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      Talk of a Trump Dictatorship Charges the American Political Debate

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      Former President Donald J. Trump and his allies are not doing much to reassure those worried about his autocratic instincts. If anything, they seem to be leaning into the predictions.When a historian wrote an essay the other day warning that the election of former President Donald J. Trump next year could lead to dictatorship, one of Mr. Trump’s allies quickly responded by calling for the historian to be sent to prison.It almost sounds like a parody: The response to concerns about dictatorship is to prosecute the author. But Mr. Trump and his allies are not going out of their way to reassure those worried about what a new term would bring by firmly rejecting the dictatorship charge. If anything, they seem to be leaning into it.If Mr. Trump is returned to office, people close to him have vowed to “come after” the news media, open criminal investigations into onetime aides who broke with the former president and purge the government of civil servants deemed disloyal. When critics said Mr. Trump’s language about ridding Washington of “vermin” echoed that of Adolf Hitler, the former president’s spokesman said the critics’ “sad, miserable existence will be crushed” under a new Trump administration.Mr. Trump himself did little to assuage Americans when his friend Sean Hannity tried to help him out on Fox News this past week. During a town hall-style meeting, Mr. Hannity tossed a seeming softball by asking Mr. Trump to reaffirm that of course he did not intend to abuse his power and use the government to punish enemies. Instead of simply agreeing, Mr. Trump said he would only be a dictator on “Day 1” of a new term.“Trump has made it crystal clear through all his actions and rhetoric that he admires leaders who have forms of authoritarian power, from Putin to Orban to Xi, and that he wants to exercise that kind of power at home,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” referring to Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Viktor Orban of Hungary and Xi Jinping of China. “History shows that autocrats always tell you who they are and what they are going to do,” she added. “We just don’t listen until it is too late.”Despite his public sparring with China’s leaders, President Trump has praised President Xi Jinping for his strongman policies.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesTalk about the possible authoritarian quality of a new Trump presidency has suffused the political conversation in the nation’s capital in recent days. A series of reports in The New York Times outlined various plans developed by Mr. Trump’s allies to assert vast power in a new term and detailed how he would be less constrained by constitutional guardrails. The Atlantic published a special issue with 24 contributors forecasting what a second Trump presidency would look like, many of them depicting an autocratic regime.Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman from Wyoming who was vice chairwoman of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, published a new book warning that Mr. Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy. And of course, there was the essay by the historian, Robert Kagan, in The Washington Post that prompted Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio and a Trump ally, to press the Justice Department to investigate.To be sure, American presidents have stretched their power and been called dictators going back to the early days of the republic. John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, among others, were all accused of despotism. Richard M. Nixon was said to have consolidated power in the “imperial presidency.” George W. Bush and Barack Obama were both compared to Hitler.But there is something different about the debate now, more than overheated rhetoric or legitimate disagreements over the boundaries of executive power, something that suggests a fundamental moment of decision in the American experiment. Perhaps it is a manifestation of popular disenchantment with American institutions; only 10 percent of Americans think democracy is working very well, according to a poll in June by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.Perhaps it is a reflection of the extremism and demagoguery that has grown more prevalent in politics in many places around the world. And perhaps it stems from a former president seeking to reclaim his old office who evinces such perplexing affinity for and even envy of autocrats.Mr. Trump once expressed no regret that a quote he shared on social media came from Mussolini and adopted the language of Stalin in calling journalists the “enemies of the people.” He told his chief of staff that “Hitler did a lot of good things” and later said he wished American generals were like Hitler’s generals.Last December, shortly after opening his comeback campaign, Mr. Trump called for “termination” of the Constitution to remove Mr. Biden immediately and reinstall himself in the White House without waiting for another election. The former president’s defenders dismiss the fears about Mr. Trump’s autocratic instincts as whining by liberals who do not like him or his policies and are disingenuously trying to scare voters. They argue that President Biden is the real dictator because his Justice Department is prosecuting his likeliest challenger next year for various alleged crimes, although there is no evidence that Mr. Biden has been personally involved in those decisions and even some former Trump advisers call the indictments legitimate.