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      Why New Hampshire could be the last chance for Republicans to beat Trump

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      Brightly dressed in a red-and-white starry jacket, Melinda Tourangeau was waiting eagerly at Grill 603, a casual diner in small-town New Hampshire, for a US presidential candidate not named Donald Trump.Tourangeau, 57, who lives in Milford, was “reluctantly forced to vote for Trump” in 2016 and 2020, she said. “I had to leave my morals at the door.”But this time she is supporting Nikki Haley. “She has gone all over the state to meet people, and when she meets you, and when you meet her, you feel raised, you feel like you’re a better person after you’ve met her. And her platform is brilliant – clear, concise, cogent – and she intends to do everything she says. She’s the right candidate.”Whether this is a minority view, or indicative of tectonic plates shifting among Republicans in New Hampshire, will be put to the test in Tuesday’s first-in-the-nation primary election. It comes one week after Trump’s record victory over Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and Haley, an ex-US ambassador to the UN, in the Iowa caucuses.For half the century, no candidate who won both Iowa and New Hampshire has failed to secure their party’s presidential nomination. Victory for Trump here would probably seal the deal and set up a rematch with Democrat Joe Biden in November.But if Iowa played to Trump’s strengths among evangelical Christians and rural conservatives, New Hampshire is a different proposition. Its voters pride themselves on an independent streak – the state motto is “Live free or die” – and are generally wealthier, more educated and less religious. Both states are about 90% white.Voters who are registered without a party affiliation make up about 40% of the electorate in New Hampshire and are eligible to cast a Republican primary ballot, which makes them more moderate than in Iowa. New voters can also register at the polls on Tuesday.For Trump, whose authoritarian language, criminal charges and brash populism play less well among college-educated voters, this represents something of an away game. Even in the Iowa suburbs last week, he won only a third of the votes.Haley has a more “Republican classic” image – less extreme on issues such as abortion, more hawkish on foreign policy – and has been barnstorming New Hampshire for months. Although her third place finish in Iowa blunted her momentum, and some opinion polls still show Trump well ahead in New Hampshire, others put Haley running neck and neck.That makes Tuesday a make-or-break moment. EJ Dionne, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said at a panel discussion organised by the thinktank: “There is a road for her but it’s rocky, it’s rutted, it’s narrow and it runs along the edge of a cliff. She has to win New Hampshire, I believe, to have any chance of going on. I don’t think running Trump close in New Hampshire will really cut it any more, especially after running third in Iowa.”Trump apparently senses the danger and has stepped up his attacks on Haley. At a rally in Concord on Friday, he told supporters: “All you need to know about Nikki Haley is that every corrupt and sinister group we’ve been fighting for the past seven years is on her side … Nikki Haley is backed by the deep state and the military-industrial complex. She’s never seen a war she doesn’t like.”He has also resorted to his default tactic of using race and ethnicity as a political cudgel. In a post on his Truth Social account, Trump repeatedly referred to Haley, the daughter of immigrants from India, as “Nimbra”. She was born as Nimarata Nikki Randhawa but has always gone by her middle name.Asked about Trump’s false claim that her heritage disqualifies her from running from president, Haley told reporters: “I’ll let people decide what he means by his attacks. What we know is, look, he’s clearly insecure if he goes and does these temper tantrums, if he’s spending millions of dollars on TV. He’s insecure, he knows that something’s wrong.”She has also been returning fire by making a case that, while Trump was the right choice for president in 2016, he is now too old and chaos follows him wherever he goes. She is seeking to thread a needle, appealing to independents as the more acceptable face of the Republican party while not entirely alienating Trump’s “Make America great again” base.Such calculations have led her into trouble. Last month, when she was asked by a New Hampshire voter about the reason for the civil war, she did not mention slavery in her answer. Last week, in an interview on Fox News, she claimed: “We’ve never been a racist country.”But even if Haley does pull off a stunning upset, she would then head into less favourable territory next month in Nevada and her home state of South Carolina. It is also difficult for any candidate to compete with the attention-grabbing spectacle of Trump, facing 91 charges across four cases, showing up in courtrooms even as he runs for president.Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, predicts that he will win the New Hampshire primary. “There are some people who are hoping and praying and wishing that Nikki Haley can overtake him, which would be interesting, but again, fleeting in her success because she will go to South Carolina and lose by 30 points in her own home state. I cannot think of any example in political history where losing in your own home state by double digits has been a momentum booster.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe added: “Some are looking at New Hampshire and thinking, well, depending on how Trump does, this could be indicative of his weakness in the general election. Perhaps. But there is a certain desire by the political media for a story and the horse race, and they’re looking for anything to write other than the inevitability of Trump, because once that happens, then people may tune out because they’re bored.”DeSantis got about 21% of the vote in Iowa, 30 points behind Trump’s narrow majority and two points ahead of Haley. He has spent little time in New Hampshire, aware that his mini-Trump persona and joyless campaign are unlikely to gain traction with either the Maga base or independents. He may soldier on to Nevada and South Carolina, playing for second in case Trump is unexpectedly felled by his age or legal troubles, and with an eye on another run in 2028.Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster, told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute thinktank in Washington last week: “His appeal overlaps so much with Donald Trump. Even though he and Donald Trump have sparred a little bit throughout this race, it hasn’t got super nasty. And all of the polling I see, Nikki Haley’s favourables are not great-great but Ron DeSantis’s are still pretty great-great among Republican voters.“Even though I don’t see a path for him – he’s going to get single digits in New Hampshire and go to South Carolina, I don’t know where this all ends – I do think I can see why he wants to stay in and be relevant as long as he can, because he does have a shot at being able to say: ‘I’m the second place guy if there is an in-case-of-emergency-break-glass situation.’”Meanwhile Democrats are also holding a primary on Tuesday but Biden is skipping it because the state defies new Democratic rules he advocates. The president will not be on the ballot alongside nearly two dozen candidates but his allies in the state have mounted a campaign to get voters to write in his name. The result will have no bearing on the Democratic nomination but could deal Biden a symbolic blow.Another tradition missing from the final week in New Hampshire is debates. Haley, angling to frame the primary as a battle between Trump and herself, had suggested that she would debate only if he was on stage. But the former president has skipped every debate so far and paid no price. Two televised debates for the final New Hampshire sprint were duly cancelled.Indeed, Trump is already campaigning as if he were already in a general election against Biden, focusing his invective on border security and rising prices. At a rally in Atkinson, New Hampshire, this week he told supporters: “Our country is dying … And I stand before you today as the only candidate who is up to the task of saving America.” He promised to “make our country rich as hell again”.There are also ominous signs of the Republican party coalescing around him, just as it did in 2016. Primary rivals Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota; Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur; and Tim Scott, a senator for South Carolina, all endorsed Trump after dropping out of the race. A constellation of senators, representatives, governors, and former White House and cabinet officials have done likewise, lending his nomination a sense of inevitability.Back in Milford, despite all the criminal charges and his past conduct towards women, Tourangeau admitted that she would still vote for Trump if he is the Republican nominee come November, not least because of her retirement savings plan.“I will have the sickest feeling in my stomach as I begrudgingly walk to the polls with my head down, and I will cast a vote for him,” she said. “But it’s only because my 401k will be bursting.” More

