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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 Trump would have withdrawn from Afghanistan more smoothly.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

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      DeSantis Starts Campaign in Iowa, Hoping It Slingshots Him Past Trump

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      In Iowa, Ron DeSantis warned supporters of a “malignant ideology” taking hold across the country, described children facing “indoctrination” and vowed to fight for conservative causes.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida kicked off his presidential campaign in Iowa on Tuesday with a sweeping denunciation of the “elites” that he said dominated American institutions, pitching himself as an unrepentant fighter who could reverse a tide of progressivism in boardrooms, the government and the military.“We must choose a path that will lead to a revival of American greatness,” Mr. DeSantis told supporters at an evangelical church in the suburbs of Des Moines.In a strident speech, he painted a dark picture of America, saying he would be a salve to a “malignant ideology” that was taking hold across the nation. He described children facing “indoctrination.” He mocked transgender athletes, denounced the “woke Olympics” of diversity programs and reveled in his battle with Disney.“It is time we impose our will on Washington, D.C.,” Mr. DeSantis said. “And you can’t do any of this if you don’t win.”The stop was the first in a three-state, 12-city tour that Mr. DeSantis’s team hopes can begin the arduous process of chipping away at former President Donald J. Trump’s advantage in early polls of the 2024 Republican primary race.Mr. DeSantis did not mention Mr. Trump by name in his speech. But he left little doubt about some of the areas in which he planned to draw contrasts with the former president in the coming months, including how each leader handled the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic more than three years ago and his ability to win in 2024.Later, in a news conference, he sharpened the contrast.“The former president is now attacking me saying that Cuomo did better handling Covid than Florida did,” Mr. DeSantis said, referring to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, a Democrat. “I can tell you this. I could count the number of Republicans in this country on my hands that would rather have lived in New York under Cuomo than lived in Florida in our freedom zone.”“Hell, his whole family moved to Florida under my governorship, are you kidding me?” Mr. DeSantis added later of Mr. Trump.A prayer at Eternity Church in Clive, Iowa, before Mr. DeSantis’s first rally since he made his campaign official.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesThe pastor at the Iowa church said the auditorium seated 600, and hundreds more were in spillover areas.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesThe DeSantis campaign’s decision to hold its first in-person event at Eternity Church in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines, signaled the enduring importance of evangelical Christian voters in Iowa’s Republican caucuses, which begin the nominating process.Before the event, Mr. DeSantis and his wife, Casey DeSantis, had met privately with about 15 local pastors for a private prayer over his family and candidacy, according to a campaign aide.“As a pastor, it tells me they value the Christian vote,” Jesse Newman, the pastor of Eternity Church, said in an interview, referring to the DeSantis team’s decision to begin campaigning at the church. In his own brief address to the crowd, Mr. Newman prayed for Mr. DeSantis’s family and urged the Lord’s intervention in the “fight against globalism and socialism.”Mr. DeSantis was introduced by the state’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, who joked that her state was “the Florida of the north” for the similarly conservative agenda she has pushed.“They’re going to be here a lot,” Ms. Reynolds said of the DeSantis family.Mr. DeSantis entered the stage in a blazer, a blue button-down shirt and no tie, alongside Ms. DeSantis, who also addressed the crowd in a demonstration of the central role she is expected to play in the campaign. The pastor said the jam-packed auditorium seated 600, and campaign officials estimated the spillover crowd that filled the lobby and elsewhere on the complex was more than 1,000.In his speech, Mr. DeSantis made the argument that he had fought the left in Florida and won — both electorally and on a raft of policies that have been enacted during his tenure.Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife, joined him onstage.