“The dictator talk by Kagan and his fellow liberal writers is an attempt to scare Americans not just to distract them from the failures and weakness of the Biden administration but because of something they are even more afraid of: that a second Trump administration will be far more successful in implementing its agenda and undoing progressive policies and programs than the first,” Fred Fleitz, who served briefly in Mr. Trump’s White House, wrote on the American Greatness website on Friday.Mr. Kagan, a widely respected Brookings Institution scholar and author of numerous books of history, has a long record of support for a muscular foreign policy that hardly strikes many on the left as liberal. But he has been a strong and outspoken critic of Mr. Trump for years. In May 2016, when other Republicans were reconciling themselves to Mr. Trump’s first nomination for president, Mr. Kagan warned that “this is how fascism comes to America.”His essay on Nov. 30 sounded the alarm again. Mr. Trump may have been thwarted in his first term from enacting some of his more radical ideas by more conventional Republican advisers and military officers, Mr. Kagan argued, but he will not surround himself with such figures again and will encounter fewer of the checks and balances that constrained him last time. The former president’s defenders dismiss the fears about Mr. Trump’s autocratic instincts as complaints by liberals who are trying to scare voters.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesAmong other things, Mr. Kagan cited Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn an election that he had lost, disregarding the will of the voters. And he noted Mr. Trump’s overt discussion of prosecuting opponents and sending the military into the streets to quell protests. “In just a few years, we have gone from being relatively secure in our democracy to being a few short steps, and a matter of months, away from the possibility of dictatorship,” Mr. Kagan wrote.Mr. Vance, a freshman senator who has courted Mr. Trump’s support and was listed by Axios this past week as a possible vice-presidential running mate next year, took umbrage on behalf of the former president. He dispatched a letter to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland suggesting that Mr. Kagan be prosecuted for encouraging “open rebellion,” seizing on a point in Mr. Kagan’s essay noting that Democratic-run states might defy a President Trump.Mr. Vance wrote that “according to Robert Kagan, the prospect of a second Donald Trump presidency is terrible enough to justify open rebellion against the United States, along with the political violence that would invariably follow.”Mr. Kagan’s piece did not actually advocate rebellion, but simply forecast the possibility that Democratic governors would stand against Mr. Trump “through a form of nullification” of federal authority. Indeed, he went on to suggest that Republican governors might do the same with Mr. Biden, which he was not advocating either.But Mr. Vance was trying to draw a parallel between Mr. Kagan’s essay and Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. By the Justice Department’s logic in pursuing Mr. Trump, the senator wrote, the Kagan article could be interpreted as “an invitation to ‘insurrection,’ a manifestation of criminal ‘conspiracy,’ or an attempt to bring about civil war.” To make his point clear, he insisted on answers by Jan. 6.Mr. Kagan, who followed his essay with another on Thursday about how to stop the slide to dictatorship that he sees, said the intervention by the senator validated his point. “It is revealing that their first instinct when attacked by a journalist is to suggest that they be locked up,” Mr. Kagan noted in an interview.Aides to Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance did not respond to requests for comment. David Shipley, the opinion editor of The Post, defended Mr. Kagan’s work. “We are proud to publish Robert Kagan’s thoughtful essays and we encourage audiences to read both his Nov. 30 and Dec. 7 pieces together — and draw their own conclusions,” he said. “These essays are part of a long Kagan tradition of starting important conversations.”It is a conversation that has months to go with an uncertain ending. In the meantime, no one expects Mr. Garland to take Mr. Vance seriously, including almost certainly Mr. Vance. His letter was a political statement. But it says something about the era that proposing the prosecution of a critic would be seen as a political winner. More

