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      DeSantis Dismisses One Endorsement (for Haley) and Plays Up Another (for Him)

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      At a town hall in Iowa, Ron DeSantis, who has the backing of Iowa’s popular governor, attacked Nikki Haley after she added a key supporter: Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire.As Republicans struggle to coalesce around a single rival to former President Donald J. Trump, the popular governors of Iowa and New Hampshire have also split their ticket.Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, which votes first in the Republican presidential nominating contest, is backing Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, which votes second, is supporting Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor.On Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis played up the power of Ms. Reynolds’s backing while dismissing the potency of Mr. Sununu and calling Ms. Haley an avatar of “the old failed Republican establishment of yesteryear.”“Even a campaigner as good as Chris is not going to be able to paper over Nikki being an establishment candidate,” Mr. DeSantis said during a town hall for Iowa voters broadcast by CNN on Tuesday, hours after Mr. Sununu announced his endorsement of Ms. Haley at an event in New Hampshire. “I mean, she’s getting funded by liberal Democrats from California like the founder of LinkedIn, people on Wall Street like the head of JPMorgan.”For Mr. DeSantis, the town hall was a chance to make his pitch before a national audience without the name-calling and noisy cross-talk of the Republican presidential debates. He had entered the race as the clear favorite to upend Mr. Trump. But as frequent missteps have marred his campaign, some influential megadonors have thrown their support behind Ms. Haley, whom they see as more moderate.Among them are the two donors name-checked by Mr. DeSantis, Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, and Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase. (Ms. Haley also has the backing of traditional Republican donors.)Both Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley trail Mr. Trump by wide margins in polls nationally as well in the early-voting states. To close the gap, Mr. DeSantis has jumped at every opportunity to appear before Iowa voters, including the town hall hosted by CNN, a news organization that he has frequently derided as “corporate media.”Many of the questions asked on Tuesday, both by the voters in attendance at Grand View University in Des Moines and the moderator, Jake Tapper, were less than hard-hitting, and Mr. DeSantis was able to have a largely easy and confident stage presence.One voter asked him what food he most enjoyed at the Iowa State Fair. “Pork on a stick,” Mr. DeSantis replied with a smile, “but I did not do it in public because they said if they get a picture of it, you know, it’s a really bad thing.”Mr. Tapper asked Mr. DeSantis, who often talks about “destroying leftism,” to name his favorite Florida Democrat. He responded with two county sheriffs in South Florida.But Mr. DeSantis was also given the opportunity to detail some of his policy positions. On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr. DeSantis said he opposed a two-state solution. On Ukraine, he expressed support for efforts by Republicans in Congress to tie funding for its war against Russia to U.S. border security. On Social Security, he said seniors should keep their benefits and called for a bipartisan effort to ensure the program’s long-term stability.“My grandmother lived till 91,” Mr. DeSantis explained. “Social Security was her sole source of income. So I understand what a lot of people are going through.”Still, he was sometimes light on specifics.Pressed by Mr. Tapper to say when he would release his plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, Mr. DeSantis said, “We’re working on it.”He added: “You kind of campaign in poetry, then you govern in prose.”And although he saved his harshest words for Ms. Haley, Mr. DeSantis also forcefully criticized Mr. Trump, something he has rarely done on national television.In his first answer, Mr. DeSantis said that Mr. Trump had “dramatically” mishandled the economy during the coronavirus pandemic. He also said that Mr. Trump was “flip-flopping” on abortion by criticizing a six-week ban that Mr. DeSantis had signed in Florida. And he noted Mr. Trump’s failure to build a wall on the United States’ southern border and have Mexico pay for it, as he had pledged to do.“It’s a different Donald Trump than ’15 and ’16,” he argued. “Back then he was colorful, but it was really America-first about the policies. Now, a lot of it’s about him.”Mr. DeSantis has said that Mr. Trump must be beaten in Iowa if Republicans want to stop him elsewhere. He has devoted extensive resources to winning the state, visiting each of its 99 counties and moving roughly a third of his campaign staff there.Outside groups are also helping his cause. One allied super PAC has built an extensive ground game to turn out support during the Jan. 15 caucuses. Another is investing heavily in advertisements targeting Ms. Haley.And he has campaigned frequently with Ms. Reynolds, who endorsed him last month. In a radio interview on Tuesday before the town hall, Mr. DeSantis called her “a tremendous help.”Other candidates are also focusing heavily on Iowa. The entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy plans to visit a total of 29 counties this week alone, according to his campaign. On Wednesday, Mr. Ramaswamy will appear in a similar CNN town hall in Des Moines.But none of the efforts have seemed to move the polls. Mr. DeSantis now trails Mr. Trump by more than 30 points among Iowa Republicans, according to a Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom survey released on Monday.And in New Hampshire, where Mr. DeSantis has spent far less time, Ms. Haley has now pulled into second place. Mr. DeSantis has fallen to fourth or fifth. More

