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      The Run-Up Goes to Iowa

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicFor the past few months, The Run-Up has been reporting on political insiders and the work they’ve quietly been doing to shape the 2024 presidential election.What we’ve found is a group of people — Republicans and Democrats — all operating under the premise that this race will revolve around former President Donald Trump. That his nomination — and thus a rematch between Trump and President Biden — is almost inevitable.But if anything is going to blow up that assumption, it’s probably going to start in Iowa.As the first state in the Republican primary process, Iowa plays a key role in narrowing the field. If Trump wins there, it may effectively mean that he has secured the nomination.However, there’s a group of voters that holds disproportionate power in the state and in American culture more broadly. These voters were once part of Trump’s coalition — and they are now wavering.If they go another way, the whole race could open up.In our final episode of the season, The Run-Up goes to Iowa and inside the evangelical church. We speak with Bob Vander Plaats, an evangelical activist with a history of picking Iowa’s winners. And we go to Eternity Church, where Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida recently spoke, and talk to Jesse Newman, the pastor, and other members of the congregation.Photo Illustration by The New York Times. Photo by Jenn Ackerman for The New York TimesAbout ‘The Run-Up’First launched in August 2016, three months before the election of Donald Trump, “The Run-Up” is The New York Times’s flagship political podcast. The host, Astead W. Herndon, grapples with the big ideas already animating the 2024 presidential election. Because it’s always about more than who wins and loses. And the next election has already started.Last season, “The Run-Up” focused on grass-roots voters and shifting attitudes among the bases of both political parties. This season, we go inside the party establishment.New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      5 Takeaways From Mike Pence’s CNN Town Hall

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      Donald Trump’s former vice president sought to draw a contrast with his old boss while also embracing the actions of their administration.Former Vice President Mike Pence capped his first full day as a formally declared presidential candidate with a CNN town hall on Wednesday night in Iowa, casting himself as an experienced, traditional conservative.But his challenges in a Republican primary field dominated by former President Donald J. Trump were evident throughout the roughly 90-minute event.Mr. Pence sought at once to align himself with Trump administration actions that were cheered by many Republicans, while drawing both explicit and oblique contrasts with Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the nomination. It is a difficult balancing act for any Republican candidate, but especially for Mr. Trump’s former vice president, who has so far gained little traction in the polls.He also sought to emerge as the leading social conservative in the race, quoting Scripture and emphasizing his opposition to abortion and transgender rights.“I’d put my arm around them and their parents, but before they had a chemical or surgical procedure I would say, ‘Wait, just wait,’” Mr. Pence said, when asked about his opposition to gender-transition care for young people even when their parents consent.Here are five takeaways:Trump’s legal troubles were a thorny topic.A number of the Republican 2024 hopefuls have struggled with how to distance themselves from Mr. Trump, who maintains a strong grip on a slice of the Republican base.Mr. Pence confronted that issue early in the town hall, when he was asked about the possibility of another indictment of Mr. Trump. Federal prosecutors have informed Mr. Trump’s legal team that he is a target of an investigation concerning his handling of classified documents after he left office.“It would be terribly divisive to the country,” Mr. Pence said, saying he “would hope” that an indictment would not go forward. “It would also send a terrible message to the wider world.”He added, “No one’s above the law,” when pressed on whether he thought prosecutors should not pursue an indictment even if they believed Mr. Trump had committed a crime. But he suggested that the situation involving Mr. Trump presented “unique circumstances here.”Asked whether, as president, he would pardon Mr. Trump if he was convicted of a crime, Mr. Pence instead shifted to speak lightheartedly about his chances in the race.“I’m not sure I’m going to be elected president of the United States,” he said. “But I believe we have a fighting chance. I really believe we do.”Mr. Pence has faced his own scrutiny over his retention of documents, but the Justice Department declined to pursue charges.He was firmer in criticizing Trump over Jan. 6.Hours before the town hall, Mr. Pence issued his sternest denunciations to date of Mr. Trump, lacing into him over his actions on Jan. 6, 2021.Mr. Pence, who had helped legitimize Mr. Trump in the eyes of some conservatives in 2016 and was long his loyal lieutenant, rebuffed Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign to seek to effectively reject now-President Biden’s victory in the Electoral College. He drew threats of “Hang Mike Pence” from some in the pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol that day.During the town hall, moderated by Dana Bash, Mr. Pence again made clear that he and Mr. Trump had “a difference” in their approach to the results of the 2020 election.“That hasn’t changed,” he said. “But also there are profound differences about the future of this country, the future of the Republican Party.”Asked if he would consider pardoning those who attacked the Capitol, as Mr. Trump has suggested doing, Mr. Pence said, “I have no interest or no intention of pardoning those that assaulted police officers or vandalized our Capitol. They need to be answerable to the law.”The declaration drew little audible reaction from the audience.He tied himself to key Trump administration decisions.Even as Mr. Pence highlighted areas of disagreement with Mr. Trump, he also spoke frequently about their shared time in the White House as he discussed issues as varied as immigration, abortion and the pandemic, illustrating the challenge of running on a record tied so closely to a political rival.