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      DeSantis Campaign Uses ‘Deepfake’ Images to Attack Trump, Experts Suggest

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      The images, which at first glance appear genuine and are interspersed with real photographs in a campaign video, purport to show Donald Trump hugging and kissing Dr. Anthony Fauci.As Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida begins to aggressively attack former President Donald J. Trump, his campaign has spread three images of the former president embracing Dr. Anthony S. Fauci that forensic experts say are almost certainly realistic-looking “deepfakes” generated by artificial intelligence.The images — which at first glance appear genuine and are interspersed with real photographs in a campaign video — show Mr. Trump hugging and kissing Dr. Fauci, who led the nation’s pandemic response and has been a target of harsh criticism from Mr. DeSantis. The governor has used the pandemic to contrast himself with his main rival for the Republican presidential nomination.A Twitter account run by Mr. DeSantis’s campaign posted the images, part of a video attacking Mr. Trump, on Monday. The news agency Agence France-Presse first reported that they appeared fake on Wednesday.The governor’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. Trump’s Republican allies criticized the DeSantis campaign on Thursday. Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio wrote on Twitter: “Smearing Donald Trump with fake AI images is completely unacceptable.” Representative Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia agreed, saying: “Those fake AI campaign ads need to be taken down immediately.”In turn, Mr. DeSantis’s camp suggested the images were obviously fake, comparing them to memes circulated by Mr. Trump and his allies. But those images — which included a video of Mr. DeSantis in a woman’s suit adapted from “The Office” and a “recording” of a conversation between Mr. DeSantis, Adolf Hitler and the Devil — were clearly intended to be humorous and easy to discern as doctored.On Twitter, Christina Pushaw, the DeSantis campaign’s rapid response director, shared a fake photograph of Mr. DeSantis riding a rhinoceros (a reference to accusations that he is a “Republican in Name Only,” or RINO), writing: “I think this might be an AI-generated image. Who knows?” The image, which appeared to be photoshopped, had earlier been posted by Mr. Trump on his Truth Social website.As the 2024 campaign heats up, the use of such deepfakes has been of urgent concern to those who study manipulated images, which thanks to new technology are easier to generate than ever before. While Americans have grown far more skeptical of reports in the print, digital and broadcast news media, experts said, they have been more likely to trust videos and images that they could examine with their own eyes. The advent of deepfakes could change that.“This is the big information security problem of the 21st century,” said Matthew Stamm, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Drexel University who reviewed the images of Mr. Trump and Dr. Fauci and strongly doubted their authenticity.After President Biden announced he would seek re-election, the Republican National Committee released a video with A.I.-generated images, including of China invading Taiwan, claiming to depict a potential future if he were to win again in 2024. Unlike Mr. DeSantis’s video, the R.N.C. ad acknowledged, in small white characters at the top left of the screen, that it had been “built entirely with A.I. imagery.”Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said the use of such tactics would only increase.“We will continue to see campaigns, state-sponsored actors, trolls and people who want to sow chaos use these fake images to drive their own agendas,” said Mr. Farid, who also concluded that the images posted by the DeSantis campaign were most likely fake.While he described the three images as “pretty clumsily done” — pointing to flaws in Mr. Trump’s hair and ear, as well as nonsensical lettering in what appeared to be a White House seal and an American flag with a bizarre pattern of stars — he said generative artificial intelligence was quickly growing more sophisticated. For instance, he said, the technology had already adapted to produce more authentic-looking hands, an early flaw in its realism.“These are well-known signs that an A.I.-based synthetic image generator was likely used to create these images,” said Mr. Farid, who added that some experts were beginning to systemically review campaign materials for signs they contain deepfakes.He said politicians would now have a ready-made excuse when genuine representations of their actions — such as Mr. Trump’s infamous “Access Hollywood” tape — appear in public.“They have plausible deniability,” Mr. Farid said. “They can say it’s fake.”Jonathan Swan More

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      Where the GOP Presidential Candidates Stand on Climate Change

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      While many of them acknowledge that climate change is real, they largely downplay the issue and reject policies that would slow rising temperatures.As wildfires in Canada have sent masses of smoke over the United States this week, engulfing much of the Northeast in a yellow haze of hazardous air pollution, scientists are clear that we are seeing the effects of climate change. But the Republicans campaigning for the presidency have largely downplayed the issue and rejected policies that would slow rising temperatures.On Wednesday, even as the country experienced one of its worst days on record for air quality, with New York City especially hard-hit, former Vice President Mike Pence said in a town-hall event on CNN that “radical environmentalists” were exaggerating the threat of climate change.His response reflected what has become a pattern among Republican officials. Many of the candidates acknowledge that climate change is real, in contrast to party members’ years of outright denial. But they have not acknowledged how serious it is, and have almost universally rejected the scientific consensus that the United States, like all countries, must transition rapidly to renewable energy in order to limit the most catastrophic impacts.Here is a look at where some of the major Republican candidates stand.Donald J. TrumpAs president, Donald J. Trump mocked climate science and championed the production of the fossil fuels chiefly responsible for warming the planet.He rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations, mostly aimed at reducing planet-warming emissions and protecting clean air and water; appointed cabinet members who were openly dismissive of the threat of climate change, including Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency; and withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, under which almost every country had committed to try to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.President