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      ‘God spoke to me’: Ryan Binkley’s quixotic quest for the Republican nod

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      In a movie, Ryan Binkley would be storming towards the presidency.At more than 6ft tall, with a strong jaw and an athletic physique, Binkley looks the quintessential Hollywood vision of a political leader. The long-shot Republican candidate for president wears well-cut suits and has a full head of dark brown hair. He has a lovely set of teeth, nice shiny shoes, and he smells nice.But Binkley’s problem? No one knows who he is.The Texan, a pastor and co-founder of a financial services company, has spent more than $8m of his own money on his quixotic presidential campaign. He has been running for president for more than nine months: three-quarters of a year spent in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.The sum total of his efforts so far has been almost zero attention from US media, a lot of puzzlement when he introduces himself to people, and 774 votes in Iowa.On Thursday night Binkley strode confidently into one of his political events, held in a back room of a bar in Manchester, New Hampshire. There was a broad grin fixed on his face, and his right palm was pre-extended, ready to shake the hands of potential voters.That didn’t take long. Only two people had turned up. And they weren’t eligible to vote in New Hampshire.“You know, I’ve been to meetings with one person in it,” Binkley said. “It’s disheartening sometimes, but you know, you do it 200 times and you get used to it.”Binkley is trying to sell people his version of Republicanism: budget balancing and small government, with a heavy dash of Christianity-inspired social conservatism. It’s the faith bit that inspired Binkley to run for president.“I am a business owner, I’m a pastor,” he said.“And God spoke to me many years ago about this. It became increasingly clear that he had a message for our country that … I think is this: we are so far in debt, we’re at a precipice. Something’s coming financially that we’re not ready for. I don’t know what it is.”It would be unfair to paint Binkley as solely a religious candidate – even if his campaign literature stresses that one of his aims is “restoring trust in God and each other”.Binkley has a plan to balance the US budget, and would rein in health insurance companies so Americans can receive better medical care. If elected president, he would “focus on people truly struggling financially”, he said, by improving education and offering job training.Binkley has a proper written-out platform, and can talk at length about his ideas. But there’s no one listening.As the event in Manchester continued it took on a tragicomic air. His sole member of staff had ambitiously laid out Binkley baseball caps, T-shirts and signs, and there was food and an open bar.But only four more people showed up, and only one of them lived in New Hampshire and was actually eligible to vote. He wasn’t fully sold on Binkley.“There’s so many candidates that are coming in and out of the race, you just kind of have to see what’s available the day of. It’s like going to the market. I maintain an open mind,” said Jason Barabas. He’s a professor of government at Dartmouth College, an Ivy League university in New Hampshire, and there was a sense that he was there as an anthropological exercise.“New Hampshire is famously independent, people really like to meet candidates,” Barabas said when asked about Binkley’s chances.“So a lot of New Hampshire voters will appreciate this exact moment, which is he’s coming to New Hampshire trying to meet with voters. I think that’s going to be really impactful for a lot of people.”Binkley’s event was competing against a trivia night taking place in the main bar. Once that had finished, Binkley’s campaign staffer, a pleasant person apparently well-practiced in remaining positive, went round to try to lure people to Binkley’s event. But not even the open bar could tempt a crowd that had largely never heard of the candidate.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I just looked him up. He’s this guy,” said one woman triumphantly, after the Guardian pointed at Binkley and asked if she knew who he was.Did she plan to vote for him?“Probably not, no. I don’t even know his party affiliation.”The next day, at the Red Arrow Diner, a must-visit location for presidential candidates whose walls are adorned with photos of politicians including Binkley’s rivals Donald Trump, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, there was a bit more success.No one was at the diner specifically to meet Binkley, but he seemed to get on well with the smattering of people eating their lunch. A huddle of female staff were impressed too.“He’s so handsome!” one worker said as Binkley loitered at the end of the counter.“Who is he?”Binkley, a high school football star who has an MBA from Southern Methodist University, may have made his money in finance, but it is Create church, the Christian church he co-founded with his wife, Ellie, that appears to be his passion. Housed in a gigantic building just north of Dallas, it’s the kind of modern American church where a band plays electric guitars and keyboards on stage, and parishioners raise both hands in the air and close their eyes as they pray.It is going to take a lot of prayer for Binkley to have a breakout moment on Tuesday, even if his goals for the primary are almost upsettingly low.At the diner, he giddily pointed out that a New Hampshire poll released on Wednesday has him polling four points behind Ron DeSantis, but he failed to mention that the poll had DeSantis at just 6%, and Binkley at 2% of the vote – with a margin of error of plus or minus 3%.“Man, if I could get 2 or 3%, and keep moving up in the polls, that’d be a win for me,” he said.To Binkley’s mind, 3% of the vote here, after the 0.7% he won in Iowa, would represent a sort of rolling progress that could see him win exposure and support. But in any case, for this unknown, religious, good-looking, would-be president, the decision on whether to stay in the race is out of his hands.“I feel like our message will connect,” Binkley said.“And I’m keep standing until it’s heard, and until I feel like God tells me to hang up the cleats.” More

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      Trump takes on ‘dictator’ Biden as his upside down show moves to New Hampshire