“I couldn’t be more proud to have been vice president in an administration that appointed three of the justices that sent Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history where it belongs,” he said.At another point, he said, “I’m proud of everything that we did during our administration to come alongside families and businesses in the midst of the worst pandemic in 100 years.”He made frequent overtures to evangelical voters.Mr. Pence, the former governor of Indiana, is a man of deep faith, and his allies see an opening to connect with evangelical voters in Iowa, the leadoff caucus state that is home to many socially conservative voters.Mr. Pence spoke about his personal faith journey and sprinkled his remarks with references to the Bible. He also emphasized his opposition to abortion rights, pledging that “we will not rest or relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in the country.”“If I have the great privilege to serve as president of the United States, I’ll support the cause of life at every level,” he said, even as he acknowledged that “we have a long way to go to win the hearts and minds of the American people.”Some Republican presidential candidates have been reluctant to give specifics on their positions regarding abortion policy, or have modulated how they approach it depending on the audience. Mr. Pence seemed eager to discuss the subject, but he faces stiff competition for the voters who are often most moved by the issue. White evangelical voters ultimately became one of Mr. Trump’s most crucial constituencies, and many other candidates, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, are competing hard to make inroads with those voters as well.He sounded at times like a pre-Trump Republican.Mr. Pence invoked former President Ronald Reagan, expressed qualms about spending and made the case for a muscular foreign policy that emphasized American leadership in the world.Throughout the night, he often sounded like a Republican candidate from the pre-Trump era.“It’s also disappointing to me that Donald Trump’s position on entitlement reform is identical to Joe Biden’s,” Mr. Pence said as he discussed the social safety net.He chided both Mr. Trump — and, more obliquely, Mr. DeSantis — for their postures toward Ukraine.“When Vladimir Putin rolled into Ukraine, the former president called him a genius,” Mr. Pence said. “I know the difference between a genius and a war criminal.”Swiping at Mr. DeSantis, he said at another point, “I know that some in this debate have called the war in Ukraine a territorial dispute. It’s not.” Mr. DeSantis, who did use that phrase, has since sought to clarify that description, also calling Mr. Putin a war criminal.And despite his own involvement in the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice overhaul during the Trump administration, Mr. Pence sounded tough-on-crime notes. “I frankly think we need to take a step back from the approach of the First Step Act,” he said.As the event wound down, Mr. Pence was pressed repeatedly on how he squared casting Mr. Trump as a threat to the Constitution with his promise to support the Republican nominee. Mr. Pence did not answer directly, insisting, “I don’t think Donald Trump’s going to be the nominee.” More

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      Pence Delivers Strong Rebuke to Trump in Campaign Announcement

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      The former vice president — and now rival — to Donald Trump gave his most aggressive criticism of his former boss, portraying him as unfit to be president.Former Vice President Mike Pence announced his presidential campaign in Iowa on Wednesday with a repudiation of Donald J. Trump, portraying his former boss — and now rival — as unfit for the presidency and going further than ever before in condemning the character and values of the man he loyally served for four years.Before a crowd of several hundred on the campus of the Des Moines Area Community College, Mr. Pence focused on something that many in his party have tried to desperately avoid: Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021.“Jan. 6 was a tragic day in the life of our nation,” Mr. Pence said. “But thanks to the courage of law enforcement, the violence was quelled, we reconvened the Congress. The very same day, President Trump’s reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol.”He added: “But the American people deserve to know on that fateful day, President Trump also demanded I choose between him and our Constitution. Now voters will be faced with the same choice. I chose the Constitution, and I always will.”No other major Republican candidate for president has even mentioned the attack on the Capitol in an announcement speech. Most elected Republicans have contorted themselves to avoid ever talking about that day — believing it only alienates their voters. A growing number of Republicans are going even further, trying to falsely reframe the attack on the Capitol as an inside job by the F.B.I. or by leftist groups pretending to be Trump supporters.Instead, Mr. Pence described his own actions that day in certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory as a decisive moment that proved his mettle, and Mr. Trump’s actions that day as disqualifying.“The Republican Party must be the party of the Constitution of the United States,” Mr. Pence said to applause.At his campaign announcement in Des Moines, Mr. Pence pitched himself as a candidate who would uphold the Constitution as president.Jordan Gale for The New York Times“Anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” he said. “And anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president again.”Mr. Pence’s use of the word “never” took him across a line he had not breached until now, even as he has criticized Mr. Trump since Jan. 6. His announcement speech put him closer to more outspoken Republicans such as former Representative Liz Cheney, who have described Mr. Trump as morally unfit to occupy the Oval Office.With his remarks, Mr. Pence raised an immediate question for his campaign: As one of the criteria for participating in the G.O.P. primary debates, the Republican National Committee requires each candidate to sign a pledge that they will support the party’s eventual nominee.Mr. Pence has put himself in the potential position of having to support a candidate in Mr. Trump, the front-runner in the Republican Party, who he said should “never” be president.Despite that, only minutes after his speech, Mr. Pence promised in an interview with Fox News that he would support the Republican nominee for president, “especially if it’s me.”The former vice president addressed a thorny issue of his long-shot candidacy: how to account for his years of supporting a candidate whose character and positions were well known in 2016, and whose presidency was consistent with some of those expectations. In Mr. Pence’s telling, the Mr. Trump with whom he shared a ticket has, in fact, changed.Mr. Pence spoke to a crowd of several hundred on the campus of Des Moines Area Community College on Wednesday, drawing a contrast between himself and his former boss, who is their party’s current front-runner.