Biden rejoined the Paris Agreement and undid many of Mr. Trump’s policies, but the damage may not be fully reversible. A report last year from researchers at Yale and Columbia found that the United States’ environmental performance had plummeted in relation to other countries as a result of the Trump administration’s actions.Mr. Trump has given no indication that his approach would be different in a second term. He has repeatedly minimized the severity of climate change, including claiming falsely that sea levels are projected to rise only ⅛ of an inch over 200 to 300 years. But according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, sea levels are rising by that amount every year.Ron DeSantisGov. Ron DeSantis leads a state, Florida, that is on the front lines of climate change: It has been hit hard by hurricanes, which are becoming more frequent and more severe as the Atlantic Ocean gets warmer.But Mr. DeSantis has dismissed concern about climate change as a pretext for “left-wing stuff” and said on Fox News last month, “I’ve always rejected the politicization of the weather.”He has, however, taken significant steps to fortify the state against stronger storms and rising waters. Among other things, he appointed the state’s first “chief resilience officer” and backed the Resilient Florida Program, which has sent hundreds of millions of dollars to vulnerable communities to fund projects like building sea walls and improving drainage systems.Scientists support these sorts of adaptation efforts, because the climate has already changed enough that even aggressive emission reductions will not avert all the effects. But they are also clear that such measures are not enough on their own.Nikki HaleyNikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, has acknowledged that climate change is real and caused by humans, but she has generally rejected governmental efforts to reduce emissions. Her advocacy group Stand for America said that “liberal ideas would cost trillions and destroy our economy.”As ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, Ms. Haley was closely involved in withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement. At the time, she said, “Just because we pulled out of the Paris accord doesn’t mean we don’t believe in climate protection.” Over the next three years, the Trump administration systematically reversed climate protections.But Ms. Haley has supported greater use of carbon capture technology to remove carbon from the air. She and some other Republicans — including another presidential candidate, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota — have presented this as a way to limit climate change while continuing to use fossil fuels. Many experts agree that carbon capture could be a powerful tool, but it is unlikely to be sufficient on its own, in part because of its high cost.Mike PenceMr. Pence has acknowledged that climate change is real. He said during the 2016 campaign, “There’s no question that the activities that take place in this country and in countries around the world have some impact on the environment and some impact on climate.”But that assertion falls short of the scientific consensus that human activity is the primary driver of climate change. He has also downplayed the severity, like in his comments this week that “radical environmentalists” were exaggerating climate change’s effects. And as vice president, Mr. Pence had a hand in Mr. Trump’s defiantly anti-climate agenda, including defending the decision to withdraw from the Paris accord by saying Mr. Trump had stood up for “America first.”Mr. Pence’s political organization, Advancing American Freedom, has denounced “the left’s climate radicalism” and called for a rejection of “climate mandates.” It has also called for expediting oil and gas leases and taking other steps to “unleash the full potential” of fossil fuel production in the United States.Tim ScottSenator Tim Scott of South Carolina has also acknowledged that climate change is occurring, once telling The Post and Courier, his home-state newspaper: “There is no doubt that man is having an impact on our environment. There is no doubt about that. I am not living under a rock.”At the same time, he has opposed most policies that would curb carbon dioxide emissions. During the Obama administration, Mr. Scott challenged a regulation that would have required utilities to move away from coal and adopt wind, solar and other renewable power. During the Trump administration, he argued for dumping the Paris Agreement. And last year, he voted against President Biden’s expansive climate and health legislation that will invest about $370 billion in spending and tax credits over 10 years into clean energy technologiesChris ChristieChris Christie acknowledged the reality of climate change before many of his fellow Republicans did. “When you have over 90 percent of the world’s scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role, it’s time to defer to the experts,” he said in 2011.As governor of New Jersey, he announced a moratorium on new coal-plant permits, filed a successful petition with the E.P.A. to demand reduced pollution from a coal plant along the Pennsylvania border and signed offshore wind power legislation. But state regulators in his administration didn’t approve any wind projects — and at the same time, Mr. Christie withdrew New Jersey from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a multistate cap-and-trade partnership, and vetoed state legislators’ efforts to rejoin it.He also said in 2015 that climate change, while real, was “not a crisis.” Last year, he called for increases to domestic oil production.Asa HutchinsonAsa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, has not spoken much about climate change. But when he has, he has generally stuck to the Republican Party line, rejecting government efforts to reduce emissions.He criticized President Barack Obama’s power plant regulations and, in 2019, praised the Trump administration for its environmental deregulation. Shortly after Mr. Biden was elected president in 2020, Mr. Hutchinson joined several other Republican governors in pledging to sue if the federal government mandated emission reductions.