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      RFK Jr. Sought a Meeting With Kamala Harris to Discuss a Cabinet Post

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate whose standing has dropped in the polls, sought a meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris to discuss endorsing her in exchange for a promise of a cabinet post, according to two people briefed on the outreach who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.His effort has been unsuccessful. The news was first reported by The Washington Post.“We’ve reached out repeatedly through the highest level intermediaries,” Mr. Kennedy wrote in a text message on Wednesday night. “We’ve been told that they have no interest in talking with me.”There was little chance the Harris campaign would engage with Mr. Kennedy. Public and private polling has found that as he spent the summer attacking President Biden, he began to draw more support from voters otherwise predisposed to back former President Donald J. Trump. Now Ms. Harris does better in some surveys when Mr. Kennedy is included than when she is tested in a head-to-head matchup with Mr. Trump.Mr. Kennedy, long seen as a potential spoiler in the race, has slipped in polls and struggled to raise money, and he has appeared to consider potential off ramps as speculation has grown about whether he might drop out and, if so, whether he would endorse Ms. Harris or Mr. Trump.On Wednesday night, Mr. Kennedy wrote: “I’ve always argued that we should be willing to talk with each other across party lines. I’m willing to meet with leaders of both parties to discuss the possibility of a unity government.”The Post reported last month that Mr. Kennedy had held talks with Mr. Trump about a possible cabinet job, proposing a role in public health leadership, in exchange for his support. And in a leaked video of a phone call between the two men, Mr. Trump tried to cajole Mr. Kennedy to exit the race and endorse him.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump, Appealing to Bitcoin Fans, Vows U.S. Will Be ‘Crypto Capital of the Planet’

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      Former President Donald J. Trump vowed on Saturday that he would turn the United States into a “Bitcoin superpower” if returned to the White House, wielding much of the same rhetoric of persecution that he has applied to himself and his supporters to appeal to cryptocurrency enthusiasts who want to see less regulation.“Sadly, we see the attacks on crypto,” Mr. Trump told a gathering of cryptocurrency fans in Nashville. “It’s a part of a much larger pattern that’s being carried out by the same left-wing fascists to weaponize government against any threat to their power. They’ve done it to me.”He added that, if he were elected, “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s anti-crypto crusade will be over” and that “the moment I’m sworn in, the persecution stops and the weaponization ends against your industry.”Mr. Trump has been competing with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate, for the support of cryptocurrency holders, and his remarks represented one of his most direct pitches yet.Three large crypto firms have invested about $150 million to elect pro-crypto candidates in congressional races. In his speech, Mr. Trump promoted himself as “the first major party nominee in American history to accept donations in Bitcoin and crypto,” adding that his campaign has raised $25 million from cryptocurrency donations in the last two months.The former president offered promises of sweeping deregulation and the establishment of a “strategic national Bitcoin stockpile.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tucker Carlson, Ousted by Fox, Roars Into Milwaukee as a Top Trump Ally

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      After time away from the spotlight, the right-wing host is increasingly welcomed by Trump’s inner circle. He also made a surprise visit to Fox’s convention studio.All of a sudden, Tucker Carlson has roared back to the forefront of Republican politics.Once the top-rated anchor on Fox News — only to be abruptly ousted 15 months ago, his national platform yanked out from under his feet — Mr. Carlson has made an improbable re-emergence into America’s living rooms at this week’s Republican National Convention.He was the first person to greet Donald J. Trump after the former president’s dramatic entrance in the convention hall on Monday, and cameras later caught them joking together in Mr. Trump’s friends and family box, just two seats apart. He is even returning to prime time: Mr. Carlson is set to deliver a televised address to the convention on Thursday in a coveted slot shortly before Mr. Trump accepts his party’s nomination.Mr. Carlson once electrified Fox viewers with racial grievances and flimflam conspiracy theories. Spurned by the network, he found mixed success with a self-produced video series on X and a subscription streaming service that failed to generate much buzz, although a recent pivot to lengthy, Joe Roganesque podcasts has attracted more listeners.But behind the scenes over the past year, Mr. Carlson has become more deeply allied with Mr. Trump than at any point in his long relationship with the former president, a man for whom the broadcaster once expressed deep ambivalence.Mr. Carlson lobbied Mr. Trump to select Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, who had been a frequent guest on his Fox show, as his running mate, and he helped broker a meeting in Milwaukee between Mr. Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate.He and a longtime producer of his shows, Justin Wells, recently visited Mar-a-Lago to pitch Mr. Trump on a fly-on-the-wall docuseries about his campaign. Mr. Trump granted access, and the series is set to be released on Mr. Carlson’s streaming platform before the election; Mr. Wells and a cameraman were filming several feet away from the former president in Pennsylvania on Saturday when he was shot by a would-be assassin.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Tries to Coax RFK Jr. Into His Camp in Leaked Phone Call

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      A leaked video of Donald J. Trump calling Robert F. Kennedy Jr. offered a behind-the-scenes look into the former president’s efforts to coax Mr. Kennedy out of the presidential race and into his camp.On Mr. Kennedy’s speaker phone, Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee, can be heard offering up the kind of anti-vaccine message that Mr. Kennedy is known for. Mr. Trump also reveals details of his call with President Biden, saying “it was very nice.” And he tells Mr. Kennedy, seemingly in an effort to win his support: “I would love you to do something. And I think it’ll be so good for you and so big for you. And we’re going to win.”Mr. Kennedy, the iconoclastic but struggling independent candidate, apologized for the leak almost immediately on X, the same social media site where the video appeared.“When President Trump called me I was taping with an in-house videographer,” he wrote. “I should have ordered the videographer to stop recording immediately. I am mortified that this was posted.”On the call, Mr. Trump marveled that he had been shot by an AR-15-type weapon, the sort of military-style rifle Mr. Biden wants to ban — “pretty tough guns, right?” He also recounted telling the president how lucky he was to avoid his would-be assassin’s bullet.“It felt like the world’s largest mosquito,” he told Mr. Kennedy of the bullet wound to his ear. More