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesHe spoke about signing a six-week abortion ban, pressing for the death penalty for those convicted of sexually abusing children, and “even sending illegal aliens to Martha’s Vineyard.”Mr. DeSantis injected more bits of his biography into his emerging stump speech than he did during his pre-candidacy. He invoked his mother’s work as a nurse, his father’s installation of Nielsen ratings boxes and his own minimum-wage jobs.“I was given nothing,” Mr. DeSantis said.His cadence at times felt rushed. He pushed so quickly through his speech that sections were swallowed by the crowd’s applause, which did not slow him down.Mr. Trump, who has focused on Mr. DeSantis more than on all of his other rivals, is also set to visit Iowa on Wednesday and Thursday, meeting with local Republicans and faith leaders and holding a Fox News town hall event also in Clive.Mr. DeSantis has positioned himself to the right of Mr. Trump on some key issues, including abortion, as part of an effort to woo right-wing voters. In his news conference, he accused Mr. Trump of shifting to the left.“He’s not an orator, I don’t think,” said Matt Wells, a conservative activist who drove 120 miles from Washington, Iowa, to see Mr. DeSantis. “But you give him a question about policy and he’ll run with it. I have wanted someone for so long who, when they’re asked about policy, they have an answer for it right there.”Kenneth Wayne, a retired physician from Clive, cited Mr. DeSantis’s leadership skills, including his military service, as a selling point. He said he had read Mr. DeSantis’s book cover-to-cover.“I feel that this is a fellow who knows his own mind, who is not going to blow with the wind,” said Mr. Wayne, who was wearing a Vietnam veteran hat. “He’s of a solid conservative bent.”Mr. DeSantis has sought to differentiate himself from Mr. Trump on social issues, pointing to their stances on abortion and the governor’s clash with Disney, among other issues, as proof that he is the more conservative candidate in the race and that Mr. Trump has moved to the center.Mr. DeSantis has positioned himself to the right of Mr. Trump on some key issues. Rachel Mummey for The New York Times“I will be able to destroy leftism in this country,” Mr. DeSantis said on Fox News on Monday.It is part of a DeSantis pitch that, more broadly, centers on fulfilling the promises where Mr. Trump fell short, including winning the White House for a second term by appealing to Republicans and independents who say they can no longer support the former president.“There are a lot of voters that just aren’t going to ever vote for him,” Mr. DeSantis told reporters on Tuesday. “We just have to accept that.” More

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      DeSantis Impresses Voters and Trolls Trump in Iowa Swing

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      The former president canceled a rally in Des Moines, citing a storm warning. The Florida governor made the most of his rival’s absence, as DeSantis allies taunted Mr. Trump.For the first time in months, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Saturday showed the aggressive political instincts that his allies have long insisted he would demonstrate in a contest against former President Donald J. Trump.After headlining two successful political events in Iowa, Mr. DeSantis made an unscheduled stop in Des Moines — a move aimed at highlighting the fact that Mr. Trump had abruptly postponed a planned Saturday evening rally in the area because of reports of possible severe weather.Mr. Trump’s explanation for postponing the event drew skepticism from local Iowa officials and derision from DeSantis allies about the “beautiful” weather. And Mr. DeSantis — who has avoided direct conflict with Mr. Trump — essentially kicked sand in the former president’s face by coming to an area that Mr. Trump claimed to have been told was too dangerous for him to visit.After wrapping up his events on Saturday evening elsewhere in the state, Mr. DeSantis headed to Jethro’s BBQ Southside, where he and his wife, Casey DeSantis, stood on a table outside and spoke to a cheering crowd. The barbecue joint was a short drive from where Mr. Trump had planned to host his own rally.“My better half and I have been able to be all over Iowa today, but before we went back to Florida we wanted to come by and say hi to the people of Des Moines,” a grinning Mr. DeSantis said. “So thank you all for coming out. It’s a beautiful night, it’s been a great day for us.”Mr. DeSantis’s pointed pit stop was a clear rebuke to Mr. Trump, who has tried to torment the Florida governor for months, mocking him for his falling poll numbers and perceived dearth of charisma. Mr. DeSantis’s resistance to hitting back while not a declared candidate as he finished the state’s legislative session, combined with a handful of unforced errors, had allowed the former president to take control of the race for 2024 and frustrated some of Mr. DeSantis’s allies. But as he prepares to take on Mr. Trump, who has dominated every Republican he has campaigned against in the past, Mr. DeSantis moved to show he doesn’t intend to suffer