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      Las inquietudes sobre el autoritarismo de Trump abren un debate en EE. UU.

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      El expresidente y sus aliados hacen poco para tranquilizar a quienes están preocupados por una posible dictadura. Incluso, con sus declaraciones y acciones parecen estar reafirmando esas alarmas.El otro día, cuando un historiador escribió un ensayo en el que advertía que elegir al expresidente Donald Trump el próximo año podría conducir a una dictadura, un aliado de Trump no tardó en responder con un llamado para que dicho historiador fuera enviado a prisión.Suena casi como una parodia: la respuesta a las inquietudes de un autor sobre una dictadura es procesarlo. Pero Trump y sus aliados no se están tomando la molestia de rechazar con firmeza la acusación de una dictadura para tranquilizar a quienes les preocupa lo que podría significar un nuevo mandato. En todo caso, parece que la están alentando.Si Trump regresara a la presidencia, sus allegados han prometido “perseguir” a los medios de comunicación, iniciar investigaciones penales contra excolaboradores que se distanciaron del expresidente y expulsar del gobierno a los funcionarios públicos que consideran desleales. Cuando los críticos señalaron que el lenguaje de Trump sobre eliminar a todos los “parásitos” de Washington evocaba al de Adolf Hitler, un portavoz del expresidente dijo sobre los críticos que su “triste y miserable existencia será destruida” bajo el gobierno de Trump.El propio Trump hizo poco para calmar a los estadounidenses cuando su amigo Sean Hannity intentó ayudarlo en Fox News la semana pasada. Durante una reunión de foro abierto, Hannity le planteó a Trump lo que parecía ser una pregunta sencilla al pedirle que reafirmara que, por supuesto, no tenía la intención de abusar de su poder y usar el gobierno para castigar a sus enemigos. En lugar de tan solo concordar con esa afirmación, Trump aseguró que solo sería un dictador en el “Día 1” de un nuevo periodo.“Trump ha dejado bien claro, mediante todas sus acciones y retórica, que admira a los líderes que despliegan tipos de poder autoritario, desde Putin hasta Orbán pasando por Xi, y que quiere ejercer ese tipo de poder en casa”, comentó Ruth Ben-Ghiat, autora de Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, en referencia a Vladimir Putin de Rusia, Viktor Orbán de Hungría y Xi Jinping de China. “La historia nos demuestra que los autócratas siempre manifiestan quiénes son y qué van a hacer”, agregó. “Solo que nosotros no escuchamos hasta que es demasiado tarde”.A pesar de su enfrentamiento público con la dirigencia china, el presidente Trump ha elogiado al presidente Xi Jinping por sus políticas de hombre fuerte.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesEn los últimos días, las conversaciones sobre el posible carácter autoritario de una nueva presidencia de Trump han impregnado el debate político en la capital de Estados Unidos. Una serie de informes en The New York Times esbozaron varios planes desarrollados por aliados de Trump para imponer un enorme poder en un nuevo mandato y detallaron cómo el exmandatario tendría menos restricciones constitucionales. The Atlantic publicó una edición especial en la que 24 colaboradores pronosticaron cómo sería un segundo periodo presidencial de Trump, y muchos predijeron un régimen autocrático.Liz Cheney, quien fue legisladora republicana por Wyoming en el Congreso y vicepresidenta del comité de la Cámara de Representantes encargado de investigar el asalto del 6 de enero de 2021 al Capitolio, publicó un nuevo libro en el que advierte que Trump es un peligro claro y presente para la democracia estadounidense. Y, por supuesto, se publicó el ensayo del historiador Robert Kagan en The