“Our power companies have voluntarily embraced sources of alternative energy without heavy-handed regulation from government,” he said at the time.Vivek RamaswamyVivek Ramaswamy began his presidential campaign by claiming that “faith, patriotism and hard work” had been replaced by “secular religions like Covidism, climatism and gender ideology.” In an interview with The New York Times, he defined “climatism” as “prioritizing the goal of containing climate change at all costs.”He is also an outspoken opponent of environmental, social and governance investing, or E.S.G., in which financial companies consider the long-term societal effects — including climate-related effects — of their investment decisions.Mr. Ramaswamy supports using more nuclear power and has painted a conspiracy theory for why many environmentalists oppose it. “The problem with nuclear energy is it’s too good,” he claimed on Twitter this April. “And if you solve the ‘clean energy problem’ activists lose their favorite Trojan Horse for advancing ‘global equity’ by penalizing the West.”But many environmental activists cite concerns about the safe storage of nuclear materials and the potential for accidents as the reason for their opposition — though they are by no means united in their stance, and many support nuclear power as a carbon-free source of energy.Doug BurgumGov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota has pushed harder to address climate change than most Republicans by actively identifying carbon neutrality as a goal: In 2021, he announced that he wanted North Dakota to reach it by 2030.He wants to do so through carbon-capture programs alone, without transitioning away from fossil fuels. (Climate scientists are skeptical that this is possible, even as they agree the technology holds promise.)Mr. Burgum, who created a tax incentive for one form of carbon capture, argued in an interview with Future Farmer magazine in 2021 that his policies showed “North Dakota can reach the end goal faster with innovation and free markets and without the heavy hand of government mandates and regulation.” More

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      With Migrant Flights, Ron DeSantis Shows Stoking Outrage Is the Point

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      The flights to California illustrate the broader bet Gov. Ron DeSantis has made that the animating energy in the G.O.P. has shifted from conservatism to confrontationalism.Ron DeSantis’s decision to send migrants from near the Mexico border to the capital city of California is at first glance the latest in a series of escalating clashes between the Florida governor and his Democratic counterpart, Gavin Newsom.But the performative gambit in the early days of Mr. DeSantis’s 2024 presidential run is better understood as an opening bid to prove to Republican primary voters that he can be just as much a provocateur, and every bit as incendiary, as former President Donald J. Trump.For Mr. DeSantis, the flights illustrate the broader bet he has made that the animating energy in the Republican Party today has shifted from conservatism to confrontationalism. And that in this new era, nothing is more fundamental than picking fights and making the right enemies, whether it’s the migrants who have slogged sometimes thousands of miles to slip through the border, the news media or the chief executive of the biggest blue state on the map.Mr. DeSantis has used this playbook before. He ordered up flights from the Texas border last year to the symbolically liberal hamlet of Martha’s Vineyard, a stunt that drew exactly the outrage he sought. Those flights are now a staple of his stump speech, usually to cheers from the crowd. His allies in the Florida Legislature earmarked $12 million of taxpayer money into the state budget this year for just this purpose.“The easiest way to prove one’s tribal loyalty in 2020s America is by theatrically hating the other tribe,” said Russell Moore, the editor in chief of Christianity Today and the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.A private charter plane that carried more than a dozen migrants, at Florida’s direction, at a Sacramento airport on Monday.Andri Tambunan for The New York TimesIn recent days, two charter flights orchestrated by the DeSantis administration carried roughly three dozen migrants from a New Mexico airport to Sacramento. The migrants, who are mostly Venezuelan, said they had been recruited from outside a shelter in El Paso, with promises of employment that California officials have said amounted to deception. Mr. Newsom, the California governor who is a potential future presidential contender himself, has suggested that the affair could merit “kidnapping charges,” calling Mr. DeSantis in a tweet a “small, pathetic man.”Mr. Moore said he believed “that migrants and asylum seekers are created in the image of God and shouldn’t be mistreated or treated as political theater for anybody.” But he could also see the more crass calculations that Mr. DeSantis is making in a polarized era where politicians are most clearly defined not by what they’re for, but who they’re against.“The one heresy that no tribe seems to allow is a refusal to hate the other tribe,” Mr. Moore said.Mr. DeSantis, who flew to Arizona on Wednesday for a border event, is not a trailblazer in this regard. It was Mr. Trump who began his 2016 campaign by calling Mexicans rapists, who promised to “build the wall” and later pitched a Muslim ban, making an “America First” approach to immigration a central theme of the party. And it was Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas who first began busing immigrants to blue cities and states last year (an idea Mr. Trump floated as president in 2018 but never pursued). Mr. DeSantis later one-upped Mr. Abbott’s buses with the dramatic flights to Martha’s Vineyard, which are now the subject of a federal class-action lawsuit.At the demographic and geographic epicenter of Mr. DeSantis’s presidential candidacy is an effort to appeal to deeply conservative evangelical voters in Iowa, where the Republicans’ 2024 nominating contest begins. Evangelical voters helped propel the Iowa victories of Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee in the last three open contests.Yet the DeSantis campaign and its allies see fighting the left as the fastest way to appeal to those voters rather than overt displays of religiosity. “Christians aren’t looking for a savior to be a president, they already have one,” said one DeSantis adviser, who was not authorized to speak publicly to discuss strategy, explaining how Mr. Trump has dominated that voting bloc despite concerns about his moral character.Kevin Madden, who served as a top adviser on Mitt Romney’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, said transporting migrants, however cynical, allowed Mr. DeSantis to agitate all the right people.Mr. DeSantis and his wife, Casey, praying at a campaign stop in Iowa last month.Rachel Mummey for The New York Times“He’s provoking Gavin Newsom,” Mr. Madden said. “He’s provoking the most extreme liberal voices to attack him. He is provoking media voices. And that works to his favor because it endears him to the forces on the right who want to see a clash of political civilizations.”Outrage sells. Campaign contributions have repeatedly surged to the fury merchants on the right, whether the politicians selling the lie that the 2020 election was stolen or the G.O.P. hard-liners who battled Representative Kevin McCarthy’s ascent to the House speakership. An “own the libs” mentality has come to drive, if not define, the right online.On the left, Mr. Newsom has sought to elevate himself through his tussles with Mr. DeSantis, too. He ran a television advertisement in Florida attacking him last year. He challenged him to a debate. He traveled this spring to the New College of Florida, a public liberal arts institution where Mr. DeSantis is engineering a right-wing intellectual takeover. In his personal Twitter account, Mr. Newsom has slammed Mr. DeSantis by name at least 20 times.