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      Megyn Kelly Returning to Debate Spotlight on NewsNation

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      Wednesday’s Trump-less debate is a breakthrough moment for a fledgling cable network — and a comeback of sorts for Ms. Kelly, a former Fox News star.Eight years ago, Megyn Kelly’s turn as a debate moderator made headlines around the world. Before an audience of 24 million Fox News viewers, she confronted Donald J. Trump about his history of misogynist remarks, setting off a well-publicized feud that helped her leap from cable news to NBC.This week, Ms. Kelly returns to television as a moderator of Wednesday’s Republican debate. A breakout moment may be harder to come by.For one thing, Mr. Trump is almost certainly not going to appear, despite Ms. Kelly’s warm entreaties. (“Mr. President,” she wrote on X, “you would be more than welcome and we would love to have you.”) And her appearance will be seen by a fraction of her old audience: The debate will air on NewsNation, an upstart cable network unfamiliar to many Americans.It is still a milestone for Ms. Kelly, whose career imploded when NBC canceled her show in 2018, after she mused on air about whether white people could wear blackface on Halloween. The ouster followed weak ratings and a series of incidents that suggested her punchy and confrontational style was a poor fit for the serene pastures of morning TV.Ms. Kelly, 53, gradually re-emerged as a conservative podcaster and radio host, stoking the culture war grievances that were her stock-in-trade at Fox. (Her recent posts on X refer to “mask fascists” and denounce the use of the term “pregnant person.”) She signed a deal with SiriusXM in 2021 and has since broken into Top 10 charts for news podcasts and booked big guests — including, in September, Mr. Trump.During that interview, Mr. Trump scolded Ms. Kelly for their famous debate moment, saying, “That was a bad question.” Ms. Kelly gamely replied: “That was a great question!” A few days later, at a rally in Iowa, Mr. Trump called her “nasty.”Ms. Kelly declined to speak for this article. In an interview with Real ClearPolitics, she admitted that she had doubted if Wednesday’s debate, with its undercard lineup, was even worth her time. “Does it matter at all?” she said she asked herself.Ultimately, she said, she decided to participate, suggesting that one of the candidates onstage — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy — could, in the event of a Trump criminal conviction or perhaps a health scare, end up as the nominee. “It’s not likely, but who am I to rule it out?” she said.Her attitude is something of a contrast to the unvarnished enthusiasm of anchors and executives at NewsNation, who consider Wednesday’s event, in Tuscaloosa, Ala., a breakthrough moment. NewsNation, which is owned by the Nexstar Media Group and airs 24-hour news coverage on weekdays, outflanked better-known outlets like ABC and Newsmax to secure the broadcast rights for this week’s debate.Elizabeth Vargas, a NewsNation anchor and former ABC News personality.John Lamparski/Getty ImagesEliana Johnson, editor in chief of The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news site.Taylor Glascock for The New York Times“We’re a brand-new news network, and it’s a fantastic opportunity for us,” said Elizabeth Vargas, a NewsNation anchor and former ABC News personality. Ms. Vargas will serve as a moderator with Ms. Kelly and Eliana Johnson, editor in chief of The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news site.NewsNation, which started in 2021, has fashioned itself as an independent alternative to more partisan, opinion-fueled channels. “The moderate middle may be quieter or may not make as much of a fuss, but they’re a powerful voting bloc,” Ms. Vargas said. “Those are the viewers we serve.” The network has hired prominent journalists like Dan Abrams, Ashleigh Banfield and Chris Cuomo, the former CNN anchor who was fired over ethics concerns and who now hosts NewsNation’s 8 p.m. hour.Ratings remain low. Year-to-date, NewsNation’s prime-time audience has averaged 109,000 viewers on weeknights, compared with 2.2 million for Fox News, 650,000 for CNN and 264,000 for Newsmax, according to Nielsen. The network says that it has a growing fan base — that prime-time figure is up 73 percent from a year before — and that Wednesday’s showcase can reel in new viewers. The debate, which begins at 8 p.m., will also be shown online and on local affiliates of the CW, a broadcast network owned by Nexstar.The stage for the December 2023 Republican presidential candidates debate, which will be shown on Wednesday on NewsNation.via NewsNationMs. Kelly is not the only Fox News veteran with a major role in the NewsNation debate.Cherie Grzech, who produced 15 primary debates for Fox News before leaving in 2021, now runs NewsNation’s news and political programming. Chris Stirewalt, best-known as the Fox News analyst who defended the 2020 election night call for Arizona — a projection that enraged Mr. Trump, alienated viewers and led to Mr. Stirewalt losing his job — is