Washington Post que motivó a J. D. Vance, senador republicano por Ohio y aliado de Trump, a presionar al Departamento de Justicia para que lo investigara.Seamos claros, los presidentes estadounidenses han excedido los límites de su poder y han sido llamados dictadores desde los primeros días de la república. John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson y Franklin Roosevelt, entre otros, fueron acusados de ser déspotas. Se decía que Richard Nixon consolidó su poder en la “presidencia imperial”. Tanto a George W. Bush como a Barack Obama se les comparó con Hitler.Pero hay algo distinto en el debate actual, más allá de la retórica subida de tono o los desacuerdos legítimos sobre los límites del poder ejecutivo, algo que sugiere que este es un momento fundamental de decisión en el experimento estadounidense. Tal vez es una manifestación del desencanto popular con las instituciones del país: solo el 10 por ciento de los estadounidenses piensa que la democracia funciona muy bien, según una encuesta realizada en junio por The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.Tal vez es un reflejo del extremismo y la demagogia que se han vuelto tan comunes en la política de muchos lugares en el mundo. Y tal vez proviene de un expresidente que reclama su antiguo puesto y evidencia una afinidad tan desconcertante hacia los autócratas.En una ocasión, Trump expresó que no sentía ni un atisbo de remordimiento al compartir en redes sociales una cita de Mussolini y adoptó el lenguaje de Stalin al llamar a los periodistas los “enemigos del pueblo”. Le dijo a su jefe de gabinete que “Hitler hizo muchas cosas buenas” y luego expresó que deseaba que los generales estadounidenses fueran como los generales de Hitler.En diciembre del año pasado, poco después de iniciar su campaña de reaparición, Trump hizo un llamado a “poner fin” a la Constitución para retirar de inmediato al presidente Joe Biden del cargo y reinstaurarlo a él en la Casa Blanca sin tener que esperar a otras elecciones.Los defensores de Trump desestiman los temores sobre sus instintos autocráticos como quejas de los liberales que no lo apoyan ni a él ni a sus políticas y que intentan asustar a los votantes de maneras engañosas. Argumentan que Biden es el verdadero dictador, ya que su Departamento de Justicia llevará a juicio a su rival más contundente el próximo año por varios presuntos delitos, aunque no hay evidencia de que Biden haya participado personalmente en esas decisiones, y a pesar de que algunos exasesores de Trump afirman que las acusaciones son legítimas.“Los comentarios relacionados con una dictadura que realizan Kagan y sus colegas escritores liberales es un intento de asustar a los estadounidenses no solo para distraerse a sí mismos de los errores y la debilidad del gobierno de Biden, sino porque hay algo que ellos temen aún más: que un segundo gobierno de Trump tenga mucho más éxito a la hora de implementar su agenda y deshacer políticas y programas progresistas que el primero”, escribió Fred Fleitz, quien trabajó brevemente en la Casa Blanca de Trump, en el sitio web American Greatness el viernes.Kagan, un académico muy respetado de la Institución Brookings y autor de numerosos libros de historia, tiene muchos antecedentes de apoyar una política exterior firme que, en opinión de la izquierda, dista mucho de ser liberal. Pero desde hace años ha sido un crítico firme y declarado de Trump. En mayo de 2016, cuando otros republicanos se hacían a la idea de la primera nominación de Trump a la presidencia, Kagan advirtió: “así es como el fascismo llega a Estados Unidos”.Su ensayo del 30 de noviembre sonó como una nueva advertencia. Puede que los intentos de Trump para poner en marcha sus ideas más radicales en su primer mandato hayan sido obstaculizados por asesores