the same result. “If someone’s punching you in the face, you better punch them back,” said Terry Sullivan, who managed the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida — a race in which Mr. Rubio was criticized for not fighting back enough against Mr. Trump.Mr. DeSantis has been outflanked by Mr. Trump’s team at various turns until now. Saturday was the first time Mr. DeSantis has taken advantage of an opportunity to show up Mr. Trump over a perceived misstep. Mr. DeSantis needs to string together many more days like Saturday in a campaign that will rely heavily on winning the Iowa caucus early next year. But Republican activists in the state say there is an opening with caucus-goers for someone other than Mr. Trump. And the visit Saturday, where he also traveled to Sioux Center — populated by Christian conservatives whose support he must gain — was seen as a positive development by Republicans who want to defeat Mr. Trump but have been dismayed by Mr. DeSantis’s stumbles as he steps onto the national stage.Casey DeSantis mingled with attendees at the event in Cedar Rapids on Saturday.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesDespite the unforeseen — albeit indirect — jab at Jethro’s, the governor is unlikely to criticize Mr. Trump directly until after he formally announces his campaign, according to two people familiar with his political operation. And even when he does jump into the race, which is expected to happen imminently, he will largely focus on contrasting his record with Mr. Trump’s — particularly on issues like the coronavirus pandemic — while making the case that he is the candidate better equipped to defeat President Biden in a general election. It’s a strategy that avoids relitigating Mr. Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, and one the governor is foreshadowing as he barnstorms Republican events around the country. It also positions Mr. DeSantis — who is decades younger than the 76-year-old Mr. Trump, who was recently indicted and faces the possibility of additional ones in other investigations — as interested in the future and not the past.“If we make this election about a referendum on Joe Biden and his failed policies, and we provide a positive alternative to take America in a new direction, I think Republicans will win across the board,” Mr. DeSantis said at a Saturday evening fund-raiser for the Republican Party of Iowa in Cedar Rapids. That event was shown on Fox News during time that Mr. Trump had claimed Fox News was reserving to show his rally. Mr. DeSantis’s message is already appealing to some voters, including Amy Seeger, who traveled from Milwaukee to see him speak earlier in the day at a picnic in Sioux Center.“I would vote for a shoe over Trump,” Ms. Seeger said in an interview. “It is time to move forward. Trump is very wrapped up in 2020 and playing the victim.”Mr. DeSantis also used the Iowa trip to show off the sometimes enigmatic lighter side of his personality, flipping burgers at the picnic and talking about his life as a family man with his wife at the evening fund-raiser in Cedar Rapids.At that second event, Ms. DeSantis joined her husband on stage for an interview conducted by the state Republican Party chair, Jeff Kaufmann, following remarks from the governor. Mr. DeSantis’s stump speech focuses almost exclusively on policy, leaving out the biographical details that politicians are generally expected to supply. His wife seemed to try to fill in those gaps, telling personal stories about Mr. DeSantis’s childhood in Florida, his military service, and their three young children.“When he gets home, don’t think for a second that he goes and goes right to bed,” she said. “I hand three small kids over to him and I go to bed.”The moment resonated with the crowd. “There was a tender side to him, a family side, that I didn’t really have an appreciation for,” said Bob Carlson, a physician from Muscatine who was in the audience.Mr. DeSantis greeted supporters after making an unscheduled visit to the Jethro’s BBQ Southside in Des Moines on Saturday.Bryon Houlgrave/USA Today NetworkAs Mr. DeSantis builds toward an announcement, he is beginning to show other signs of political strength in ways that matter beyond having financial backing. The outing to Iowa — where he is expected to make a return visit fairly soon — came as a super PAC backing his all-but-official presidential campaign announced support from 37 state lawmakers. Local elected officials tend to pay less attention to national polls than members of Congress, who have been slower to endorse the governor.In contrast, Mr. Trump — who had scheduled a rally to try to blot out Mr. DeSantis’s visit by appearing on the same day — abruptly called off his own event in the middle of the afternoon, citing a tornado watch.