“I think I’m being generous — ‘small and pathetic’ — very generous,” Mr. Newsom said in an interview on NBC’s “Today Show” broadcast on Wednesday. He accused Mr. DeSantis of using migrants as “pawns,” adding, “He’s just weakness masquerading as strength.”Mr. Newsom’s new PAC has been running a rotation of online fund-raising ads that attack Mr. DeSantis. “In my book, a bully and a coward doesn’t deserve to be the leader of the free world,” Mr. Newsom says of Mr. DeSantis in a video ad that began running on Facebook on Wednesday.Mr. DeSantis’s round-table discussion in Arizona on border security was a government event underwritten by taxpayers, not his campaign. After days of mystery, Mr. DeSantis’s administration took credit for the Sacramento flights on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he did not mention Mr. Newsom by name, though he said “sanctuary jurisdictions” had “incentivized” illegal immigration.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a possible eventual presidential hopeful, has sought to elevate himself through his tussles with Mr. DeSantis, too.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThen Mr. DeSantis shifted to pick another fight with President Biden. “I don’t know how you can just sit there and let the country be overrun with millions and millions of people coming illegally,” Mr. DeSantis said.Mr. DeSantis has become expert at agitating the right’s boogeymen. He once called Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, a “little elf” who needed to be chucked “across the Potomac.” And when Mr. DeSantis’s motives are questioned by reporters, his snapbacks have been quickly packaged and posted on social media in hopes of generating viral hits.If he were to become president, Mr. DeSantis has made plain he would use the White House’s powers to the fullest. He is fond of saying that although he first won the governorship in 2018 with barely 50 percent of the vote, that victory came with 100 percent of the executive authority.As governor, he proudly used the power of the state to overrule local governments, ousting a prosecutor and prohibiting school districts from imposing mask mandates. Such actions are a departure from the limited-government conservatism of yesteryear. His allies say it is a vivid signal to voters that Mr. DeSantis will leverage the powers of government to battle their enemies, at a moment when many Republicans feel that their values and nation are under siege.Cesar Conda, a former chief of staff to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida who, two decades ago, served as the top domestic policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, said that “Ronald Reagan would be rolling over in his grave using taxpayer dollars” to fly migrants from one faraway state to another.“DeSantis’s move is part of a growing strain in conservatism, endorsed by younger conservatives, to aggressively use the power and resources of government to achieve — or coerce — policy goals,” Mr. Conda said. “The ‘less government, lower taxes, more freedom’ mantra of conservatism is becoming quaint and old-fashioned, unfortunately.”Shawn Hubler More

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      Ron DeSantis Defends Migrant Flights While Taking Shot at Gavin Newsom

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida criticized immigration policies in his first visit to the border since beginning his presidential bid.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Wednesday defended his state’s sending three dozen Latin American migrants to Sacramento on recent charter flights from the border, saying California had “incentivized” illegal immigration and ought to pay the costs.“These sanctuary jurisdictions are part of the reason we have this problem, because they have endorsed and agitated for these types of open-border policies,” Mr. DeSantis said during his first visit to the southern border since starting his presidential campaign. “They have bragged that they are sanctuary jurisdictions. They attacked the previous administration’s efforts to try to have border security.”Democratic officials in California, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, have said Florida’s taxpayer-funded operation to move migrants to Sacramento could merit criminal or civil charges. They said the migrants, who arrived on Monday and last Friday, were misled into boarding the planes with false promises of jobs before being left outside a church building. In criticizing the flights, Mr. Newsom resorted to unusually personal terms, calling Mr. DeSantis a “small, pathetic man.”On Wednesday, Mr. DeSantis took a shot back at Mr. Newsom, comparing California’s budget deficit to his own state’s fiscal surplus. “We have a good managed state,” he said at a round-table discussion in Sierra Vista, Ariz., that included law enforcement officials from Florida, Arizona and Texas. Mr. DeSantis was appearing in his official capacity as governor.Mr. DeSantis has staked out a hard-line position on immigration in the Republican primary, criticizing the policies of both President Biden and, to a lesser extent, former president Donald J. Trump, his main rival for the nomination.“The border just needs to be shut down,” said Mr. DeSantis, who is making a fund-raising trip to Texas this week. He also reiterated his support for a border wall, adding: “Mass migration just doesn’t work.”Last month, Mr. DeSantis authorized sending more than 1,100 Florida National Guard members and law enforcement personnel to Texas to serve at the southern border. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, had requested the assistance. Mr. DeSantis led a similar effort in 2021, when he also made a public appearance at the border.While border apprehensions have hit record highs in recent years, illegal crossings between ports of entry along the southern border have decreased more than 70 percent since May 11, when Title 42, the pandemic-era health measure, was lifted, according to statistics from Customs and Border Protection.After Mr. DeSantis’s comments in Arizona, sheriffs took turns describing crimes that they said had been committed by undocumented immigrants.At times, the conversation felt like a campaign event, as the assembled officials, mainly Republicans, praised Mr. DeSantis.“I’ve worked for a lot of governors,” said Grady Judd, sheriff of Polk County in Central Florida. “Ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake about it: This is simply the best governor that the state of Florida has had in the last 50 years.”Miriam Jordan More

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      Chris Christie: Columnists and Writers Discuss His 2024 Candidacy.