republicanos y oficiales militares más moderados, argumentó Kagan, pero no se va a volver a rodear de esas figuras y encontrará menos de los controles y contrapesos que lo limitaron la última vez.Los defensores del expresidente califican los temores sobre los instintos autocráticos de Trump como quejas de liberales que intentan asustar a los votantes.Jordan Gale para The New York TimesEntre otros ejemplos, Kagan citó el intento de Trump por anular una elección que había perdido, sin tomar en cuenta la voluntad de los votantes. También señaló los comentarios francos de Trump sobre llevar a juicio a sus adversarios y desplegar al ejército en las calles para reprimir las manifestaciones. “En unos pocos años, hemos pasado de tener una democracia relativamente segura a estar a unos pasos cortos, y a escasos meses, de la posibilidad de vivir una dictadura”, escribió Kagan.Vance, senador recién llegado que buscó el apoyo de Trump y la semana pasada fue mencionado por Axios como un posible compañero de fórmula a la vicepresidencia en 2024, se ofendió en nombre del expresidente. Envió una carta al fiscal general Merrick Garland en la que sugería que Kagan debía ser llevado a juicio por incitar una “rebelión abierta”, y basó su argumento en una parte del ensayo de Kagan que señalaba que los estados dirigidos por demócratas podrían desafiar la presidencia de Trump.Vance escribió que “según Robert Kagan, la perspectiva de una segunda presidencia de Donald Trump es tan terrible como para justificar una rebelión abierta contra Estados Unidos, junto con la violencia política que invariablemente le seguiría”.El artículo de Kagan no abogaba realmente por la rebelión, sino que pronosticaba la posibilidad de que los gobernadores demócratas se opusieran a Trump “mediante una forma de anulación” de la autoridad federal. De hecho, llegó a insinuar que los gobernadores republicanos podrían hacer lo mismo con Biden, algo que tampoco defendía.Vance intentaba establecer un paralelo entre el ensayo de Kagan y los esfuerzos de Trump para revertir las elecciones de 2020. El senador escribió que, según la lógica del Departamento de Justicia al investigar a Trump, el artículo de Kagan podría ser interpretado como una “invitación a la ‘insurrección’, una expresión de ‘conspiración’ delictiva o un intento de ocasionar una guerra civil”. Para enfatizar su idea, insistió en que hubiera respuestas para el 6 de enero.Kagan, quien publicó otro ensayo el jueves sobre cómo detener la trayectoria hacia la dictadura que él vislumbra, comentó que la intervención del senador validaba sus argumentos. “Es revelador que su primer instinto tras ser atacado por un periodista es sugerir que lo encierren”, señaló Kagan en una entrevista.Los ayudantes de Trump y Vance no respondieron a las solicitudes de comentarios. David Shipley, editor de opinión de The Washington Post, defendió el trabajo de Kagan. “Estamos orgullosos de publicar los reflexivos ensayos de Robert Kagan y animamos al público a leer sus artículos del 30 de noviembre y del 7 de diciembre juntos, y a sacar sus propias conclusiones”, dijo. “Estos ensayos forman parte de una larga tradición de Kagan de iniciar conversaciones importantes”.Es una conversación que tiene meses por delante y un final incierto. Mientras tanto, nadie espera que Garland tome en serio a Vance, incluido casi con toda seguridad el propio Vance. Su carta era una declaración política. Pero dice algo de este momento que su propuesta de procesar a un crítico se pueda ver como un triunfo político.Peter Baker es el corresponsal jefe del Times en la Casa Blanca. Ha cubierto a los cinco últimos presidentes estadounidenses y a veces escribe artículos analíticos que sitúan a los mandatarios y sus gobierno en un contexto y un marco histórico más amplios. Más de Peter Baker More