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said the Iowa event was sold out but that “due to the National Weather Service’s Tornado Watch in effect in Polk and surrounding counties, we were unfortunately forced to postpone the event. We will be there at the first available date.”But although it rained heavily at points, it was sunny mid-afternoon and no severe weather such as a tornado materialized, which raised questions among Iowans about whether Mr. Trump was concerned he would fail to draw the crowd he had anticipated. The lack of dangerous storms was noted by local activists who want to see the party move on from Mr. Trump. “We’re all outside on a nice night,” the influential podcast host Steve Deace wrote on Twitter from the scene of Mr. DeSantis’s barbecue victory lap. “Pretty big crowd too. No severe weather in sight. Planes landing and taking off as scheduled.”While Mr. Trump canceled his Iowa appearance, he later called in to an event hosted by the ReAwaken America Tour, a Christian nationalist, far-right movement led by Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the QAnon promoter and national security adviser who Mr. Trump forced out early in his term. The group, which helps promote conspiracy theories, paid one of Mr. Trump’s clubs in Florida, the Doral, to hold it there. Mr. DeSantis’s hope for a win in the Iowa caucuses involves uniting a careful coalition of social conservatives who backed candidates like Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee in 2016, along with suburban moderates who went for Mr. Rubio.Yet Mr. DeSantis may be poised to pick up support from enough corners of the state to increase his support. For instance, the influential social conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats has met with the governor and has praised him publicly.Mr. DeSantis’s day was also punctuated with appearances with Senator Joni Ernst and Gov. Kim Reynolds, both Iowa Republicans. Those visits don’t necessarily mean endorsements from those officials are in the offing, but they do indicate a willingness in the state to support someone other than Mr. Trump and less concern than once existed about retribution from the former president.Bret Hayworth contributed reporting from Sioux Center, Iowa. More

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      in Elections

      It’s Been a Week. What Does It Tell Us About 2024?

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      The presidential race has started to crystallize, with flawed standard-bearers, worried political parties and voters unhappy with their choices.Eighteen months is an eternity in politics.But rapid-fire and high-profile events over the past week have set the tone and clarified the stakes of a still nascent presidential race featuring an incumbent president and a Republican front-runner whom many Americans, according to polling, do not want as their choices — but may feel resigned to accept.The week began with a surprising poll — probably an outlier — that showed President Biden losing to both former President Donald J. Trump and his closest presumptive primary competitor, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.Then in quick succession came a jury’s verdict holding Mr. Trump liable for sexual abuse, a raucous New Hampshire town hall that brought the former president’s falsehoods and bluster back into the spotlight, the lifting of pandemic-era controls at the U.S.-Mexico border, and a raft of endorsements for Mr. DeSantis — and an unscheduled visit to show up Mr. Trump — in Iowa that showed many Republican leaders are open to a Trump alternative.All of that left leaders, strategists and voters in both parties exceptionally anxious.“We’re in the midst of a primary that has yet to even really form, and meanwhile the opportunity to pound Biden into dirt with his incompetence is slipping,” said Dave Carney, a longtime Republican consultant in New Hampshire, where the first Republican primary votes will be cast in February. “It’s scattershot right now.”Democrats, who would be expected to rally around their standard-bearer, have spent the week expressing a divide on border security and questioning the president on key policy issues.Strategists have begged Democratic voters to get over their discontent and accept the president as the best they’re going to get.“Live in the real world,” Stuart Stevens, the longtime Republican political consultant who bolted from the party as Mr. Trump rose to power, exhorted after the New Hampshire town hall. “If you saw Donald Trump tonight and aren’t supporting Biden, you are helping elect Trump. It’s not complicated.”Representative Ro Khanna of California, a liberal Democrat often willing to say openly what other rank-and-file Democrats won’t, laid out a vision for economic renewal in a Friday speech in New Hampshire that contrasted the president’s more modest ambitions with his failure to secure the allegiance of white working-class voters whom Mr. Biden has said he is uniquely qualified to win back.