NewsNation’s political editor.Mr. Stirewalt said he believed in the mission of his new employer. “The shortest distance to securing a habituated audience is to cosset them and flatter them and to reinforce their prejudices,” he said. “The harder thing is to try to be aspirationally fair, and try to report and analyze honestly, not to reinforce existing opinions. It’s a substantially underserved market.”This may be a counterintuitive business model, given the nation’s polarized state, but NewsNation is not alone in trying it out. Jeff Zucker, the former president of CNN, is aiming to acquire The Daily Telegraph, a London newspaper, in hopes of expanding its reach to center-right consumers in the United States.Similar experiments have struggled. Shepard Smith, another anchor who left Fox News, created a straightforward newscast on the financial network CNBC in 2020; it was canceled after two years. Chris Licht, who succeeded Mr. Zucker at CNN, promised to dial back partisan opinion, but his programming efforts failed to jell and ratings plummeted.Ms. Kelly, who has no qualms about expressing strong views, is more opinionated than her temporary partners at NewsNation. Eric Bolling, a former Fox News colleague who is now an anchor on Newsmax, said that would work to her advantage.“She will be the biggest viewer draw of all Wednesday night,” Mr. Bolling wrote in a text message. “Unless Trump shows up!” More

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      Trump Deflects Questions on Retribution and Law-Breaking at Town Hall

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      Pressed by Sean Hannity to promise not to abuse power, Donald Trump agreed he wouldn’t, “other than Day 1,” adding: “We’re closing the border. And we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.”Twice during a town hall on “Fox News” on Tuesday night, Sean Hannity asked former President Donald J. Trump to say categorically that he would not abuse presidential power and retaliate against his political opponents if elected next year.Both times, Mr. Trump declined to give an outright denial.First, Mr. Hannity, the moderator, asked Mr. Trump to respond to concerns raised by recent reporting that has detailed his violent rhetoric on the campaign trail and his vow to use the Justice Department against his political foes.“Do you in any way have any plans whatsoever, if re-elected president, to abuse power?” Mr. Hannity asked. “To break the law? To use the government to go after people?”Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, deflected. “You mean like they’re using right now?” he responded, an allusion to his claims that President Biden has weaponized the Justice Department against him. He then turned to his frequent campaign-trail lament that he has been indicted more times than the gangster Al Capone.But Mr. Hannity, a longtime Trump ally, was apparently unsatisfied, and five minutes later, he brought up the issue again. “You are promising America tonight, you would never abuse this power as retribution against anybody?” he said.“Except for Day 1,” Mr. Trump said breezily. There was the smallest silence. “Except for—” Mr. Hannity responded, sounding a bit flustered.“Look,” Mr. Trump joked to the crowd watching him in Davenport, Iowa. “He’s going crazy.”And even as Mr. Hannity tried to clarify that Mr. Trump had no intention of abusing his office, Mr. Trump did not state a clear aversion to the idea of authoritarian power.“This guy, he says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’” Mr. Trump said, referring to Mr. Hannity. “I said, ‘No, no, no — other than Day 1.’ We’re closing the border. And we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.”Both exchanges underscored a growing challenge for some on the Trump team who are privately aware that his comments are of growing concern to voters ahead of next year’s general election.The Biden campaign has sought to seize on recent reporting about plans being made by Mr. Trump and his allies that would reshape the American presidency, vastly expanding presidential power and upending central elements of American government and the rule of law.Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, said in a statement that Mr. Trump “has been telling us exactly what he will do if he’s re-elected, and tonight he said he will be a dictator on Day 1. Americans should believe him.”Mr. Trump’s comments were a stark break from an interview in which he was largely on friendly territory. He and Mr. Hannity have a long relationship, and both of them warmly recalled past conversations they had had over Mr. Trump’s political career.Mr. Hannity also did not ask Mr. Trump about his rivals in the Republican primary, who will face off in a debate on Wednesday that Mr. Trump is skipping to attend a fund-raiser in Florida.Still, Mr. Trump made brief mention of Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, criticizing her for taking donations from Democrats, and criticized Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for votes in Congress he took that appeared to support changing Social Security benefits.Jonathan Swan More