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      Talk of a Trump Dictatorship Charges the American Political Debate

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

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      ¿Cómo cubrir a Trump? Univision, como otros medios, busca una respuesta

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      Los reclamos contra Univision comenzaron en cuanto se emitió su entrevista con Donald Trump. Un mes después, aún no han cesado.Para los críticos de Univision, la entrevista del 9 de noviembre —con sus preguntas fáciles y pocas preguntas de seguimiento del entrevistador, Enrique Acevedo— ha confirmado sus temores desde que la cadena, tradicionalmente de tendencia de izquierda, se fusionó con la cadena mexicana Televisa a principios del año pasado en un acuerdo de 4.800 millones de dólares. La cadena, argumentan ellos, estaba dando un preocupante giro a la derecha con sus nuevos propietarios, que tienen fama de cultivar relaciones con los principales políticos de México, donde Televisa ha sido un temido artífice de figuras de influencia durante más de 50 años.Las maniobras de última hora de Univision levantaron aún más sospechas. Pocas horas antes de la emisión de la entrevista, la cadena retiró su invitación a la campaña de Biden para emitir anuncios durante el especial de una hora con Trump, citando lo que parecía ser una nueva política de la empresa. Apenas una hora después, Univision canceló abruptamente una entrevista con el director de medios hispanos de la campaña de Biden.Pero la razón de los cambios en la cadena no puede explicarse solo por consideraciones políticas, según las entrevistas con más de una decena de periodistas y ejecutivos actuales y retirados de Univision, entre ellos Acevedo y Daniel Coronell, presidente de noticias de la cadena.Los medios de comunicación hispanos son susceptibles a la misma inquietud que afecta a otras redacciones estadounidenses. Las audiencias de las noticias de televisión en español están en declive, lo que se suma a la presión de una economía desigual. Y el dilema sobre cómo cubrir a Trump —¿debe tener una cobertura exhaustiva, mínima o incluso alguna?— preocupa a Univision tanto como a sus homólogos en inglés.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

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      ‘What the Heck?’ CNN’s Debate Plans Leave New Hampshire Officials Confused.

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      The news network said it would host a Republican primary debate in New Hampshire at Saint Anselm College. That was news to Saint Anselm.With great fanfare this week, CNN announced it would host the network’s first debate of the 2024 presidential campaign, gathering the Republican candidates for a marquee event on Jan. 21 at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire.There was only one problem: Saint Anselm had no idea what CNN was talking about.“We were surprised to be included on a press release by a network about a debate which we had not planned or booked,” Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm, said in a statement on Friday.The chairman of New Hampshire’s Republican Party, Chris Ager, went a little further.“The CNN thing came out and everybody’s like, ‘What the heck?’” Mr. Ager said in an interview. “I’m still scratching my head. And I still haven’t been contacted by CNN at all.”There is, however, a competing debate scheduled to take place three days earlier, hosted by CNN’s rivals at ABC News. The ABC debate, on Jan. 18, is set to be held at Saint Anselm, and it has the approval of both the college and state Republican officials. “We’ve been working for months planning with ABC,” Mr. Ager said. “We’ve already done a run-through of the facility. We’ve agreed on a lot of the details.”The CNN announcement, Mr. Ager said, caught his team off guard. “For a big, professional organization like that, putting out a location on this date and the location doesn’t know — something’s not quite right,” he said.A CNN spokeswoman said on Friday: “We can’t speak to any miscommunication within Saint Anselm, but we are moving forward with our plans to host a debate in New Hampshire on Jan. 21.”ABC is the traditional host of presidential debates in New Hampshire ahead of the state’s first-in-the-nation primary. Its local station, WMUR-TV in Manchester, N.H., which is a co-host of the Jan. 18 debate, is New Hampshire’s only affiliate of the Big Three broadcast networks.Mr. Ager said he also had concerns about CNN holding a debate just two days before the Jan. 23 primary, which he said would leave candidates little time to respond to any major moments onstage.“In New Hampshire, we like to give everybody a fair shot as much as possible,” he said.The apparent debate snafu came as the Republican National Committee announced that candidates were free to appear at any debate, eliminating a previous requirement that the candidates could participate only in debates formally approved by the party. The rule change, announced Friday, will potentially offer more national exposure to the remaining candidates, as they try to make inroads against the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Trump has so far refused to appear at any of the four televised Republican primary debates. He has not signaled if he will appear at the ABC event in New Hampshire on Jan. 18.CNN also said this week that it would host a televised debate in Des Moines on Jan. 10 at Drake University, ahead of the Iowa caucuses.Drake University issued a news release promoting that event, so it appears the institution was aware of the network’s plans.Shane Goldmacher More