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMr. Pence homed in on three issues to draw an ideological contrast with Mr. Trump: abortion, fiscal conservatism and foreign policy.“When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, he promised to govern as a conservative. And together we did just that,” Mr. Pence said, leaving unmentioned the inconvenient fact that the Trump-Pence administration added around $8 trillion to the national debt.“Today he makes no such promise,” he added. “After leading the most pro-life administration in American history, Donald Trump and others in this race are retreating from the cause of the unborn.”While Mr. Pence went after Mr. Trump in his speech, he used an announcement video earlier in the day to attack President Biden. “Our country’s in a lot of trouble,” Mr. Pence said in his nearly three-minute-long announcement video, accusing Mr. Biden and the “radical left” of weakening America “at home and abroad.”Citing “runaway inflation,” a looming recession, a southern border “under siege,” unchecked “enemies of freedom” in Russia, China “on the march,” and what he calls an unprecedented assault on “timeless American values,” he promised to deliver what he said the nation sorely needed.“We’re better than this,” Mr. Pence says. “We can turn this country around. But different times call for different leadership. Today our party and our country need a leader that’ll appeal, as Lincoln said, to the better angels of our nature.”In his speech, Mr. Pence went on to make clear that unlike other Republican candidates he wouldn’t be afraid to cut spending on Social Security and Medicare in order to confront the nation’s debt crisis.Then he turned to foreign policy. He said Mr. Trump had walked away from America’s traditional role on the world stage. He described the United States as “the leader of the free world” and an “arsenal of democracy.” He criticized Mr. Trump for describing President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as a “genius” and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for describing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “territorial dispute.” More

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      5 Takeaways From Ron DeSantis’s First Campaign Trip

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      He swung back at Donald Trump. He vowed to vanquish the “woke mob” and turn the country into mega-Florida. He had normal encounters with voters that didn’t become memes.After his unusual, buzzy and ill-fated presidential debut on Twitter last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida carried out a far more traditional campaign tour this week, barnstorming Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina to sell himself as the strongest Republican alternative to former President Donald J. Trump.Along the way, he drew sizable, enthusiastic crowds of DeSantis-curious voters. He held babies. He got testy with a reporter. He threw some punches at Mr. Trump. He warned of a “malignant ideology” being pressed by liberals and vowed to “impose our will” to stop it.Here are five takeaways.He won’t cower against Trump — but how hard he’ll counterattack is unclear.For months, Mr. DeSantis held his fire against Mr. Trump. Those days are clearly over.“Petty,” he labeled Mr. Trump’s taunts. “Juvenile.” The former president’s criticisms of him? “Bizarre” and “ridiculous.”But Mr. DeSantis made those remarks not from the stage, in front of Republican voters, but behind the scenes in comments to reporters, suggesting that he is not quite ready to attack Mr. Trump head-on. Instead, his most direct shots were saved for President Biden (“We’re going to take all that Biden nonsense and rip it out by the roots”). When it comes to Mr. Trump, the governor has said he is simply defending himself from a man with whom he avoided public disagreements for years.“Well, now he’s attacking me,” a seemingly aggrieved Mr. DeSantis said outside Des Moines.There are risks to bashing Mr. Trump. For some voters, part of Mr. DeSantis’s appeal has been his willingness to avoid warring with a fellow Republican.“DeSantis has Trump policies, without all the name-calling,” said Monica Schieb, an Iowa voter who supported Mr. Trump in 2016 but now plans to back Mr. DeSantis.Mr. DeSantis drew healthy crowds on the trip, as he did in Gilbert. He often sought to highlight his relative youthfulness at age 44, in contrast to Donald J. Trump and President Biden. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesA key message: He’s young and energetic and can serve two terms.Mr. DeSantis packed his schedule with three or four rallies per day, covering hundreds of miles in each state and addressing a total of more than 7,000 people, his campaign said.The events did not quite have the MAGA-Woodstock energy of Mr. Trump’s arena rallies, but they were lively and well-attended. Tightly orchestrated, too: There was no chowing of hoagies or cozying up to bikers at diners. Up-tempo country music and occasionally cheesy rock (“Chicken Fried” by the Zac Brown Band and “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor) preceded him onstage.The message behind the rigorous schedule?Turning the country into a mega-Florida takes a “disciplined, energetic president,” in his words.It’s a phrase we’re likely to hear more of, given that it takes aim at both of the major obstacles in Mr. DeSantis’s path to the White House: Mr. Trump and President Biden.At nearly every event, Mr. DeSantis, 44, used comments about his energy level as an indirect swipe at his much older opponents. Mr. Trump is 76; Mr. Biden is 80. And Mr. DeSantis regularly noted that unlike his main Republican rival, Mr. Trump, he would be able to serve two terms.The messaging allowed Mr. DeSantis to set a clear contrast with the former president without necessarily angering Mr. Trump’s loyal supporters.Two terms, the governor says, would give him more time to appoint conservative Supreme Court justices and unwind the “deep state.” (Mr. Trump responded angrily to the new line of attack, saying in Iowa on Thursday that “you don’t need eight years, you need six months,” adding, “Who the hell wants to wait eight years?”)The case Mr. DeSantis is making, however, sometimes seems to be undercut by his own delivery. Even supporters acknowledge that he is not a natural orator, and on the stump he sometimes calls himself an “energetic executive” in a neutral monotone.Mr. DeSantis kicked off the tour with an event on Tuesday at an evangelical church in Clive, Iowa. Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesHumbly, he compares himself to Churchill, fighting ‘the woke mob’ on the beaches.If Mr. DeSantis had to summarize what he believes is wrong with America in one word, his three-state tour suggests the answer might be “woke,” a term that many Republican politicians find easy to use but hard to define. The governor frequently rails against “wokeness,” which he describes as a “war on the truth,” in distinctly martial terms.At several events, Mr. DeSantis, a military veteran, seemed to borrow from Winston Churchill’s famous “We shall fight on the beaches” speech, given to exhort the citizens of Britain in their existential struggle against Nazi Germany.“We will fight the woke in education,” Mr. DeSantis said in New Hampshire. “We will fight the woke in corporations. And we will fight the woke in the halls of Congress. We will never surrender to the woke mob.”(Mr. Trump seemed to take a shot at his rival’s use of the word, saying on Thursday, “I don’t like the term ‘woke,’ because I hear ‘woke, woke, woke.’” He added: “It’s just a term they use. Half the people can’t even define it. They don’t know what it is.”)Earlier, at his kickoff rally outside Des Moines on Tuesday night, Mr. DeSantis seemed to put the various building blocks of his stump speech together into a coherent vision, one that portrayed the United States as a nation being assaulted from the inside by unseen liberal forces bent on reshaping every aspect of American life.“They are imposing their agenda on us, via the federal government, via corporate America, via our own education system,” he said. “All for their benefit and all to our detriment.”In turn, Mr. DeSantis promised to aggressively wield the power of the presidency in order to resculpt the nation according to conservative principles, much as he says he has done in Florida, where he has often pushed the boundaries of executive office.“It does not have to be this way,” he continued in his Iowa kickoff speech. “We must choose a path that will lead to a revival of American greatness.” The line drew cheers.Mr. DeSantis on Thursday in Manchester, N.H. Apart from a few contentious exchanges with reporters, he avoided awkward moments on the trip. David Degner for The New York TimesHis interactions: Pretty normal, overall.Both detractors and supporters were watching closely for how Mr. DeSantis, who sometimes appears uncomfortable with the basics of retail politics, interacted with voters. Democrats and Trump allies have made a legion of memes out of his uncomfortable facial expressions or clumsy responses to voters in casual conversations. (An emphatic “OK!” is often his answer to learning a person’s name or a child’s age.)But apart from a pugnacious exchange or two with the news media — episodes that are, of course, cheered by the Republican base — Mr. DeSantis avoided obvious awkward moments. He tried to make himself relatable, playing up his dad credentials. He told stories about taking his family out for fast food and contending with a 3-year-old who needed to use the “little potty.”After his speeches, he worked the rope line, talked with voters, snapped pictures and signed autographs. He always reacted enthusiastically when voters told him they lived part-time in Florida. “What part?” was his standard follow-up, before discussing how badly those areas had been hit by Hurricane Ian.While this all might be a low bar, it was set, in part, by Mr. Trump’s relentless mockery of Mr. DeSantis’s personality.Frank Ehrenberger, 73, a retired engineer who attended a DeSantis event in Iowa on Wednesday, said the governor had struck him as “genuine.”Still, Mr. DeSantis may need to do more. At events in Iowa and New Hampshire on Wednesday and Thursday, he did not take audience questions from the stage, leading to some criticism. Instead, at one stop in New Hampshire, Mr. DeSantis tossed baseball caps to the crowd.The early nominating states require a set of political skills different from the one that works in Florida, where politicians rely heavily on television advertising to get their messages across.By Friday, during his visit to South Carolina, he had seemed to shift his strategy, electing to answer voters’ questions from the stage alongside his wife, Casey DeSantis.Casey DeSantis has given remarks in the middle of Mr. DeSantis’s stump speeches at events, talking about both their family life and what she casts as her husband’s ability to clean up “the swamp” in Washington.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesYou’ll be seeing a lot more of Casey DeSantis.At his events, Mr. DeSantis has paused his stump speech to invite Ms. DeSantis onto the stage to deliver her own remarks. As she speaks, he usually stands smiling behind her before returning to the lectern to close out his speech. At one stop in New Hampshire, he kissed her temple after she had finished.These intermissions — not unprecedented, but unusual as a routine at presidential campaign events — underscore the high-profile role Ms. DeSantis is expected to play her in husband’s bid, after acting as an important adviser in his political rise.If this first tour is anything to go by, she is likely to be one of the most prominent and politically active spouses of a major presidential candidate in several election cycles, perhaps since Bill Clinton in 2008.Onstage, Ms. DeSantis tells the usual marital stories meant to humanize candidates and illustrate their family life — including an oft-repeated bit about the time one of their three children wielded permanent markers to decorate the dining room table in the governor’s mansion.But she is far from light entertainment. Much of her roughly five-minute speech is meant to portray her husband, whom she often refers to as “the governor,” as an authoritative, decisive leader, one capable of cleaning up “the swamp” in Washington.“Through all of the history, all the attacks from the corporate media and the left, he never changes,” Ms. DeSantis said Thursday in New Hampshire. “He never backs down, he never cowers. He never takes the path of least resistance.”Ann Klein More

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      A Peek Behind the MAGA Curtain