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      DeSantis-Newsom Debate: What We Learned and Key Takeaways

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      Ron DeSantis showed a feistier side, using a friendly moderator to go on offense. Gavin Newsom defended California and President Biden, and jabbed right back.For an hour and a half on Thursday night, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California shouted at and interrupted each other, trying to leave an impression on Fox News viewers beyond the din of their slugfest.The debate in Alpharetta, Ga., was a chance for Mr. DeSantis to hold the spotlight without other candidates for the Republican presidential nomination on the stage. It was a chance for Mr. Newsom to bring his smooth persona and quick wit to a national — and conservative — audience.Here are five takeaways.It was DeSantis and Hannity vs. Newsom and Biden.The debate’s moderator, Sean Hannity, wanted the night to be a showdown between the liberal governor of the most populous state in the nation and the conservative governor of the third most populous state over starkly different views of governance.From the beginning, Mr. Hannity pressed Mr. Newsom on his state’s high tax rates, its loss of residents over the past two years and its relatively higher crime rate. And Mr. DeSantis backed up the moderator in his challenges to how California is run.It was an odd, mismatched conversation, since Mr. Newsom, who is not running for president, tried hard to focus on the 2024 campaign in which Mr. DeSantis is currently running. Mr. Newsom talked up President Biden’s record on the economy, health care and immigration and took swipes at Mr. DeSantis’s flagging campaign in the face of former President Donald J. Trump’s dominance.“We have one thing in common: Neither of us will be the nominee for our party in 2024,” Mr. Newsom said early in the debate, only to follow later with a left hook about Mr. Trump’s polling lead in Florida. “How’s that going for you, Ron?” he taunted. “You’re down 41 points in your own state.”An exasperated Mr. Hannity asked Mr. Newsom at one point: “Is Joe Biden paying you tonight? I thought this was state versus state.”DeSantis was far feistier than in the Republican debates.Mr. DeSantis showed more assertiveness on Thursday night than he has onstage at the Republican presidential debates. Fox NewsThrough three Republican primary debates, Mr. DeSantis has struggled to make an impression on a crowded stage with several deft campaigners. On Thursday night, a different Mr. DeSantis was onstage.He kept Mr. Newsom on his heels for much of the night. With Mr. Hannity’s help, he hit Mr. Newsom on subject after subject: crime, immigration, taxes, education.And he appeared prepared. When Mr. Newsom predictably brought up Mr. DeSantis’s fruitless war with Disney, the Florida governor didn’t defend his actions but went after his California counterpart over his Covid policies: “You had Disney closed inexplicably for more than a year,” he said.Newsom was determined to take down DeSantis’s 2024 campaign.If Mr. DeSantis wanted to take the sheen off the Golden State, Mr. Newsom seemed determined to bury Mr. DeSantis’s White House aspirations. The Californian was definitive in dismissing speculation that he was running for president, and was just as definitive in saying the Floridian was going nowhere.“Joe Biden will be our nominee in a matter of weeks,” Mr. Newsom said before adding of Mr. DeSantis, “In a matter of weeks, he will be endorsing Donald Trump.”It was not a one-off jab. Mr. Newsom told his onstage rival that “Donald Trump laid you out” on Florida’s initial Covid restrictions. He accused Mr. DeSantis of caving to the far right in lifting the restrictions and allowing tens of thousands of Floridians to die.Mr. Newsom invoked Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and one of Mr. DeSantis’s competitors for the Republican nomination, when he said the Florida governor opposed fracking.“You were celebrated by the Sierra Club for that action until you weren’t,” he said.To conclude the debate, Newsom stuck in the knife: “When are you going to drop out and give Nikki Haley a chance to take on Donald Trump?” he asked. “She laid you out.”A debate watch party at an event space in San Francisco.Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesSean Hannity, a neutral moderator? Fuhgeddaboudit.As the debate began, Mr. Hannity allowed that he was a conservative, but stipulated that as a moderator, he would be fair and nonpartisan.About an hour later, he began one question with this assertion: “Joe Biden has experienced significant cognitive decline.”Fair he wasn’t.Protestations aside, Mr. Hannity didn’t even try to be evenhanded. Again and again, he served up softballs to Mr. DeSantis, while shutting down Mr. Newsom’s attempts to defend himself.And he trotted out a series of well-prepared graphics to show Florida in the best possible light, and California in the worst: on education, crime, tax rates and population loss and gain. Mr. Newsom tried to rebut those graphics, but all Mr. DeSantis had to do was turn to the graphics to say the Californian was a slick spinmeister.Despite Newsom’s efforts, Biden had a tough night.The California governor wanted to shine a rosy light on Mr. Biden’s record before a Fox News audience unused to hearing anything positive about the president.Inflation was down to 3.2 percent, he noted. Wage growth had topped 4 percent, and economic growth in the last quarter was a blistering 5.2 percent, he said, adding, “Those are facts you don’t hear on Fox News.”But in a two-on-one fight, those facts probably didn’t get through, especially when both the moderator and the Florida governor were double-teaming Mr. Newsom on their repeated assertions of the president’s cognitive decline. Mr. Newsom did not come up with a particularly good defense on the matter, though he did say he would take Mr. Biden at 100 years old over Mr. DeSantis at any age in the White House.Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Hannity also teamed up on the dangers of an uncontrolled border, and when Mr. Newsom tried to hit Mr. DeSantis on having gladly taken money from Mr. Biden’s signature achievements, including millions of dollars from the law he signed to promote a domestic semiconductor industry and revive commercial science, Mr. Hannity just moved the conversation along. More