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      Snow was falling, lightly dusting the tables full of “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president” and “Fight for Trump” and other “Make America great again” regalia. Still, in subzero temperatures, people waited in a long and winding line on Saturday for a chance to see their greatest showman.Donald Trump, the former US president, was about to hold the biggest campaign rally yet in New Hampshire’s primary elections, where victory would put him within touching distance of the 2024 Republican nomination – and trigger renewed warnings that democracy itself will be on the ballot in November.But his ardent supporters in Manchester, New Hampshire, saw things differently – 180 degrees differently. In their view it is Joe Biden who acts like an autocrat and Trump who is the saviour of the constitutional republic.The ex-president has long deployed strategy in which accusations against him are flipped and turned on the accuser. And the rally, and this election season so far, is proof that it’s working.“The funny thing is that everything the other side seems to accuse Trump of they’re guilty of themselves,” said Steve Baird, 52, a chief financial officer. “I feel more that Biden seems to be running the country like a dictator with all his executive orders and everything else.“Trump might be a billionaire but I feel more of a connection, that he’s more of a president for the people and that he’ll follow the constitution more than what the current establishment is doing.”During a presidential election debate in 2016, when Hillary Clinton called Trump a “puppet” of Russian president Vladimir Putin, he interjected: “No puppet. You’re the puppet.”Trump has perfected this twist of message over the years. In his inverted mirror, “fake news” refers not to online disinformation but a corrupt media ranged against Trump; the threat to democracy stems not from election lies but the weaponisation of the justice department; minority rule is less about gerrymandering than the radical left imposing big government, open borders and “woke” ideology.‘We’re living in dictatorship right now’There is no greater symbol of this reversal than the deadly January 6 insurrection, for which more than 1,200 people have been charged and nearly 900 have been convicted or pleaded guilty. Collectively they have been sentenced to more than 840 years in prison. Yet in Trump’s telling, they are “patriots” and, more recently, “hostages” whom he intends to pardon.Interviews in Manchester, where thousands of Trump supporters packed a sports arena in a show of force that spelled out the challenge facing primary rivals Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, demonstrated that this strategy, amplified by rightwing media, has soaked into the grassroots. If the 2024 election is a battle for democracy, they believe Trump is on the right side of history.Derek Levine, 52, a commercial airline pilot who served for 23 years in the air force, was wearing a “Trump: Save America again” cap. “Trump has already been a president once and he wasn’t a dictator then,” he said.“We’re seeing a dictator right now with weaponizing the FBI against conservative people, calling parents in Virginia who are concerned about what their kids are being taught domestic terrorists. That’s a dictator; not what Trump did.”Jenna Driquier, 31, a hairdresser, added: “We’re living in dictatorship right now. The high prices, trying to get to communism, it’s not what this country was founded on.”The struggle over perception is a struggle over language. As Biden and his allies frequently stress the need to protect democracy at home and abroad, Trump has co-opted the word, repeating it ad nauseam, draining it of meaning and establishing a false equivalence between a man who has served in Washington for half a century and one who attempted a coup.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt Saturday’s rally, early in a speech lasting more than an hour-and-a-half, a giant screen above Trump’s head stated in stark black and white: “Biden attacks democracy.”The Republican frontrunner, wearing his customary dark suit, white shirt and red tie, said: “He is a threat to democracy. He really is. He’s a threat to democracy. We have to get him out. You know why he’s a threat to democracy? A couple of reasons but you know the first reason? He’s grossly incompetent.”Trump, facing 91 criminal charges, accused Biden of weaponising the justice department against him and railed against the president’s “protectors” in the “fake news” media.He did also pivot to attack Haley, seen as his strongest challenger in New Hampshire. Messages on the big screen included: “Nikki Haley is loved by Democrats, Wall Street & Globalists.” In a further piece of political theatre, Trump invited Governor Henry McMaster and other officials from South Carolina to assure him the state will vote in his favour, even though it is Haley’s home turf.Notably, he spent less time on Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who finished second in the Iowa caucuses but is polling weakly in New Hampshire. “You notice I haven’t mentioned the name of Ron DeSanctimonious yet,” he said “I think he’s gone.”Trump addressed a flippant remark that he made on Fox News vowing to be a dictator on “day one”, insisting that he had been unfairly edited. But some of his other comments left room for speculation about his authoritarian impulses.He argued that presidents should be immune from criminal prosecution once they have left office, a case his lawyers are attempting to make as he prepares to stand trial for election subversion. He said of the media: “These are sick people. We have to straighten out our free press.”He heaped praise on Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán and casually observed: “It’s nice to have a strong man running your country.” And for good measure, in a bizarre closing riff accompanied by hypnotic music, he again referred to those imprisoned for their part in the January 6 riot as “hostages”.The crowd went home happy. More