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      As Republican candidates enter the race for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination, Times columnists, Opinion writers and others will assess their strengths and weaknesses with a scorecard. We rate the candidates on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 means the candidate will probably drop out before any caucus or primary voting; 10 means the candidate has a very strong chance of receiving the party’s nomination next summer. This entry assesses Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey.Candidate strength averagesRon DeSantis: 6.1Tim Scott: 4.6Nikki Haley: 3.5Mike Pence: 3.0Asa Hutchinson: 2.3Chris Christie: 2.0How seriously should we take Chris Christie’s candidacy?Frank Bruni Medium seriously, not for his minuscule potential to be the nominee but for his somewhat greater potential to diminish Donald Trump and to scramble the overall picture. Among Trump’s challengers, he has a singular combination of meanness and keenness, and he’s not vying for veep. He won’t walk on eggshells. He’ll do some vengeful, spiteful Jersey jitterbug on them.Jane Coaston Mildly.Michelle Cottle As a potential president, not very. As someone who could rough up Trump for the entire field — a political picador of sorts — he has potential.Ross Douthat Unless he invents a time dial that spins us back to 2012, the year he probably should have run for president, not seriously at all.David French There’s a distinction between Chris Christie’s presence in the race and his candidacy. His candidacy isn’t serious. There is zero path to victory. But his presence might matter, just as it did when he demolished Marco Rubio’s candidacy in a 2016 primary debate.Nicole Hemmer Chris Christie is a deeply unpopular politician, but he’s also a man on a mission: to take out Trump. Understood in that light, he’s worth paying attention to, if only to see which of Trump’s weaknesses he’s able to exploit.Katherine Mangu-Ward He’s having fun with it. So should we.Daniel McCarthy He’s not a plausible contender. But he must sense that he’s not any less plausible than the other alternatives to Donald Trump, so why not run?What matters most about him as a presidential candidate?Bruni He’s not fashioning himself as Trump-plus, Trump-minus or any other improved version of Trump. He’s the anti-Trump, imploring Republicans to grapple with who Trump is and how far the party has staggered from its supposed principles. That’s a noble play even if it’s a self-aggrandizing ploy.Coaston He believes that there is a way to be a Republican that isn’t Trumpian, and he believes that Americans will respond to that version of the G.O.P.Cottle Well, someone needs to experiment with going hard at the MAGA king. If he can muster the will, Christie has skill.Douthat There’s a narrative in which having played a crucial role in Donald Trump’s 2016 ascent — shivving Trump’s rivals on the debate stage and then offering him an early endorsement — Christie will now play a crucial role in his downfall, by attacking Trump with the gusto he once brought to taking down Marco Rubio. But I’m not sure that Christie will even qualify for the debate stage; if he does, I suspect he’ll be strongly tempted to attack his non-Trump rivals as often as he swings at Trump; and even if he attacks Trump, I don’t think he’s particularly well positioned to prosecute the case.French Christie is a guided missile aimed rhetorically right at Trump.Hemmer Christie bullies well. In the 2016 primaries, he relished eviscerating Senator Rubio. He failed to do the same to Trump at the time, but seven years later, he has plenty of new material to work with.Mangu-Ward The conventional wisdom holds that Christie can take a bite out of Trump’s support by getting in some one-liners at the debates. But that gives too much weight to the debates themselves. There is simply no zinger zingy enough to bring down Trump — or to overcome Christie’s mixed record as a smart, accomplished governor whose pragmatism too often bleeds into the appearance of opportunism or even corruption.McCarthy He’ll make other not-Trumps seem bland by comparison. Christie’s ridicule won’t stop the ex-president but could maim anyone else unlucky enough to be its target.What do you find most inspiring — or unsettling — about his vision for America?Bruni Well, he’s wagering that America is better than Trump — that a critical mass of Republicans can finally grasp the Trump threat and see the Trump damage. I’m inspired by that possibility, no matter how remote.Coaston I don’t find his vision — a particular kind of American stasis — particularly inspiring or unsettling.Cottle Does he have one? Does it matter?Douthat Nothing in particular, since I don’t think he’s offering one yet.French By far the most inspiring aspect of Christie’s candidacy is his vision for a Trump-free G.O.P. By far the most unsettling is Christie’s previous sycophantic capitulation to the same man he attacks today. How much can any voter trust that Christie has learned his lesson?Hemmer People run for president for all sorts of reasons other than to become president: to promote new policies, break glass ceilings, increase book sales. Some mix of genuine concern for the party and vengeance (Trump booted Christie as transition chair in 2016 and most likely gave him a grave case of Covid in 2020) isn’t the worst reason to run.Mangu-Ward Christie’s vision of America seems to be one where Donald Trump is not president. For some, perhaps that is inspiring enough.McCarthy His vision for America is New Jersey, and most Republicans, at least, find that unsettling.Imagine you’re a G.O.P. operative or campaign manager. What’s your elevator pitch for a Christie candidacy?Bruni By the Iowa caucuses, Trump could be under multiple indictments and in such a flamboyant mental tailspin that Republicans must listen seriously to his rivals. Are they really going to prefer DeSantis’s whine to Christie’s roar?Coaston New Jersey normalcy.Cottle Takes a bully to smack a bully.Douthat Don’t want Trump? The rules are clear: Only a tristate-area Republican can defeat another tristate-area Republican.French No one is more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose.Hemmer You want a straight-talking, no-holds-barred candidate who will pummel your enemies but stop short of fomenting an insurrection? Christie’s your guy.Mangu-Ward Spicy words, bland policies.McCarthy Wouldn’t it be fun to see him debate Joe Biden?Ross Douthat and David French are Times columnists.Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer.Michelle Cottle (@mcottle) is a member of the Times’s editorial board.Jane Coaston is a Times Opinion writer.Nicole Hemmer (@pastpunditry) is an associate professor of history and director of the Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University and the author of “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s” and “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.”Katherine Mangu-Ward (@kmanguward) is the editor in chief of Reason magazine.Daniel McCarthy is the editor of “Modern Age: A Conservative Review.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Do Christie and Pence Make It 2016 Again? Not Yet.