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      DeSantis-Newsom Debate: What to Watch for at Tonight’s Showdown

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      The stakes are high for the governor of Florida as his polling sags fewer than seven weeks out from the Iowa caucuses.Call it the “Debate Me Please” showdown.Ron DeSantis of Florida, 45, and Gavin Newsom of California, 56, two relatively youthful governors adept at seeking — and finding — the spotlight, will square off at 9 p.m. Eastern on Thursday in a nationally televised debate in Alpharetta, Ga., in suburban Atlanta. Both pleaded for this matchup, and now they have it.Each has an agenda, both near-term and further out, as well as political challenges that they hope to address during their 90-minute encounter. Mr. DeSantis, the Republican, needs to lift his campaign for president a week ahead of the fourth Republican primary debate and under seven weeks before the Iowa caucuses. Mr. Newsom, the Democrat, needs to lift the fortunes of his president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., and prove in the short run that he is a team player, and in the medium term that his appeal can reach beyond the liberal enclaves of the West Coast.With Donald J. Trump still holding wide leads in the Republicans’ 2024 nominating contests, and Mr. Biden resolute on standing for re-election, both men could also be eyeing the 2028 presidential race, though neither would admit it. They have presented themselves as the fresh, new avatars of their respective ideologies and, potentially, the future of their political parties. Now, after they have used each other as foils for years, the debate could offer a culmination to their long-running public feud.Here is what to watch.The higher stakes for DeSantisMr. DeSantis has much more riding on this moment than his verbal sparring partner.The first three Republican presidential debates featured jam-packed stages, some verbal brawling, often involving the 38-year-old entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and not a lot of Mr. DeSantis. Thursday night will be one-on-one, and with a friendly moderator, Sean Hannity, for the Republican on the stage.Mr. DeSantis’s poll numbers have sagged, leading him to seek exposure at every opportunity, including the debate against Mr. Newsom. Now Mr. DeSantis, who once preferred to ensconce himself in the friendly bubble of conservative media, has become almost a regular on mainstream broadcast networks.He has also repeatedly challenged his main rivals for the Republican nomination to debate him, hoping to generate momentum and attention, although his performances onstage so far have done little to change the dynamics of the race. But Mr. Trump has refused to appear at the G.O.P. debates, saying they were not worth his time given his lead in the polls. And former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who has caught up with or overtaken Mr. DeSantis in many early-state polls and has been busy building support among influential Republican donors, declined his recent offer of a one-on-one matchup.Voters in Iowa go to the caucuses Jan. 15 to cast the first ballots of the primary season. Mr. DeSantis has nailed down the coveted endorsements of the state’s governor, Kim Reynolds, and an influential evangelical leader, Bob Vander Plaats. Now he has to win over more Republican voters if he hopes to catch Mr. Trump and buoy his campaign ahead of more difficult primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina.There will not be a partisan audience to influence viewer perceptions, but Mr. Newsom’s camp fully expects Mr. Hannity to unlevel the playing field: “We’re under no illusions; this is going to be a two-on-one match with the ref in the bag for the home team,” said Nathan Click, a Newsom spokesman.If the moderator keeps the Democrat on the defensive over policy, Mr. DeSantis could use the 90 minutes on Fox to combat his awkward, remote and sometimes canned image. DeSantis supporters say it’s a moment for him to highlight the stakes for the Republican Party in a debate not over marginal policy differences between Republicans, like the primary debates, but over starkly different visions of the future. If he can best Mr. Newsom, he can bask in the victory of a unified party, if only for one night.“Ron DeSantis will take this responsibility seriously and looks forward to sharing the stark contrast between his vision to revive our nation and Newsom’s blueprint for failure,” said Mr. DeSantis’s campaign manager, James Uthmeier.A top Biden surrogate seizing the spotlightIn political circles, it goes without saying that California’s governor has his eyes on the highest office in the land.“It’s very obvious that he is running for president right now,” said Jessica Patterson, the chairwoman of the California Republican Party. “He elevates himself to a national level when he tries to punch up to Ron DeSantis. Every opportunity he gets to be on the national stage, he goes for it.”Maybe so, but as long as Mr. Biden is seeking re-election, Mr. Newsom’s job on that stage is to defend the president’s record. Nothing else would lift Mr. Newsom in the eyes of his own party more than his help keeping a Democrat in the White House next year — and Mr. Trump out.But to be a credible surrogate, Mr. Newsom cannot come off as an elite, West Coast liberal out of touch with the concerns of voters in key swing states far from California, like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia.Can Hannity keep the focus on policy?Mr. Hannity sees the showdown not as a stand-in for a presidential debate but as a chance for the governors of the first and third largest states in the nation to defend and showcase the very different policies governing those states.“I think both governors really have an opportunity to present their political philosophy and ideology, why they govern the way they do,” he said in an interview.They would have much to discuss: Florida’s low-tax, growing economy versus California’s dominance in fields like technology and electric vehicles but struggles against Republican states poaching its businesses; university systems with divergent approaches to political speech and influence; California’s hands-on approach to climate change, including an eventual ban on internal combustion engines, versus Florida’s laissez-faire attitude even as it is battered by stronger, more frequent hurricanes and coastal flooding.Mr. DeSantis has relished talking up his record in Florida. He often brags about how many California residents are moving to Florida, claiming that Mr. Newsom’s “leftist” policies are responsible. Mr. DeSantis once said that Mr. Newsom had treated Californians like “peasants” during the coronavirus pandemic. He filmed a campaign ad in San Francisco that painted the city as a kind of dystopia, with Mr. DeSantis saying he had seen people using drugs and “defecating on the street.”Mr. Newsom has also not held back. During Mr. DeSantis’s re-election campaign, he ran a pointed ad on Florida airwaves criticizing Mr. DeSantis’s policies and recently ran another attacking the six-week abortion ban signed by the Florida governor. He has called Mr. DeSantis “weak” and “undisciplined” and said he would get “crushed” by Mr. Trump in the G.O.P. primary. After Mr. DeSantis sent planeloads of migrants from the southern border to Sacramento this year, Mr. Newsom suggested his Florida counterpart could face kidnapping charges, calling him a “small, pathetic man.”Mr. Newsom still sees the evening as “a way to showcase and put more scrutiny on Mr. DeSantis’s brand of authoritarianism,” Mr. Click said.But both men have said their more pressing objective for this debate is the White House, not the state house.“We’re focused on defending the president and contrasting the president’s record with Ron DeSantis’s record of taking away fundamental freedoms that we have come to take for granted over the last 50 years,” Mr. Click said, tallying off abortion, free speech and the right to vote.Location, location, locationThe Newsom camp has made much of the California governor’s willingness to venture into hostile territory and bring his message to Republican voters. And just a decade ago, the northern reaches of Fulton County, Ga., where the debate is being held, qualified as such.Not anymore. Most of North Fulton has turned Democratic in the last eight years, as its citizenry has diversified and many suburban Republicans have recoiled at the party’s direction under the leadership of Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump eked out a win in the ZIP code where the debate will be held, though his margin slipped by nearly 5 percentage points. But all around that 30005 ZIP code are blue stretches, a testament to Georgia’s arrival on the national stage as a true presidential battlefield.Both camps said they wanted the debate in Georgia (Mr. DeSantis will be campaigning on Friday in South Carolina next door). Fox News chose the venue, a battleground within a battleground.Adam Nagourney More

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      When Is the DeSantis-Newsom Debate and How to Watch