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      National and World Leaders Condemn the Shooting at Trump’s Rally

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      Leaders across the United States and the world condemned the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday at his rally in Butler, Pa. President Biden, a wide array of prominent Democratic figures and other political opponents of the former president were among those who quickly condemned the violence, called for national unity and prayed for Mr. Trump’s safety.Mr. Biden, who was being briefed by national security officials in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, issued a written statement later in the evening.“I have been briefed on the shooting at Donald Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania,” Mr. Biden said in the statement. “I’m grateful to hear that he’s safe and doing well. I’m praying for him and his family and for all those who were at the rally.”He continued: “There’s no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation to condemn it.”The top Republicans in Congress — Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana — and their Democratic counterparts — Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York — also quickly published statements denouncing the shooting.“My thoughts and prayers are with former President Trump,” Mr. Jeffries said, adding, “America is a democracy. Political violence of any kind is never acceptable.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kennedy Sent Apologetic Text to Woman Who Accused Him of Sexual Assault

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      The independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. privately apologized last week to a woman who accused him of sexual assault in a recent magazine article, The Washington Post reported on Friday.The woman, Eliza Cooney, now 48, had worked for Mr. Kennedy’s family as a weekend babysitter in her early 20s, the year she graduated from college, and at the same time was an intern at his environmental legal clinic at Pace Law School in White Plains, N.Y. In an article in Vanity Fair last week, she said Mr. Kennedy made unwanted sexual advances toward her while she was at his family home in the late 1990s, including by groping her in a pantry.Ms. Cooney told The Post that Mr. Kennedy had called her twice on July 3 of this year, after the Vanity Fair article had run, and then sent her two text messages, which she also showed to The New York Times.“I hope you are well,” he wrote in the first message. “Please call me if you have a moment.”In the second, sent shortly after midnight, he wrote: “I read your description of an episode in which I touched you in an unwanted manner. I have no memory of this incident, but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable or anything I did or said that offended you or hurt your feelings.”He said he hoped she would be willing to speak to him over the phone or in person.Mr. Kennedy declined to comment on the messages or on Ms. Cooney’s allegations. In a podcast interview last week, after the Vanity Fair article came out, he declined to address her allegations but said he was not a “church boy.” He added, “I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.”Ms. Cooney did not respond to his outreach, and did not welcome it, she told The Times. “Sending a text at 12:33 a.m. is not considering his actions’ effects on someone else — me,” she said. “At that time, on Fourth of July weekend, the last thing I wanted to do was talk to him.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Raises Just $2.6 Million

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign has depended heavily on contributions from Nicole Shanahan, his vice-presidential pick, who did not make major new donations in May.Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign raised just $2.6 million in May, a paltry sum that speaks to how reliant his bid has become on his running mate, the wealthy Silicon Valley lawyer Nicole Shanahan.The Kennedy campaign raised less in May than it had in any previous month in 2024, according to filings on Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission. That was in large part because Ms. Shanahan, who has poured millions into their independent presidential campaign, barely contributed any additional money in May.The total raised by Mr. Kennedy was essentially the same as what he raised in April, not counting Ms. Shanahan: He brought in $10.7 million that month, but $8 million came from her. Earlier, when he announced her as his running mate in March, she almost immediately threw $2 million behind the campaign.Mr. Kennedy ended May with $6.4 million on hand. And yet that figure is only somewhat revealing about his financial position because of the looming possibility that Ms. Shanahan, at a moment’s notice, could inject more money into their bid. She has been able to do so directly because while campaign finance laws bar people from donating more than $3,300 to a campaign, candidates themselves can give unlimited sums of their own money.And Ms. Shanahan, a philanthropist who was once married to the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, is said to have access to over $1 billion. She has not signaled if there is a limit to how much she might spend.Mr. Kennedy and his allies have some unique costs associated with their campaign — primarily ballot-access work that can be expensive.His campaign spent about $6.3 million in May, but almost half of that was routed through a limited liability company that focuses on ballot access. The money laid out was labeled “campaign consulting,” making his precise expenditures somewhat opaque. More

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      Kennedy Vows to Cut Military Budget in Half

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate, said this week that he would cut military spending by half by the end of his first term as president, and said the United States should have a reduced role in global affairs.“Military spending is a constant drain on our nation’s vitality,” Mr. Kennedy said in an hourlong speech on Wednesday evening at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in California, adding that “obsessed with the idea of our nation’s strength, we ignore the growing infirmity at our core.”Mr. Kennedy has long assailed American military spending and defense contractors, but his speech at the Nixon Library, which partly focused on foreign policy, painted a grim picture of American decline over the last 60 years and laid out a radically different vision of America’s place on the world stage.He said the United States should accept a diminished role in global affairs, divert much of the nation’s security spending to domestic programs, and prepare for a multipolar world — where other powerful countries like China and Russia would have increased influence and America would not be the sole global superpower.“We seem to think that we’re still where we were — in the same world as in 1991,” Mr. Kennedy said, referring to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. He added: “We are stuck in that past. Any nation, or for that matter any individual, can maintain an illusion like that only at an ever increasing cost.”Mr. Kennedy’s vow to aggressively reduce national security spending stands in stark contrast to the trajectory of global military spending, which has reached a 35-year high, driven in part by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Kennedy, as an independent, would also have few allies in Congress to help him fulfill that promise, and there has typically been strong support for military spending in Congress. The defense budget for 2025 is currently capped at about $895 billion, though Democrats and Republicans are mulling a further increase.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More