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      A bigger field in the G.O.P. primary could chip away at DeSantis’s chances of overtaking Trump.A crowded field could help Donald Trump, as it did in 2015-16. Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressIt’s been feeling a bit like 2016 lately.Back then, the opposition to Donald J. Trump was badly divided. The party couldn’t coalesce behind one candidate, allowing Mr. Trump to win the Republican primary with well under half of the vote.With Mike Pence and Chris Christie bringing the field up to 10 candidates this week, it’s easy to wonder whether the same conditions might be falling into place again. Despite high hopes at the start of the year, Ron DeSantis has failed to consolidate Trump-skeptic voters and donors alike. Now, the likes of Mr. Pence and Mr. Christie — as well as Tim Scott and Nikki Haley — are in the fray and threatening to leave the Trump opposition hopelessly divided, as it was seven years ago.In the end, Mr. Pence or Mr. Christie might well break out and leave the opposition to Mr. Trump as fractured as it was in 2016. But it’s worth noting that, so far, the opposition to Mr. Trump has been far more unified than it ever was back then. It’s not 2016, at least not yet.So far this cycle, polls have consistently shown Mr. DeSantis with the support of a majority of Republican voters who don’t support Mr. Trump. Nothing like this happened in that past primary, when at various points five different candidates could claim to be the strongest “not-Trump” candidate, and none came even close to consolidating so much of the opposition to Mr. Trump. Ted Cruz got there eventually, but only after a majority of delegates had been awarded and it was down to him and John Kasich.Perhaps surprisingly, Mr. DeSantis’s share of not-Trump voters has remained constant, even though his own support has dropped. This suggests Mr. DeSantis has mainly bled support to Mr. Trump, not to another not-Trump rival. It also suggests that the other not-Trump candidates may have bled support to Mr. Trump over the last half year as well.Consolidation of Not-Trump Voters More

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      Mike Pence Is ‘a Rebuke of Trump’s Presidency’: Our Columnists and Writers Weigh In on His Candidacy

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      As Republican candidates enter the race for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination, Times columnists, Opinion writers and others will assess their strengths and weaknesses with a scorecard. We rate the candidates on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 means the candidate will probably drop out before any caucus or primary voting; 10 means the candidate has a very strong chance of receiving the party’s nomination next summer. This entry assesses Mike Pence, the former vice president.Candidate strength averagesRon DeSantis: 6.1Tim Scott: 4.6Nikki Haley: 3.5Mike Pence: 3.0Asa Hutchinson: 2.3How seriously should we take Mike Pence’s candidacy?Frank Bruni At least a bit more seriously than the fly that colonized his coiffure during his 2020 debate with Kamala Harris did. He is polling well enough to be part of the Republican primary debates. Let’s hope that Chris Licht at CNN has an entomologist at the ready for the post-debate panel.Jane Coaston Not very.Michelle Cottle As seriously as the wet dishrag he impersonated for most of his term as V.P.Ross Douthat On paper, a former vice president known for his evangelical faith sounds like a plausible Republican candidate for president. But in practice, because of Pence’s role on Jan. 6 and his break with Donald Trump thereafter, to vote for Trump’s vice president is to actively repudiate Trump himself. So until there’s evidence the G.O.P. voters are ready for such an overt repudiation (as opposed to just moving on to another candidate), there isn’t good reason to take Pence’s chances seriously.David French Nothing signals G.O.P. loyalty to Trump more than G.O.P. anger at Mike Pence. And what sin has he committed in Republican eyes? After years of faithful service to Trump, he refused to violate the law and risk the unity of the Republic by wrongly overturning an American election. We can’t take Pence seriously until Republicans stop taking Trump seriously.Michelle Goldberg One clue to Mike Pence’s standing among Republican base voters is that many of them have made heroes out of a mob chanting “hang Mike Pence.”Nicole Hemmer On the one hand, he’s the former vice president, which has to count for something. On the other hand, a mob whipped up by the former president wanted to hang him in front of Congress, so his candidacy is a high-risk proposition.Katherine Mangu-Ward Mike Pence is a serious person. He is seriously not going to be president.Daniel McCarthy As things stand, his candidacy isn’t very serious. If calamity befalls Donald Trump, however, the former vice president could gain favor as the G.O.P. old guard’s alternative to Ron DeSantis.What matters most about him as a presidential candidate?Bruni He was Trump’s No. 2, so the fact of his candidacy is a rebuke of Trump’s presidency. He has a warm history with evangelical voters, whom he will assiduously court. And if squaring off against Trump somehow prods Pence to be more candid about what he saw at the fair, his words could theoretically wound.Coaston It is a candidacy no one wants.Cottle He’s a uniter: Everyone dislikes him.Douthat As long as he’s polling in the single digits, he matters only as a condensed symbol of the Republican electorate’s resilient loyalty to Trump. What could matter, come the debates, is that he’s the Republican with the strongest incentive to attack his former boss on character and fitness rather than just on issues — because his history with Trump sets him apart from the other non-Trump candidates, and his only possible path to the nomination involves persuading primary voters that he was right on Jan. 6 and Trump was wrong. If he sees it this way, his clashes with Trump could be interesting theater, and they might even help someone beat the former president; that someone, however, is still