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      The unusual event, between a Republican presidential candidate and a high-profile Democratic governor who has been a surrogate for the Biden administration, will be moderated by Sean Hannity.Fox News will host a 90-minute debate between Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, starting at 9 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday.The unusual event, between a Republican presidential candidate and a high-profile Democratic governor who has been a surrogate for the Biden administration, will be moderated by Sean Hannity, the conservative prime-time host and a close Trump ally. Here are the ways you can watch:Fox News Channel will show the event starting at 9 p.m. as part of a two-hour broadcast of Mr. Hannity’s prime-time show.Fox News Radio will broadcast the debate simultaneously.The debate will also be streamed on FoxNews.com, but cable authentication will be required to view it online.The matchupMr. DeSantis is facing an intensifying race as he pushes for a strong showing in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses in January. More than six months after joining the campaign as the most prominent rival to former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. DeSantis has been losing support in recent polls. New upheavals within his campaign will only add to the pressure for a strong performance from Mr. DeSantis in front of a national prime-time audience.He is facing Mr. Newsom, who has been a key ally of President Biden’s and a leading voice of the national Democratic Party. Mr. Newsom has gathered the kind of national support and connections with donors that would place him in a strong position for a future presidential run. For 2024, Mr. Newsom has firmly backed Mr. Biden and has offered reassurances that he will not threaten the president’s re-election campaign.Why are they debating?Presidential candidates typically do not debate people who are not themselves running for president. Mr. Newsom had challenged Mr. DeSantis to a debate more than a year ago, when the Florida governor had not officially begun his campaign but had long been seen to be preparing a run for the presidency. Mr. Newsom’s participation is likely to further fuel speculation that he has his eye on the White House.But the unusual spectacle reflects the current state of the presidential campaign: Mr. DeSantis has been slowly losing momentum and needs a jolt. Mr. Newsom has also been eager to further raise his national profile, and Mr. Biden needs powerful surrogates who can help make the case for a second term.What issues will the two governors discuss?Mr. Hannity’s debate questions will be framed around the two governors’ “vastly different approaches” to running their states, according to Fox News, as well as how they would handle major national issues. These issues would include the economy, the border, immigration, crime and inflation.The two governors have already sparred for more than a year over some of the most contentious issues in politics, particularly immigration, with each seeking to present his state as a role model of his party’s policies and governance. Thursday’s debate is likely to feature similar contrasts. More

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      Viewership Fell Sharply for Second G.O.P. Debate

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      Fewer than 10 million people watched the Republican presidential candidates on Wednesday, according to preliminary data from Nielsen.Fewer than 10 million people watched the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night, according to preliminary data from Nielsen, a sign that interest in the race is waning without the presence of former President Donald J. Trump, the front-runner for his party’s nomination, who has so far refused to participate in the debates.The audience on Wednesday — viewers of Fox News (6.7 million), Fox Business (1.8 million) and Univision (813,000) — was down from the 12.8 million people who tuned in last month to watch the first Republican primary debate. Fox also hosted that debate.Those numbers are a fraction of the audiences for the first two Republican presidential debates in the summer of 2015, when a crowded field and curiosity about Mr. Trump pushed ratings to record highs. The first, hosted by Fox News in Cleveland, drew nearly 24 million viewers — ranking among the most-watched events in cable-TV history. The second, hosted by CNN in Simi Valley, Calif., had an audience of 22.9 million.Without Mr. Trump this primary season, the networks and the Republican National Committee are in a difficult spot. Television executives will be faced with deciding whether it’s worth the cost to produce an event that is drawing relatively tepid interest and is, for the moment, of questionable significance given Mr. Trump’s dominance in the polls. In most national surveys taken since the summer, he has led his closest rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, by more than 30 points.Mr. Trump appears unlikely to agree to appear at any debate in the near future. His campaign said this week that he would not participate in one scheduled for early November in Miami. And one of his senior advisers called on the Republican National Committee on Wednesday not to schedule any more debates for the primary season so Republicans could instead focus on defeating President Biden.Despite the lower ratings, the debate attracted an audience larger than any other program on cable or network television on Wednesday evening. More

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      How Dana Perino, G.O.P. Debate Moderator, Walks a Fine Line at Fox News