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      Every now and then, it’s important to watch Fox News in prime time. No, not because the programs are particularly good or because the hosts tell their audience the truth. Fox is writing Dominion Voting Systems a $787.5 million check for very good reasons, and it still faces a multibillion-dollar lawsuit from Smartmatic over the channel’s election reporting. But to watch Fox News is to begin to understand millions of your fellow Americans. And there was no better time to start understanding the 2024 Republican primary contest than Thursday night, during Donald Trump’s town hall in Iowa, hosted by Sean Hannity.To watch the town hall was to start learning the answer to a key question: After everything, how can Republicans still be so loyal to Trump? But that word, “everything,” is loaded with different meanings in different American communities.When I look back on the Trump years, I see a dark time of division, corruption and social decay. After all, when he left office, the murder rate was higher, drug overdose deaths had increased, and the abortion rate had gone up for the first time in decades. America was more bitterly divided, and deficits increased each year of his presidency. His early Covid lies helped fuel an immense amount of confusion and almost certainly cost American lives. And his entire sorry term was capped by a violent insurrection fueled by an avalanche of lies.If you watched the town hall, however, you entered an entirely different world. According to Trump’s narrative, everything he did was good. His term was a time of economic prosperity, energy independence, fiscal responsibility, a rejuvenated military, a locked-down border and fear and respect from foreign regimes. The only thing that marred his four years was a stolen election and his unjust persecution by the corrupt Democratic Party and its allies in the F.B.I.In Trumpworld, the Trump past is golden, and the Trump future bright, but the present is a time of misery and darkness. It is President Biden, not Trump, who mishandles classified documents. It is Biden’s family, not Trump’s, that corruptly profits off foreign regimes. Trump would have prevented the Ukraine war. Trump would have withdrawn from Afghanistan more smoothly. As for Biden himself, he’s an object of derision and pity — far too physically and mentally impaired to be president of the United States.False narratives are often sustained by a few kernels of truth, and so it is in MAGA America. The economy was strong before Covid, and there were fewer southern border crossings each year during Trump’s presidency than there have been during Biden’s. The ISIS caliphate fell. And I don’t know a single Republican who isn’t pleased with Trump’s judicial nominees.Moreover, not all of Trump’s opponents possess the cleanest of hands. There were, in fact, Department of Justice excesses during its investigation of his campaign’s possible ties to Russia. A special counsel is investigating Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. Hunter Biden is under criminal investigation, and his overseas business dealings are indeed unsavory, even if there is not yet proof of criminal wrongdoing. The withdrawal from Afghanistan turned into a chaotic and bloody rout of allied forces. Inflation remains too high.In short, there is enough truthful criticism of the Biden administration to make it vulnerable to an election loss. And there remains sufficient false Trump administration nostalgia to make Trump the G.O.P. nominee. Put both realities together, and the nation is facing RealClearPolitics polling averages that show Trump to be the overwhelming favorite for the G.O.P. nomination and a slight leader in a potential general election matchup against Biden.Given these facts — and Thursday night’s peek at MAGA America — my colleague Frank Bruni’s warning to Democrats on Thursday was timely and important: Democrats should not hope to face Trump in 2024. Rooting for him isn’t just dangerous; it’s based on misunderstandings. All too many Trump opponents — in both parties — have spent so long building their voluminous cases against him that they’ve forgotten how he looks to the other side. They can’t conceive of a coherent case for his candidacy.The two most telling moments on Thursday came from Trump’s audience. First, they booed Mike Pence at the very mention of his name. Second, they shouted derisively at Hannity at the mere thought that Trump should perhaps tone down his rhetoric. Both moments emphasized the ferocity of their support for Trump. When you see that public response, you can begin to see his opponents’ dilemma. Given the size of Trump’s base, a winning Republican rival will have to peel away at least some members of audiences like Thursday’s — the very people who see him as a persecuted hero.That challenge is compounded by every event like Thursday’s town hall, in which a relaxed Trump was “questioned” by a supine host in front of an adoring crowd. Hannity’s performance was quite a contrast to Kaitlan Collins’s pointed challenges to Trump during last month’s CNN town hall. Yet both events advanced Trump’s narrative. CNN’s tough questions reminded MAGA of his alleged persecution. Hannity’s coddling reminded MAGA of Trump’s alleged triumphs. Both ultimately helped Trump deepen his bond with the people who love him the most.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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      Donald Trump and Fox News play it safe in town hall as network faces lawsuit

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      Donald Trump and Fox News played it safe on Thursday with a town-hall event in Iowa that swerved past the former US president’s election lies and liability for sexual abuse.The uncharacteristic omissions were a striking contrast to Trump’s recent town hall on rival network CNN and likely a source of relief for both his own lawyers and those of Fox News.In April, the beleaguered network agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787m to avert a trial in the company’s lawsuit over its promotion of Trump’s debunked claims about the 2020 election.The case had already embarrassed Fox News over several months and raised the possibility that its founder, Rupert Murdoch, and stars such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity would have to testify publicly. Fox News still faces a defamation lawsuit from another voting technology company, Smartmatic.But Thursday night’s town hall with Trump in the Des Moines suburb of Clive was pre-taped, giving Fox News the option of editing out egregious lies about the 2020 election in general, or Dominion and Smartmatic in particular, before it was broadcast.The choice might have been informed by CNN’s fateful decision last month to go live with a Trump town hall from New Hampshire. The ex-president repeated a fusillade of bogus election claims and insulted writer E Jean Carroll a day after being found liable for sexual abuse and defamation against her; Carroll now intends to