unlikely to be Pence himself.French Pence’s stand on Jan. 6 is defining him. In a healthy party, his integrity at that moment would be an asset. In the modern G.O.P., it’s a crippling liability.Goldberg It’s notable that Trump’s former vice president, the man chosen, in part, to reassure the Christian right, is now running against him. If Pence were willing to call out the treachery and mayhem he saw up close, it would be a useful intervention into our politics. But so far, he still seems cowed by his former boss.Hemmer In a rational world, he’d be a plausible candidate because of his strong connection to white evangelicals and time as V.P. But in this world, he’s the scapegoat for Trump’s failed effort to overthrow the 2020 election.Mangu-Ward Pence is an old-school Republican. The likely failure of his campaign will demonstrate how dead that version of the party really is. There was lots to hate about that party — including the punitive social conservatism demonstrated in his positions on abortion and gay rights — but I will confess to some nostalgia for the rhetoric of limited government and fiscal conservatism that still sometimes crosses Pence’s lips, seemingly in earnest.McCarthy His experience and calm demeanor give him a gravitas most rivals lack. He puts Governor DeSantis at risk of seeming too young to be president, even as the 44-year-old governor suggests Trump is too old.What do you find most inspiring — or unsettling — about his vision for America?Bruni I’m unsettled by how strongly Pence has always let his deeply conservative version of Christianity inform his policy positions. I respect people of faith, very much, but in a country with no official church and enormous diversity, he makes inadequate distinction between personal theology and public governance.Coaston He might be the most uninspiring candidate currently running.Cottle He wants to ram his conservative religious views down the nation’s throat.Douthat To the extent that Pence has a distinctive vision, it overlaps with both Nikki Haley’s and Tim Scott’s, albeit with a bit more piety worked in. Like them, he’s selling an upbeat Reaganism that seems out of step with both the concerns of G.O.P. voters and the challenges of the moment. The fact that Pence wants to revive George W. Bush’s push for private Social Security accounts is neither inspiring nor unsettling; it’s just quixotic, which so far feels like the spirit of his entire presidential run.French It’s plain that Pence wants to turn from Trumpism in both tone and in key elements of substance. He’s far more of a Reagan conservative than Trump ever was. Yet his accommodations to Trump remain unsettling even after Jan. 6. One can appreciate his stand for the Constitution while also recognizing that it’s a bit like applauding an arsonist for putting out a fire he helped start.Goldberg Pence would like to impose his religious absolutism on the entire country. As he said last year, after Roe v. Wade was overturned, “We must not rest and must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land.”Hemmer Pence doesn’t stir up culture wars to win elections — he earnestly believes in a strictly patriarchal, overtly Christian version of the United States. (He was bashing Disney for suggesting women could serve in combat back when DeSantis was still in college.)Mangu-Ward Pence’s vision for America includes the peaceful transfer of power. He was willing to say these words: “President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election.” This shouldn’t be inspiring; it should be the bare minimum for a viable political career. But here we are.McCarthy What’s unsettling about Pence’s vision is how similar it is to George W. Bush’s. It’s a vision that substitutes moralism for realism in foreign policy and is too deferential to the Chamber of Commerce at home — to the detriment of religious liberty as well as working-class families.Imagine you’re a G.O.P. operative or campaign manager. What’s your elevator pitch for a Pence candidacy?Bruni He was loyal to Trump until that would have been disloyal to democracy. No porn stars or hush money here. He has presidential hair. Even flies think so.Coaston The former governor of Indiana has some thoughts he’d like to share.Cottle He has high name recognition — and great hair.Douthat There are lots of Republicans who claimed they liked Trump’s conservative policies but didn’t like all the feuds, tweets and drama. Well, a vote for Pence is a vote for his administration’s second term, but this time drama-free.French G.O.P. voters, if you’re proud of the Trump administration’s accomplishments yet tired of Trump’s drama, Pence is your man.Goldberg Honestly, it’s not easy to come up with one, but I guess he’s qualified and he looks the part.Hemmer No one is better prepared to face down the woke mob than the candidate who survived an actual mob two years ago.Mangu-Ward Mike Pence: If he loses, he’ll admit that he lost!McCarthy Mike Pence means no drama and no disruption — a return to business as usual. Doesn’t that sound good right now?Ross Douthat, David French and Michelle Goldberg are Times columnists.Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer.Michelle Cottle (@mcottle) is a member of The Times’s editorial board.Jane Coaston is a Times Opinion writer.Nicole Hemmer (@pastpunditry) is an associate professor of history and director of the Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University and the author of “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s” and “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.”Katherine Mangu-Ward (@kmanguward) is the editor in chief of Reason magazine.Daniel McCarthy is the editor of “Modern Age: A Conservative Review.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Takeaways From Nikki Haley’s CNN Town Hall