“People are so desperate for some healing, for leadership that can unify,” Mr. Khanna told Democrats at a dinner in Nashua. “We do not need to compromise who we are to find common cause.”In an interview on Saturday, he said it was not meant to be a criticism. But it was “an appeal for a bolder platform that captures the imagination of working-class Americans and inspires them.”There’s no question that political predictions this far from an election are unreliable. Mr. DeSantis has yet to declare his candidacy for the White House, though he and Mr. Trump have been circling each other and competing in a shadow contest in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first contests for the Republican presidential nomination. Even Iowa voters tend not to tune in to the race until later in the year, noted David Kochel, a longtime Iowa Republican consultant.Still, the question of the moment remains: Where are we?Simon Rosenberg, who correctly predicted that a surge of Democratic activism would blunt the promised “red wave” of the 2022 midterms, said the “fear of MAGA” that powered Democratic victories in 2018, 2020 and 2022 had not diminished ahead of 2024. If anything, abortion bans rolling from state to state across the country, a disheartening surge in mass shootings and a Republican assault on educational freedom will only sharpen those fears, he said.Mr. Trump’s performance at a CNN town hall on Wednesday evening — in which the former president repeatedly lied about the 2020 election; mocked E. Jean Carroll, whose accusations of sexual abuse and defamation ended in a $5 million judgment against him; and promised a return to some of his least popular policies — only reiterated why Democrats, independents and disaffected Republicans have turned away from the G.O.P. in the key states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan and Pennsylvania.The Biden re-election campaign, now in full gear after his formal announcement last month, was making the case to reporters after the town hall, pointing to Mr. Trump’s pride in the overturning of Roe v. Wade; his dismissive take on the economic catastrophe that could ensue if the federal government defaults on its outstanding debt; his referring to Jan. 6, 2021, as “a beautiful day”; and his refusal to commit to accepting the 2024 election results.One Biden campaign adviser suggested that Mr. Trump had supplied a trove of material for attack ads. The campaign began posting videos almost immediately. Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down, called the 70-minute performance “over an hour of nonsense.”The crucial question for both parties in 2024 is how to retain the voters they have and regain those they have lost.“It’s hard to understand how someone could vote for Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024, given that Trump is just going to get more Trumpy,” Mr. Rosenberg said, adding, “I’d still much rather be us than them.”Mr. Rosenberg’s assessment may be why 37 Republican officials in Iowa, including the State Senate president, Amy Sinclair, and the House majority leader, Matt Windschitl, endorsed Mr. DeSantis last week, as did the New Hampshire House majority leader, Jason Osborne.Republican consultants in both states said Mr. Trump’s universal name recognition and political persona might give him the highest floor for Republican support, but the same factors lower the ceiling of that support, giving Mr. DeSantis and other challengers a real chance to take him down, if they are willing to take it.The Trump campaign seemed aware of that dynamic last week as it attacked would-be rivals, not only those clearly preparing to enter the race but also some far from it. On Saturday, Mr. Trump laid into Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, for being disloyal, just days after an article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution suggested the governor was keeping his options open.Mr. DeSantis has had his own stumbles out of the gate. His war with Disney has provided fodder for rivals who have questioned a Republican’s intrusion into the free market. His signing of a six-week abortion ban and his state’s aggressive censorship of school textbooks have raised questions among would-be Republican donors and swing voters alike. But the Florida governor also has plenty of time to make his case.