go back to court to seek additional damages.Fox News’s version, hosted by Hannity before a partisan pro-Trump crowd, managed to avoid references to either the stolen election conspiracy theory or the Carroll case. Instead, via soft questions and rambling answers, it took aim at Joe Biden and Republican primary election rivals such as Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor.Hannity began: “Unlike fake news CNN, it’s not my job to sit here and debate the candidate. We are going to ask him about the issues of the day that matter to the people – the voters who will also have their questions as well.”Despite this promise, Hannity launched the event by showing film of 80-year-old Biden suffering a fall at a US Air Force Academy graduation ceremony earlier on Thursday. Republicans and Fox News have long sought to make the president’s age an election issue.After Trump had entered to whoops, cheers and chants of “USA! USA!”, Hannity asked him to comment on the incident. “Not so good,” said Trump, 76, wearing his usual dark suit, white shirt and long red tie, perched on a tall chair opposite a tieless Hannity. “It’s sad, it’s sad. They’re representing – we are all representing the country when you become president – and you’re sort of not allowed to do that.“But it’s happened. It’s happened and it’s happened pretty badly. We won’t go into it, but we all know the ones and they count those acts, you know, they never forget. But that was a bad fall.”Hannity went on to suggest that Biden is “cognitively not there”. Trump replied that he had urged Hannity not to joke about the matter, for example by referring to Biden needing a “sippy cup”. He added “This is the most dangerous time in the history of our country because of the power of the weaponry and we have somebody that doesn’t understand what’s happening.”Later Trump also went on the offensive against his Republican primary rivals, whose names elicited boos from the crowd. He dismissed DeSantis’s claim to be a better candidate because he can theoretically serve two terms. “I heard ‘DeSanctis’ say, ‘Oh, I get eight years, he gets four.’ You don’t need four and you don’t need eight. You need six months.”The former president mocked Chris Christie’s approval rating in his native New Jersey, branded Asa Hutchinson as “Ada” Hutchinson and suggested that DeSantis will soon no longer be his main challenger: “I really go after the one who second and I think the one who second is going down so much and so rapidly that I don’t think he’s going to be second that much longer. I think he’s going to be third or fourth. He had a very bad day today. He got very angry at the press.”As the audience chuckled, Trump added: “At the fake news, he got angry.”Just as in the CNN town hall, Trump stressed his role in appointing supreme court justices who helped overturn Roe v Wade, the supreme court precedent that enshrined the constitutional right to abortion, but warned against alienating voters by taking an extreme position on the issue. DeSantis recently signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida.Trump said: “I did something that nobody thought was possible. I got rid of Roe v Wade and by doing that, it put pro-lifers in a very strong negotiating position. Now they’re negotiating different things and I happen to be of the Ronald Reagan school in terms of exemptions, where you have the life of the mother, rape and incest. For me, that’s something that works very well and for probably 80, 85%, because don’t forget, we do have to win elections.”The issue had energised Democrats in last year’s midterm elections, he noted. “When you didn’t have the exceptions, they went after the people viciously – the ads – and those people generally speaking didn’t do very well in terms of election.”The former president also railed against multiple criminal investigations into his conduct (“If my poll numbers went down, it would all end”), insisting that everything he did in handling classified documents was “right” and making false assertions about the quantity of documents found in Biden’s possession. He made racist comments about Washington’s Chinatown district and claimed that he could settle the war between Russia and Ukraine “in 24 hours”.Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, said: “In what was mostly an incoherent, rambling appearance full of recycled lies on Fox News, Donald Trump told the truth at least once in his safe space – no one did more to pave the way for abortion bans across the country than him.“Whenever Trump is given a platform, he reminds America not only how much of a failure his presidency was, but just how extreme and dangerous he is. While President Biden focuses on continuing to deliver historic results for working families and protecting Americans’ hard-won freedoms, all Trump does is remind the American people why they rejected him and his failed presidency.”DeSantis, aiming to recover from a glitchy campaign launch, was touring New Hampshire on Thursday. In Laconia, he took a dig at former reality TV star Trump by remarking that “leadership is not about entertainment”. Former vice-president Mike Pence and former New Jersey governor Christie are expected to join the race next week. More

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      Ron DeSantis Avoids Talking About Florida’s Abortion Ban in New Hampshire

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      As he traversed socially conservative Iowa this week, the 2024 contender highlighted his state’s six-week ban. But now, in more moderate New Hampshire, he is shying from the subject.At a stop on his first trip to New Hampshire as a presidential candidate, Gov. Ron DeSantis mentioned his efforts to provide tax relief for Florida families. He mentioned defunding diversity programs at public colleges. He mentioned his fight with Disney.But what he did not mention was the six-week abortion ban he signed in Florida this year.The ban — which Mr. DeSantis chose to highlight in his speeches to audiences in socially conservative Iowa this week — is a potential lightning rod for voters in more moderate New Hampshire.One New Hampshire Republican, Bob Kroepel, approached Mr. DeSantis after his speech in Rochester as the governor signed baseballs and took selfies with the crowd.“Would you support an abortion policy that would allow choice to a certain point?” Mr. Kroepel, who lost Republican primaries for governor in New Hampshire in 1998 and 2002, asked through the din of the crowd and speakers blaring country music.Mr. DeSantis dodged the thrust of the question, talking instead about his efforts to help parents after they have children, including through health coverage and universal school choice.