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      Haley Questions Trump’s Mental Fitness After He Mistakes Her for Pelosi

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      Nikki Haley on Saturday escalated her attacks on Donald J. Trump, directly criticizing his mental acuity for the first time a day after the former president appeared to confuse her for Nancy Pelosi, the former House Speaker, during his Friday night rally in New Hampshire.In a news conference with reporters after her campaign event in Peterborough, N.H., Ms. Haley stopped short of calling Mr. Trump mentally unfit. But she did question whether he would be “on it” enough to lead the nation.“My parents are up in age, and I love them dearly,” she said. “But when you see them hit a certain age, there is a decline. That’s a fact — ask any doctor, there is a decline.”At his rally, the former president accused Ms. Haley of failing to provide proper security during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and connected her to the House committee that later investigated it. Ms. Haley, who was not holding a government role at the time of the attack, had been at home in South Carolina that day, according to campaign officials.The former governor of South Carolina and a United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley, 52, opened her presidential bid this year with calls for “new generational leadership” and mental competency tests for candidates who are 75 or older. Though she has continued to emphasize those calls throughout her candidacy, she has reserved her most pointed attacks about mental fitness for President Biden and Congress, which she calls “the most privileged nursing home in the country.”The last time she came this close to knocking Mr. Trump directly was in October, after he criticized Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and referred to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, as “very smart.” Responding to those remarks, Ms. Haley said: “To go and criticize the head of a country who just saw massive bloodshed — no, that’s not what we need in a president.”Since her election night speech after the Iowa caucuses, Ms. Haley has been sharpening her case against the former president, lumping Mr. Trump with Mr. Biden as backward-looking and barriers to an American revival. At her event in Keene, N.H., she criticized Mr. Trump on his leadership tone and asked the audience if they really wanted two “fellas” in their 80s competing for the presidency.“I wasn’t even in D.C. on Jan. 6 — I wasn’t in office then,” she told the audience on Friday.In a subsequent news conference, she suggested that the country was in too vulnerable of a state to have a leader who is mentally unfit.“It’s a concern, and it’s what Americans should be thinking about,” she said. More

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      To Undercut Haley, Trump Will Surround Himself With SC Leaders