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      The former press secretary in the Bush White House will moderate the next Republican debate. She’s managed to rise at Fox without being a Trump supplicant.Dana Perino can punch and parry with the best of them. But she could be better at ducking.In 2008, when Ms. Perino was the White House press secretary for President George W. Bush, she got clocked in the face with a boom microphone in the scuffle that broke out after a journalist threw his shoes at Mr. Bush.“I had a black eye for six weeks,” Ms. Perino, now an anchor for Fox News, said in an interview last week from her sun-dappled Upper West Side apartment.That kind of fracas — and the nearly two years she spent taking questions from reporters in the White House briefing room — may be good preparation for her next act: moderating the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday in Simi Valley, Calif.It will be the biggest moment for Ms. Perino at Fox News since she began co-hosting “The Five” in 2011. Not known for being as provocative or partisan as many of her colleagues behind the desk, Ms. Perino, 51, has spent a good part of the last decade trying to thrive as a Bush Republican working for a network where loyalty to former President Donald J. Trump is often the ticket to high ratings and the career advancement that accompanies them.Ms. Perino, who also co-hosts the two-hour morning news show “America’s Newsroom,” is one of the relatively few White House aides to make the leap from politics to news anchor. She says she modeled her transition after two other former West Wing staff members who had made the transition — George Stephanopoulos, the ABC News anchor who served as Bill Clinton’s communications director, and Diane Sawyer, also of ABC, who was an assistant to Richard M. Nixon.Ms. Perino at her final briefing as the White House press secretary for President George W. Bush on Jan. 16, 2009.Doug Mills/The New York TimesCurrent and former colleagues said that she has managed to persevere at Fox by being neither a Trump supplicant nor fierce critic. During the raucous discussions on “The Five,” she can often be seen ducking the fray, flashing a knowing smile as her co-hosts mock Mr. Trump’s liberal antagonists.And she feels no need to deliver the pro-Trump monologues that other conservative hosts have made a staple of their programs.“If she tried to fake it, she knows people would see through her,” said Tony Fratto, a former Bush administration official who worked with Ms. Perino in the White House and remains a friend. Mr. Fratto said that Ms. Perino’s independence was something she was determined to keep while working her way up at the network.“She’s very rational and respectful of people with different views,” he said.Ms. Perino is one of the few Fox anchors to have never interviewed Mr. Trump. And she doesn’t appear especially eager to do so.When Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News over its promotion of conspiracy theories relating to Mr. Trump’s loss in 2020, some of Ms. Perino texts with her colleagues became public, revealing how little she thought of the former president and his claims that extensive voter fraud cost him the election. She said as much on air as well and told Mr. Fratto, who was representing Dominion at the time, in one text exchange how she was being threatened. “The maga people are crushing me for it,” she wrote, “and I even have death threats now.”Asked last week whether she would prefer it if Mr. Trump participated in this week’s debate — he will skip it, as he did the debate last month in Milwaukee — Ms. Perino wasn’t exactly brimming with enthusiasm.“Sure,” she said. If she were advising Mr. Trump, she said, she would encourage him to go. But she also said she believed his absence presents his rivals with opportunities to break out in ways that have eluded them so far.She said she believed that the last debate, which was hosted by her Fox News colleagues Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, was not particularly successful for the candidates because they spent so much time interrupting each other.“The candidates made a decision to break the rules, and to talk over each other,” she said.She will not shy away from interrupting them if they do the same, she said. And she does not fear playing the role of schoolmarm if she needs to. (Her co-moderator in the debate, Stuart Varney of Fox Business, is no shrinking violet either.)Ms. Perino, the co-host of the morning news show “America’s Newsroom,” is one of the relatively few White House aides to make the leap from politics to news anchor.Amir Hamja/The New York Times“I’m happy to be that,” she said, adding that she hopes that isn’t necessary. “I think that for them, they should not want that either, right, because it didn’t help them. If you think about that debate, there was no consensus of who won.”Preparing for the debate can be a thankless task, as many moderators before her have discovered. The candidates often dismiss the carefully drafted questions the moderators have written.Friends and former colleagues said that Ms. Perino has a knack for preparedness that exceeds most.“When she would prepare President Bush for press conferences, you’d go through the anticipated questions,” said Ed Gillespie, who served as counselor to the president during Mr. Bush’s second term. “A question would come, and it would be one that Dana said would come. And then there would be another that Dana said would come. And a third. And every single question would be one that Dana said would come.”President George W. Bush with Ms. Perino in the White House briefing room in August 2007, after announcing that she would be taking over as press secretary.Doug Mills/The New York TimesHer Fox colleague Greg Gutfeld, a fellow host on “The Five,” said he pokes fun at her for how she comes to the show armed with a notebook full of ideas based on the news articles that are driving the day. “Unlike me, she reads the articles. She’s like the grade-A student in your class,” Mr. Gutfeld said. “She doesn’t throw it in your face. But she’s prepared.”Former colleagues said that Ms. Perino wasn’t one to pull her punches when it came to briefing the president, which she always came to extensively prepped.“If you’re preparing the president, you have to do it nicely, of course, since he’s the one who was elected,” said Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state during Mr. Bush’s second term. “But you also have to be willing to say, ‘Mr. President, that answer isn’t going to fly.’ Dana did that. And I think President Bush respected her for it.”Ms. Perino’s second act as a news anchor puts her back where she started her career right out of college. After working as a disc jockey on the overnight shift at a country music station in Pueblo, Colo., she graduated from the University of Southern Colorado and moved to the Midwest, eventually landing a job as a reporter for a television station in Champaign, Ill. She decided a life of covering local news — holiday parades, municipal government meetings — wasn’t for her.“I didn’t see how you could get ahead quickly. And I had an ambition,” she explained, adding that she never saw herself becoming “the replacement for Tom Brokaw.” When she left local news, she said, she thought that would be the end of her time in television news. “I really thought if I do this I’ll never work in TV again.”Her first big job in the Bush White House came in 2006 when, after holding a series of communications jobs throughout Washington, she was hired at age 34 as the deputy press secretary under Tony Snow, a former host of “Fox News Sunday.” He stepped down in 2007, after being diagnosed with colon cancer. Mr. Bush named Ms. Perino as the new press secretary.“She can handle you all,” the former president told the room of journalists. Now, she is the journalist. And the G.O.P. presidential candidates will have to handle her. More