“So my wife has a fatherhood initiative,” he replied. “We’ve also done a lot of stuff to help new mothers, like we now have a year of postpartum health coverage for poor mothers. Obviously, we have the educational choice and a bunch of stuff that we’ve done.”“So we absolutely have a responsibility to help mothers, that’s without question, one hundred percent,” Mr. DeSantis said before moving on to the next voter.Abortion is likely to be one of the most complicated issues for Mr. DeSantis to discuss, especially if he wins the Republican nomination.Moderates and independents tend to be less supportive of bans as early as six weeks, when many women do not know they are pregnant, and Mr. DeSantis has sometimes avoided talking about abortion even in front of friendly audiences. So far, he has skirted questions about a federal abortion ban, suggesting that the matter should be left largely to the states.Casey DeSantis speaking at a lectern that has a DeSantis campaign sign. Mr. DeSantis is standing behind her.David Degner for The New York Times“I think at the end of the day, fighting for life and protecting life really is a bottom-up movement,” he said in a Fox News interview last week. “I think we’ve been able to have great successes at the local level.”His main rival, former President Donald J. Trump, has also not committed to supporting a federal abortion ban. Mr. DeSantis has used abortion to criticize Mr. Trump, after the former president suggested that Florida’s ban was “too harsh.”Republican leaders in New Hampshire say a six-week ban is too extreme for voters in their state, which has a 24-week limit.Jason Osborne, the state’s House majority leader, who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis, said in an interview that he hoped the governor would state at some point in the campaign that he would not try “to make Florida’s abortion policy countrywide.”A national six-week abortion ban “would go over like a lead balloon” with New Hampshire voters, Mr. Osborne said after Mr. DeSantis’s Rochester event.“People don’t want it,” he added. If Mr. DeSantis were to propose such a ban, he said, “I think you’d see a lot of people jump ship. I would lose a lot of faith in him.”Mr. Osborne said he agreed with the governor’s strategy of not taking a louder stance on abortion.“I think abortion is one of those issues that should not be talked about in a presidential campaign,” he said. Abortion rights supporters protesting outside Mr. DeSantis’s event on Thursday in Manchester, N.H.David Degner for The New York TimesWhile Mr. DeSantis’s stump speech typically varies little from stop to stop, he does appear to be calibrating his message on abortion. In Iowa on Wednesday, he talked about Florida’s six-week ban, known as the Heartbeat Protection Act, during a lengthy recounting of his record as governor. “We have enacted the heartbeat bill,” he told a crowd in Cedar Rapids before being drowned out by cheers and applause.But he did not mention the bill at several stops in New Hampshire on Thursday.Even New Hampshire voters who said they support a six-week ban said they understood why Mr. DeSantis was unlikely to talk much about the issue.“I mean, my gosh, there’s so much blowback, right?” said Jennifer Hilton, 56, an independent who is open to supporting Mr. DeSantis and heard him speak in Rochester. “And it’s so taken out of context, and such an emotional issue, that people can’t hear you.”Sue Collins, an attendee at a DeSantis event in Salem, N.H., said, “I’ll be honest, I’m not strict pro-life, but I was not happy to see the six-week ban.” She added, “I wish it wasn’t that strict, but it would not prevent me from voting for him.”Mr. Kroepel, the Republican who approached Mr. DeSantis, said that “on balance,” he was not satisfied with how the governor had answered his question. Even so, he acknowledged the difficulties of the discussion.“I understand how delicate this whole situation is,” Mr. Kroepel said. “So I give him credit for at least listening to me.”Ann Klein More

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      In Iowa, DeSantis Signals the Start of a Slugfest With Trump

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      After absorbing months of attacks from the former president, the Florida governor is beginning to fire back — but carefully.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida came to Iowa for his first trip as a presidential candidate and made plain that he was done being Donald J. Trump’s punching bag.After absorbing months of attacks from Mr. Trump that went mostly unanswered, Mr. DeSantis has borrowed one of his rival’s favorite lines — “I’m going to counterpunch” — and jabbed back.He called one of the spending bills that Mr. Trump signed “grotesque” and accused him of increasing the national debt. He said the way Mr. Trump had sided with Disney in Mr. DeSantis’s war with the entertainment giant was “bizarre.” He described Mr. Trump’s criticism of the governor’s handling of Covid as “ridiculous.” And he dared Mr. Trump to take a position on the debt-limit bill pending in Washington.“Are you leading from the front?” Mr. DeSantis said, almost teasingly. “Or are you waiting for polls to tell you what position to take?”A tricky balancing act lies ahead for Mr. DeSantis. All of those comments came not onstage in his first campaign speech before hundreds of Republicans at an evangelical church, but during a 15-minute news conference with reporters afterward. He did not mention Mr. Trump by name when he spoke directly to voters in each of his first four Iowa stops, though he has drawn implicit contrasts.The two-pronged approach reflects the remarkable degree to which his pathway to the nomination depends on his ability to win over — and not alienate — the significant bloc of Republican voters who still like Mr. Trump even if they are willing to consider an alternative.Mr. DeSantis is trying to show voters that he is the kind of fighter who will not back down — even against his party’s dominant figure.Rachel Mummey for The New York Times“I don’t like to see them battle and do smear campaigns,” said Jay Schelhaas, 55, a professor of nursing who came to see Mr. DeSantis on Wednesday in Pella, Iowa. An evangelical voter, he said he was undecided on whom to support in 2024 after backing Mr. Trump in his two past presidential runs.Some themes have emerged in Mr. DeSantis’s early broadsides. He has sought to question Mr. Trump’s commitment to conservatism (“I do think, unfortunately, he’s decided to move left on some of these issues”); his ability to execute his agenda (“I’ve been listening to these politicians talking about securing the border for years and years and years”); and his ability to win the 2024 general election (“There are a lot of voters that just aren’t going to ever vote for him”).It was no coincidence that Mr. Trump arrived in Iowa on Mr. DeSantis’s heels on Wednesday, in a sign of the intensifying political skirmish between the leading Republican presidential contenders and the centrality of Iowa in their paths to the nomination. Mr. Trump holds an advantage of roughly 30 percentage points in early national polls of the Republican primary.In a statement, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said that Mr. DeSantis’s first speech was “crafted to appease establishment Never Trumpers who are looking for a swamp puppet that will do their bidding.”Mr. DeSantis is seeking a challenging middle ground as he begins this new, more confrontational phase. He is trying to show voters that he is the kind of fighter who will not back down — even against his party’s dominant figure. At the same time, he must avoid being seen as overly focused on Republican infighting.