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      Pressing his advantage over Nikki Haley in the homestretch before the New Hampshire primary, Donald J. Trump will surround himself with South Carolina leaders, including Ms. Haley’s successor as governor, at a rally Saturday night to portray her as politically friendless at home, two Trump campaign officials said.The former president plans the show of strength to add to his own momentum before Tuesday’s voting and to highlight Ms. Haley’s lack of support in her home state, the officials said, insisting on anonymity to discuss campaign strategy.Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina, who endorsed Mr. Trump in November 2022, shortly after he announced his third presidential bid, will speak to voters in Manchester, N.H. He will be joined by the state’s lieutenant governor, Pamela Evette; Alan Wilson, the attorney general; Curtis Loftis, the treasurer; Murrell Smith, the speaker of the Statehouse; and three congressmen from the state, Joe Wilson, William Timmons and Russell Fry.One campaign adviser said the traveling slate of South Carolinians was meant to help Mr. Trump make the case that he has presented since his landslide victory in Iowa: that overtaking him is so unlikely that his rivals should suspend their campaigns so he and the Republican Party can focus on defeating President Biden in November.The guest appearances could humiliate Ms. Haley and further undermine her case for the nomination by illustrating how isolated she appears to be in her own state, where the Republican primary will be held on Feb. 24. And the South Carolina group backing Mr. Trump on Saturday will follow the state’s junior senator, Tim Scott, who endorsed Mr. Trump in Concord, N.H., on Friday.Ms. Haley is not without support in South Carolina, where she served as governor from 2011 to 2017, when Mr. Trump appointed her as ambassador to the United Nations. She has the backing of Representative Ralph Norman and Katon Dawson, a former state Republican chairman, along with a small number of South Carolina legislators.When asked at a campaign stop in Peterborough, N.H., about Mr. McMaster’s campaigning with Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley fired back: “I’m sorry, is that the person I ran against for governor and beat? Just check it.” Ms. Haley defeated Mr. McMaster in a 2010 primary, and he then promptly endorsed her.She also suggested that her inability to win high-profile supporters both in her home state and in Washington came from her willingness to pressure state lawmakers and veto their pet projects when she was governor, along with her criticism of Congress on the campaign trail.“If Donald Trump wants all his politicians, and they all want to go to him, they can have at it,” Ms. Haley said. “But that’s everything I’m fighting against.”Ms. Haley’s path to the nomination likely hangs on a victory or a close second-place finish in New Hampshire, where independent voters make up 40 percent of the electorate. Though Mr. Trump maintains a large lead in the polls, Ms. Haley has narrowed that lead recently, effectively making the primary a two-person race in the state.But Ms. Haley would need to follow a strong performance in New Hampshire with another one in South Carolina, where Mr. Trump enjoys a large and loyal following. He leads in South Carolina polls by a wide margin and can also count on support there from Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally.Campaigning on Saturday in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was asked about South Carolina elected officials’ endorsing Mr. Trump. “Iowa Republican leadership lined up behind me, and we came in second,” Mr. DeSantis told reporters. “So I think there’s a limit to what the leadership can do.”The Trump campaign is eager to force both Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis from the race before the South Carolina primary, hoping to avert what could otherwise be an expensive fight for delegates lasting through March.As the New Hampshire primary nears, Mr. Trump has increasingly escalated and sharpened his attacks on Ms. Haley. He now often argues that while she did an adequate job in his administration, she does not have what it takes to lead on her own.“She is not presidential timber,” Mr. Trump said bluntly in Concord on Friday.Mr. Trump has also repeatedly tried to backpedal on his past praise of Ms. Haley, claiming frequently that he appointed her ambassador to the United Nations only to clear the way for Mr. McMaster to become governor.Jazmine Ulloa More

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      Mocking Haley, Trump Adds to His Long History of Racist Attacks

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      Donald J. Trump first established his connection with the largely white Republican base more than a decade ago by stoking discomfort with the election of Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president — the beginning of the so-called birther movement.In the years since, he has continued to pile up accusations of racism on the campaign trail. This week, Mr. Trump lobbed his latest racially charged attack at former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, the daughter of Indian immigrants and his closest competitor in the New Hampshire primary, by repeatedly flubbing her given name, Nimarata Nikki Randhawa.On Friday, Mr. Trump referred to Ms. Haley as “Nimbra” in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform, three days after facing criticism for dubbing her “Nimrada.” Ms. Haley has long gone by her middle name, Nikki.Both are racist dog whistles, much like his continued focus on Mr. Obama’s middle name, Hussein, and add to a long history of racially incendiary statements from the campaign trail.Ms. Haley told reporters on Friday that Mr. Trump’s attacks revealed his own insecurities about the presidential contest.“If he goes and does these temper tantrums, if he’s going and spending millions of dollars on TV, he’s insecure — he knows that something’s wrong,” she said. “I don’t sit there and worry about whether it’s personal or what he means.”At a rally for Ms. Haley in Manchester on Friday, supporters said they were glad the former governor was countering Mr. Trump’s accusations.“This is a continuation of the bullying and the third-grade behavior that should have him grounded,” said Kathy Holland, 75, a retired business owner. “We deserve leaders who act grown up.”Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, said that those raising concerns about Mr. Trump’s handling of race were themselves guilty of “faux outrage racism.”“They should get a life and live in the real world,” Mr. Cheung said.Mr. Trump’s history with the subject dates back years before his formal entry into politics.In February 2011, Mr. Trump started pushing the racist lie that Mr. Obama was not a U.S. citizen when he was testing the waters of a potential presidential campaign. Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, discussed the so-called birther issue on almost a nightly basis that April, until Mr. Obama showed reporters his birth certificate later that month.By then, a CNN poll showed Mr. Trump tied for first in a hypothetical primary. While Mr. Trump opted to return for another season of “The Celebrity Apprentice” as the reality television show’s host instead of running for president, he ran in 2016 on similar themes.That year, he questioned the citizenship of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, the first Latino senator from the state, who was born in Canada. Mr. Cruz’s mother is American, which automatically conferred citizenship.During his failed 2020 re-election bid, he falsely claimed that Kamala Harris, who would become the first woman and first person of color to be elected vice president, did not meet the country’s citizenship requirements.This month, he returned to that familiar playbook by accusing Ms. Haley on social media of not being a real American eligible for the presidency — even as he was defending his own legal eligibility for the ballot under the Constitution.“I’ll let the president’s social media post speak for itself,” Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said last week at an event hosted by Bloomberg News.After the New Hampshire contest on Tuesday, attention in the Republican primary will turn mostly to South Carolina, Ms. Haley’s home state, which has its own history of racially charged politics.In February 2000, after Senator John McCain won a come-from-behind victory over George W. Bush in the New Hampshire primary, he was the target of a smear campaign in South Carolina. The attacks falsely claimed that Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, was a drug addict and that the couple’s daughter Bridget, whom they adopted from Bangladesh, was the product of an illicit union.“Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president,” some voters were asked in phone calls, “if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate Black child?”Michael Gold contributed reporting. More