“There’s a lot of game left to play, and I don’t see anything gelling yet,” Mr. Kochel said. “There’s still a lot of room for candidates not named Trump.”What Republicans seem most amazed by is the docility of Democrats in the face of Mr. Biden’s obvious weaknesses. Age and infirmity are real issues, not Republican talking points, consultants say.A Washington Post-ABC News poll published on Monday showed Mr. Biden losing head-to-head races against Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis by between five and six percentage points. Democratic pollsters have dismissed those results, pointing to anomalies like the poll’s showing Mr. Trump winning young voters outright while dramatically closing the gap with Mr. Biden for Black and Hispanic votes.Even so, there was much in the poll to undermine Mr. Biden’s claim that he, more than any other Democrat, can vanquish a Republican comeback just as he defeated Mr. Trump in 2020.Republicans say that’s just not possible.Mr. Carney said the dynamic would get worse, not better, as the 2024 campaign took shape. Chaotic scenes from the southwestern border in the coming weeks will inflame Republican voters’ fears of an “invasion” of illegal immigrants; the Republican National Committee on Friday held the president responsible for 1.4 million “gotaway” migrants that it said had crossed the border and disappeared into the interior since he took office.More important, the situation at the border could crystallize a sense among swing voters that Mr. Biden is simply not in control. With erstwhile allies like New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, and Chicago’s outgoing mayor, Lori Lightfoot, pleading for assistance with a flood of migrants, that conclusion will not be contained to Republican voters.The brewing showdown over how to raise the federal government’s borrowing limit threatens to provoke a catastrophic financial crisis as soon as next month. And while voters might blame Republicans in Congress at first, economic turmoil eventually ends up in the president’s lap.Perhaps Mr. Biden’s voters will not defect back to Mr. Trump, Republicans agree, but they could simply stay home on Election Day.“Democrats keep saying, ‘Oh, Trump’s so bad it doesn’t matter,’” Mr. Kochel said. “I don’t know. I think it matters.” More

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      in US Politics

      DeSantis secures endorsements on visit to Iowa in preparation for likely 2024 bid

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      Florida’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, has rolled out a hefty list of endorsements from Iowa lawmakers as he visited the crucial early-voting state on Saturday in an attempt to garner support for his potential Republican presidential campaign.The pro-DeSantis Super Pac Never Back Down announced endorsements from 37 Republican Iowa state senators and representatives, including the Iowa senate president, Amy Sinclair, and the state house majority leader, Matt Windschitl.In an interview with the Des Moines Register, Sinclair praised DeSantis, saying that he stands “head and shoulders” above other Republican presidential candidates including Donald Trump and that the choice is “an easy endorsement for me”.Windschitl echoed similar sentiments, telling the outlet: “We need somebody that’s accountable to the people that has proven in their state that they can do this job and take that same prosperity and spread it throughout America.”However, DeSantis is landing in Iowa – the first state in the Republican nomination process – after a tough few weeks. The Republican frontrunner, the former US president Donald Trump, has repeatedly attacked his ex-ally and holds a commanding lead in polls. An overseas trip by DeSantis was also seen as falling flat and he has struggled recently to impress some big Republican donors.On Saturday, DeSantis and his wife, Casey, attended the 2023 Feenstra Family Picnic hosted by the state representative Randy Feenstra in Sioux Center. DeSantis’s visit to the state is widely regarded as an early attempt at swaying Iowa Republicans, many of whom will attend an outdoor rally hosted by Trump later this evening in Des Moines.During the fundraiser, DeSantis boasted about his conservative accomplishments in Florida’s ongoing culture war, including abortion bans, blocking diversity and inclusion programs, and legislation that allows residents to carry concealed weapons without a government-issued permit.“In Florida, we are a freedom zone permanently,” DeSantis said, adding: “I think we need to restore sanity in this country,” as the crowd applauded loudly while eating hamburgers.“If you look at what’s going on in Washington DC, if we were sitting here ten years ago and someone told you we would be over $31tn in debt, you would not have believed that was the case and yet the Democrats keep borrowing and saving like drunken sailors,” he said ahead of the elections in which he is expected to soon formally announce his candidacy as Trump’s chief challenger.“If you compare how Florida’s managed or Iowa’s managed to states governed by leftist politicians, it’s like night and day,” DeSantis continued.The governor appeared to also take a veiled jab at Trump.“We must reject the culture of losing that has impacted our party in recent years. The time for excuses is over,” DeSantis said, referring to a series of electoral losses suffered by Republicans in the 2020 election and the 2022 midterms.“If we get distracted, if we focus the election on the past or on other side issues, then I think the Democrats are going to beat us again,” he told the crowd of several hundred conservatives. More