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      The former South Carolina governor, who also served as United Nations ambassador under Donald Trump, emphasized her experience and vision. Will it be enough for her to stand out?Nikki Haley, who was the first prominent Republican to announce a challenge to former President Donald J. Trump in the 2024 race, has yet to see her presidential campaign catch fire. On Sunday night, she had a fresh opportunity to make the case for her candidacy during a 90-minute CNN town hall in prime time, in an effort to emerge from the low single digits in polls where she has been mired.Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump, was well versed on policy issues, consistently upbeat and evenly tempered. Although she drew contrasts with Mr. Trump, she dodged opportunities to make him — or even President Biden — into a political punching bag.At the end of the night, an audience member praised her demeanor as “a breath of fresh air,” earning applause from the house full of Iowa Republicans. But that also meant that there were few shoot-out-the-lights moments that could win Ms. Haley headlines and a new look from primary voters, who now face a growing field of Republicans who are in — or soon to enter — the race.On policies both foreign (like Ukraine) and domestic (such as Social Security), Ms. Haley’s positions were a throwback to typical Republican Party stances before its populist takeover by Mr. Trump. Her reasoned manner was also an anomaly in a race where Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida compete with displays of dominance. Both factors have made Ms. Haley, the only woman in the Republican race, an also-ran so far.Here are some takeaways from the event on Sunday night.“I think it’s important to be honest with the American people,” Nikki Haley said on Sunday night.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesIt was very different from the Trump town hall.Compared with CNN’s explosive, much-criticized town-hall-style event with Mr. Trump last month, this one was a throwback to earlier, less combative times. There was no audience jeers whipped up from the stage and no forceful interrogation of the candidate. Jake Tapper, the anchor who moderated, asked Ms. Haley follow-up questions and added occasional clarifications to her statements, but he did not veer into fact-checking.Trump and DeSantis continue to be the focus.The two big red elephants in the room, Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis, were mostly mentioned indirectly, but those two Republican presidential contenders were present nonetheless. Ms. Haley repeated her position that in order to save Social Security and Medicare, it would be necessary to raise the retirement age for young workers and to limit benefits for the wealthy. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis, who once supported similar changes, now say they won’t touch the programs.“I think it’s important to be honest with the American people,” Ms. Haley said. “We are in this situation. Don’t lie to them and say, ‘Oh, we don’t have to deal with entitlement reform.’ Yes, we do.”Ms. Haley also criticized Mr. DeSantis for his attacks on Disney as a “woke” company. She had no beef with the Florida governor’s criticism of Disney’s opposition to what critics call his “Don’t Say Gay” law, and even said she would have gone further than that law to prevent talk of gender and sexuality in schools. But she called Mr. DeSantis “hypocritical” for accepting tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions from Disney before turning on the company, and for using taxpayer dollars to sue it. “Pick up the phone deal with it,” she said. “Settle it the way you should, and I just think he’s being hypocritical.”Haley sought to find the sweet spot for Republicans on social issues.On social issues including abortion, gun restrictions and transgender rights, which animate much of the Republican voting base, Ms. Haley toed a conservative line. She defended, for example, leading the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord while at the United Nations. (President Biden rejoined the accord in 2021.) But she displayed less of the punitive rhetoric on the issues that Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis have made crucial to their messages.Ms. Haley deflected on whether she supported a federal six-week abortion ban such as the one her home state of South Carolina recently passed. Any national restrictions, she said, would require 60 senators to approve, which she said was so remote that the question barely merited consideration.In the most stirring moment of the night, Ms. Haley described persuading reluctant Republican lawmakers in South Carolina to remove the Confederate battle flag from the State Capitol after the massacre by a white supremacist of Black worshipers at the Mother Emanuel church in Charleston in 2015.She agreed with barring transgender girls from school sports and even seemed to suggest that allowing “biological boys” in girls’ locker rooms was connected with the high rate of teenage girls who have considered suicide.At the same time, she acknowledged that “we do need to be humane” about transgender children. In South Carolina schools when she was governor, Ms. Haley said, principals made private bathroom accommodations for them. “They were safe, and the majority of the student body didn’t even have to deal with it,” she said.Haley made a strong contrast with Trump and DeSantis on foreign policy.Ms. Haley also carved out differences with Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis on foreign policy issues, as she has in the past. The former U.N. ambassador disputed Mr. DeSantis, who has called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “territorial dispute” — a characterization he has since walked back — and she dismissed Mr. Trump’s refusal to say whether Ukraine should win the war.She said both positions represented a naïve trust in Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. “If Ukraine pulls out,” Ms. Haley said, “then we’re all looking at a world war.”Asked by Mr. Tapper about Mr. Trump’s congratulating North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, for recently ascending to a leadership role in the World Health Organization, Ms. Haley called Mr. Kim, whose flattering letters Mr. Trump once praised, a “thug.”“There is no reason we should ever congratulate the fact that they are now vice chair of the World Health Organization,” Ms. Haley said. More