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      Haley’s Policy Pitch Recalls a Bygone Era Before Trump’s Rise

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      Nikki Haley’s calls for muscular international engagement and cuts to future Social Security benefits have elicited withering attacks from Donald J. Trump. They used to be Republican orthodoxy.Nikki Haley is appealing to voters with policies that recall an era when the Republican Party stood for a fiscal conscience and foreign policy leadership, at a time when the most sacred of federal programs and the international alliances that built the post-World War II era are under enormous strain.But the voice of contemporary Republican politics, Donald J. Trump, has been there to attack those appeals virtually ever day. On Tuesday, the voters of New Hampshire may decide whether the party can find a path back from Mr. Trump’s big government domestic policy and his isolationism abroad.Ms. Haley’s proposals to raise the retirement age for young workers and trim benefits for the wealthy while protecting Social Security and Medicare benefits for those at or near retirement age may sound familiar to any but the youngest voters. They’re the essentially same plans put forward by Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul D. Ryan in the losing presidential campaign of 2012, and are of a piece with then-President George W. Bush’s failed efforts to transform Social Security from a federally guaranteed pension system to something more akin to a private 401(k) plan.Mr. Romney’s 2012 proposals were taken from the bipartisan commission assembled to address the budget deficit during Barack Obama’s presidency. The recommendations went nowhere.Ms. Haley’s calls to stand by NATO and support Ukraine echo the foreign policies of every president since the Second World War, but particularly the Republicans, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.But Mr. Trump has been relentless in his attacks on all those policies. His suggestions that he could withdraw the United States from NATO prompted President Biden last month to sign legislation barring the president from unilaterally dropping the North Atlantic alliance.At a rally in Concord, N.H., Friday night, he portrayed Ms. Haley as someone who “wants to wipe out your Social Security,” raise the retirement age to 75, “and then you’re dead.”A Trump radio ad placed in New Hampshire on Friday said Ms. Haley’s “devious plan” would “shockingly change the rules” on federal programs for older Americans by raising the retirement age. And a television ad, titled “Threat From Within” and placed the day before, featured retirees looking stricken as they hear that “Haley’s plan cuts Social Security benefits for 82 percent of Americans,” before being reassured, “Trump will never let that happen.”The ads’ claims are false. The 82 percent figure stems from the total number of Americans eligible for Social Security, and Ms. Haley has said repeatedly that she would change nothing for current recipients or those close to eligibility.Republicans are used to coming under fire for the types of ideas that Ms. Haley is pushing. But this time, the fire is coming from the party’s de facto leader.“Whenever you discuss Social Security in a rational way, you’ve immediately gotten skewered, usually by the left,” said Judd Gregg, a retired Republican senator from New Hampshire who made long-term deficit reduction his main cause in Congress. “But in this case it’s by Donald Trump.”Mr. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have been pushing their own form of fiscal discipline, portraying an end to aid for Ukraine and domestic spending cuts as deficit reduction.Former President Donald J. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have been pushing their own form of fiscal discipline, couching ending aid to Ukraine and other domestic spending cuts as deficit reduction.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn truth, their target for cuts mathematically could never put a dent in the federal deficit, which is expected to swell to nearly $1.7 trillion in the fiscal year that ends this Sept. 30, up from $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2023.About 85 percent of the federal budget goes to Social Security, Medicare, other entitlement programs like veterans benefits, the military and interest on the national debt — none of which are on Mr. Trump’s target list. That leaves just 15 percent of total spending, for education, law enforcement, transportation, medical and other scientific research, energy, national parks, and foreign assistance.And with interest rates at their current high levels, even liberal economists worry that if Washington doesn’t start addressing the red ink, the rising cost of paying the government’s debts will crowd out other programs, stifle private investment and hurt the nation’s long-term future. Already, interest payments reached $659 billion last year, the fourth largest item in the federal budget.“In 10 years, the government will be spending more on interest on the national debt than on defense,” warned Thomas Kahn, who was the Democrats’ staff director on the House Budget Committee for 20 years. “The reality is the national debt is out of control, and both parties will need to make politically painful decisions.”Ms. Haley has not broached the ultimate painful decision for Republicans, raising taxes, but she has hit Mr. Trump repeatedly for adding $8 trillion to the federal debt while in office, after promising in the 2016 campaign that he would not only balance the budget but would pay off the debt, which surpassed $34 trillion over the holiday season.Those attacks appear to have delivered only glancing blows to Mr. Trump’s dominance. The former president won the Iowa caucuses on Monday in a landslide, with Ms. Haley a distant third. Polls point to a narrower Trump victory in New Hampshire on Tuesday, then a steep uphill climb for Ms. Haley ahead of the South Carolina primary next month in her home state.But like a modern-day Cassandra, Ms. Haley has not flinched from her warnings that the nation must act now to curtail spending rationally in the largest government programs, Social Security and Medicare, or face more painful, chaotic cuts in the future.“I have seen the commercials you’ve seen,” she told voters on Wednesday in Rochester, N.H. “I will always tell you the truth.”The truth is not pretty. The trustees of Social Security say if nothing is done, the main Social Security program, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, will deplete its reserves in 2033, which could be the end of a Haley second term. At that point, Social Security would have to rely only on the money coming in from taxes each year. Promised benefits would have to be cut by 23 percent, not for future retirees that Ms. Haley wants to target but for those already drawing benefits.“The only person who wants to cut Social Security is Trump,” said Nachama Soloveichik, the Haley campaign communications director. “Trump’s refusal to save Social Security means 100 percent of Americans will face a 23 percent cut in Social Security benefits in less than 10 years.”Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, dismissed such criticism as still more evidence of Mr. Trump’s righteousness.“Nikki Haley is spiraling out of control and is now resorting to outright lies because she knows her position of increasing the age for Social Security and slashing retirements is an untenable position,” he said. “She should look deep down inside and really address why she wants to throw hard-working Americans off a financial cliff.” More

