown, Md., who retired from a successful career in Hollywood where he said he saw his share of political correctness and liberal group think. Mr. Boyer said he didn’t like holding his tongue about his views on transgender athletes, but, he added, he does not want politicians to intervene. “I am a laissez-faire capitalist: Let the pocketbook decide,” he said.“Your idea of ‘wokeism’ might be different from mine,” said Christopher Boyer, a 63-year-old Republican actor in Hagerstown, Md.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesWhen presented with the choice between two hypothetical Republican candidates, only 24 percent of national Republican voters opted for a “a candidate who focuses on defeating radical ‘woke’ ideology in our schools, media and culture” over “a candidate who focuses on restoring law and order in our streets and at the border.”Around 65 percent said they would choose the law and order candidate.Among those 65 and older, often the most likely age bracket to vote, only 17 percent signed on to the “anti-woke” crusade. Those numbers were nearly identical in Iowa, where the first ballots for the Republican nominee will be cast on Jan. 15.Mr. DeSantis’s famous fight against the Walt Disney Company over what he saw as the corporation’s liberal agenda exemplified the kind of economic warfare that seems to fare only modestly better. About 38 percent of Republican voters said they would back a candidate who promised to fight corporations that promote “woke” left ideology, versus the 52 percent who preferred “a candidate who says that the government should stay out of deciding what corporations should support.”Christy Boyd, 55, in Ligonier, Pa., made it clear she was no fan of the culture of tolerance that she said pervaded her region around Pittsburgh. As the perfect distillation of “woke” ideology, she mentioned “time blindness,” a phrase she views as simply an excuse for perpetual tardiness.But such aggravations do not drive her political desires.“If you don’t like what Bud Light did, don’t buy it,” she added, referring to the brand’s hiring of a transgender influencer, which contributed to a sharp drop in sales. “If you don’t like what Disney is doing, don’t go. That’s not the government’s responsibility.”Indeed, some Republican voters seemed to feel pandered to by candidates like Mr. DeSantis and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, whose book “Woke Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” launched his political career.Lynda Croft, 82, said she was watching a rise in murders in her hometown Winston-Salem, N.C., and that has her scared. Overly liberal policies in culture and schools will course-correct on their own, she said.“If anyone actually believes in woke ideology, they are not in tune with the rest of society,” she said, “and parents will step in to deal with that.”In an interview, Mr. Ramaswamy said the evolving views of the electorate were important, and he had adapted to them. “Woke” corporate governance and school systems are a symptom of what he calls “a deeper void” in a society that needs a religious and nationalist renewal. The stickers that read “Stop Wokeism. Vote Vivek” are gone from his campaign stops, he said, replaced by hats that read “Truth.”“At the time I came to be focused on this issue, no one knew what the word was,” he said. “Now that they have caught up, the puck has moved. It’s in my rearview mirror as well.”Law and order and border security have become stand-ins for “fortitude,” he said, and that is clearly what Republican voters are craving.(The day after the interview, the Ramaswamy campaign blasted out a fund-raising appeal entitled “Wokeness killing the American Dream.”)DeSantis campaign officials emphasized that the governor in recent days had laid out policies on border security, the military and the economy. Foreign policy is coming, they say. But they also pointed to an interview on Fox News in which Mr. DeSantis did not back away from his social-policy focus.Along with several other Republican-led states, Florida passed a string of laws restricting what G.O.P. lawmakers considered evidence of “wokeness,” such as gender transition care for minors and diversity initiatives. Mr. DeSantis handily won re-election in November.“I totally reject, being in Iowa, New Hampshire, that people don’t think those are important,” he said of his social policy fights. “These families with children are thanking me for taking stands in Florida.”For candidates trying to break Mr. Trump’s hold on a Republican electorate that sees the former president as the embodiment of strength, the problem may be broader than ditching the term “woke.”As it turns out, social issues like gender, race and sexuality are politically complicated and may be less dominant than Mr. Trump’s rivals thought. The fact that Mr. Trump has been indicted three times and found legally liable for sexual abuse has not hurt him. Only 37 percent of Republican voters nationally described Mr. Trump as more moral than Mr. DeSantis (45 percent sided with Mr. DeSantis on the personality trait), yet in a head-to-head matchup between the two candidates, national Republican voters backed Mr. Trump by 31 percentage points, 62 percent to 31 percent.The Times/Siena poll did find real reluctance among Republican voters to accept transgender people. Only 30 percent said society should accept transgender people as the gender they identify with, compared with 58 percent who said society should not accept such identities.But half of Republican voters still support the right of gay and lesbian people to marry, against the 41 percent who oppose same-sex marriage. Fifty-one percent of Republican voters said they would choose a candidate promising to protect individual freedom over one guarding “traditional values.” The “traditional values” candidate would be the choice of 40 percent of Republicans.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, responded simply: “Americans want to return to a prosperous nation, and there’s only one person who can do that — President Trump.”Mr. Boyer, who played Robert E. Lee in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” bristled at having to make a choice: “It’s hardly an either-or: Why wouldn’t I want someone to fight for law and order and against this corrupt infiltration in our school systems?” he asked.But given a choice, he said, “the primary job of government is the protection of our country and there’s a tangible failure of that at our border.” More