“I’m going to focus my fire on Biden,” Mr. DeSantis said at his kickoff speech on Tuesday night in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines, even as he stepped up his attacks on Mr. Trump. “And I think he should do the same.”Advisers to Mr. DeSantis said his more assertive posture stemmed largely from the fact that he is now an actual candidate. But it is a notable shift. At a recent dinner with donors in Tallahassee, Fla., Mr. DeSantis was asked when he would start slugging Mr. Trump, and he suggested he would not be doing so immediately, according to an attendee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.“Leadership is not about entertainment,” Mr. DeSantis said on Tuesday in Clive, Iowa, a suburb of Des Moines, in an implicit dig at Mr. Trump. Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesFor the third time in Mr. DeSantis’s three trips to Iowa this year, Mr. Trump planned to follow close behind with a two-day swing of his own. In March, when Mr. DeSantis came for his book tour, Mr. Trump arrived days later in the same city and drew a bigger crowd. In mid-May, Mr. Trump had scheduled a rally to stomp on the Florida governor’s trip, though he canceled at the last minute, saying it was because of the weather. It was Mr. DeSantis who one-upped him then, appearing at a barbecue joint nearby.“The weather was so nice that we felt we just had to come,” Mr. DeSantis said to laughs in Clive.Mr. Trump is doing a local television interview on Wednesday, and on Thursday he will host a lunch with religious leaders in Des Moines after attending a breakfast with a local Republican group. He is also holding a Fox News town hall event moderated by Sean Hannity.Mr. Trump has been far from subtle in his attacks on Mr. DeSantis, calling him “Ron DeSanctimonious,” denouncing his leadership of Florida and lashing him from the left for past proposals to trim Social Security and Medicare spending. No matter how much mud Mr. Trump slings, Republican voters have tended not to punish him, a double standard that has long worked to his advantage.“I guess he’s got to respond in some way,” Tim Hamer, a retired Iowan who worked in banking and owned a lavender farm, said of Mr. DeSantis. Mr. Hamer, who was at the governor’s event in Council Bluffs on Wednesday, said he had voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020 but was now leaning toward Mr. DeSantis.“The point is,” he added, “don’t descend to Trump’s level.”Among the issues over which Mr. DeSantis has explicitly broken with Mr. Trump is the legislation the former president signed that allows a pathway for nonviolent offenders to shrink their prison time. Last week, Mr. DeSantis called the measure “a jailbreak bill.”In stop after stop, Mr. DeSantis has also pointed to his ability to serve as president for two terms, unlike Mr. Trump, saying that the next president could appoint as many as four Supreme Court justices.He said on Tuesday, “I don’t need someone to give me a list to know what a conservative justice looks like.” Mr. Trump — whose appointment of the justices who tilted the Supreme Court rightward and overturned Roe v. Wade cheered conservatives — promised in the 2016 campaign to pick a justice from a list that was created by conservative judicial activists, and he has promised to release another list ahead of 2024.Mr. Trump has been far from subtle in his attacks on Mr. DeSantis, calling him “Ron DeSanctimonious” and denouncing his leadership of Florida.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesRegina Hansen, who attended the DeSantis event in Council Bluffs, said she wished Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis would patch up their once-friendly relationship. But in the meantime, she said, she thought the best way for Mr. DeSantis to win over Trump supporters was to keep talking about himself, his record and his family.“I have a very positive opinion of him, more so now than I did before I came here today,” Ms. Hansen said after hearing Mr. DeSantis speak.But Will Schademann, who came to the rally with a copy of Mr. DeSantis’s recent book, said he believed the governor needed to stay on the attack against the former president.“I just think it’s the right approach,” said Mr. Schademann, who added he voted twice for Mr. Trump. “He needs to contrast what he did with what Trump did.”At his stops on Wednesday in Council Bluffs, Salix and Pella, Iowa, Mr. DeSantis directed his verbal assaults at President Biden and kept his swipes at Mr. Trump more oblique.“Our great American comeback tour starts by sending Joe Biden back to his basement in Delaware,” he said in Council Bluffs.In contrast, Mr. DeSantis criticized Mr. Trump, a former reality television star, indirectly though pointedly.DeSantis supporters in Salix, Iowa, on Wednesday. Rachel Mummey for The New York Times“The Bible makes very clear that God frowns upon pride and looks to people who have humility,” he said.In recent days, Mr. DeSantis has seemed especially eager to discuss his handling of the coronavirus, which vaulted him to national prominence. Mr. Trump recently unfavorably compared the governor’s handling of the pandemic to that of former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, Democrat of New York.Mr. DeSantis has expressed shock at this line of attack, arguing that closures and isolation measures instituted early in the pandemic did more harm than help.“The former president would double down on his lockdowns from March of 2020,” Mr. DeSantis said.“Do you want Cuomo or do you want free Florida?” he added. “If we just decided the caucuses on that, I would be happy with that verdict by Iowa voters.”Bret Hayworth contributed reporting from Salix, Iowa. More