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      Conundrum of Covering Trump Lands at Univision’s Doorstep

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      The howls of protest against Univision began as soon as its interview with Donald J. Trump aired. A month later, they still haven’t stopped.To critics of Univision, the Nov. 9 interview — with its gentle questioning and limited follow-ups from the interviewer, Enrique Acevedo — has confirmed their fears since the traditionally left-leaning network merged with the Mexican broadcaster Televisa early last year in a $4.8 billion deal. The network, they said, was taking a troubling turn to the right under its new owners, who have a reputation for cultivating relationships with leading politicians in Mexico, where Televisa has been a feared kingmaker for more than 50 years.Last-minute maneuvering at Univision raised further suspicions. Just hours before the interview aired, the network reversed its invitation to the Biden campaign to run ads during the hourlong special with Mr. Trump, citing what appeared to be a new company policy. Scarcely an hour later, Univision abruptly canceled an interview with the Biden campaign’s director of Hispanic media.But the reason for changes at the network can’t be explained by political considerations alone, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former Univision journalists and executives, including Mr. Acevedo and Daniel Coronell, the network’s president of news.Hispanic media is proving susceptible to the same upheaval straining other American newsrooms. Spanish-language television news audiences are in decline, compounding pressure from an uneven economy. And the dilemma over how to report on Mr. Trump — should he get exhaustive, minimal or even no coverage? — is vexing Univision just as it is its English-language counterparts.Univision executives have said they are making a pivot toward the center — a strategy that reflects the split political preferences of the Hispanic electorate and the need to broaden their audience.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

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      CNN Will Host Two GOP Debates in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2024

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      The announcement of the debates, planned for the days before each state’s nominating contest, comes as the Republican National Committee considers loosening its rules for the onstage clashes.CNN will hold two Republican presidential debates in Iowa and New Hampshire next month in the days leading up to those states’ nominating contests, the network said on Thursday.The announcement, made a day after the fourth debate this year, comes as the Republican National Committee weighs whether to loosen its rules and allow candidates to take part in debates that it does not sponsor. A spokesman for the committee, Keith Schipper, said on social media that it had not approved the CNN debates.The committee approved four debates this year, steadily raising the minimum thresholds for participation and pushing out lower-polling candidates.The current Republican front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump, did not attend any of the debates. An adviser to his campaign said he did not plan to participate in the CNN debates.The Republican Party had suggested it might hold forums in January in both Iowa and New Hampshire, but multiple people involved in the process said those debates might no longer be sponsored by the party.Almost immediately on Thursday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has staked his campaign’s success on a strong showing in Iowa, said he would participate in the debate there.That gathering will be held on Jan. 10 at Drake University in Des Moines, five days before the Iowa caucuses. The network will allow candidates to participate only if they have received at least 10 percent in three separate national or Iowa polls, with at least one poll of likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers.The second debate is scheduled for Jan. 21 at St. Anselm College in Goffstown, N.H., two days before the New Hampshire primary election. The top three finishers in Iowa will be invited to participate. Otherwise, the criteria are similar to the Iowa debate. More

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      Megyn Kelly Returning to Debate Spotlight on NewsNation

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