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      For Anti-Trump Republicans, It All Comes Down to New Hampshire

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      The old guard of the Republican Party has rallied around Nikki Haley ahead of New Hampshire’s primary, in a long-shot bid to stop the former president’s march to the nomination.The first-in-the-nation primary could be the last stand for the anti-Trump Republican.Since 2016, a shrinking band of Republican strategists, retired lawmakers and donors has tried to oust Donald J. Trump from his commanding position in the party. And again and again, through one Capitol riot, two impeachments, three presidential elections and four criminal indictments, they have failed to gain traction with its voters.Now, after years of legal, cultural and political crises that upended American norms and expectations, what could be the final battle of the anti-Trump Republicans won’t be waged in Congress or the courts, but in the packed ski lodges and snowy town halls of a state of 1.4 million residents.Ahead of New Hampshire’s primary on Tuesday, the old guard of the G.O.P. has rallied around Nikki Haley, viewing her bid as its last, best chance to finally pry the former president from atop its party. Anything but a very close finish for her in the state, where moderate, independent voters make up 40 percent of the electorate, would send Mr. Trump on an all-but-unstoppable march to the nomination. The Trump opposition is outnumbered and underemployed. The former president’s polarizing style and hard-nosed tactics have pushed many Republicans who oppose him into early retirement and humiliating defeats, or out of the party completely. Yet, their long-running war against him has helped to frame the nominating contest around a central, and deeply tribal, litmus test: loyalty to Mr. Trump.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?  More