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      Racing to Stop Trump, Republicans Descend on the Iowa State Fair

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      Over decades of presidential campaigns, the Iowa way has been to hop from town to town, taking questions from all comers and genuflecting to the local culinary traditions. Going everywhere and meeting everyone has been the gospel of how to win over voters in the low-turnout midwinter caucuses that kick off the American presidential cycle.Now former President Donald J. Trump is delivering what could be a death blow to the old way.Five months from the 2024 caucuses, Mr. Trump holds a comfortable polling lead in a state he has rarely set foot in. If any of his dozen challengers hope to stop his march to a third straight nomination, they will almost certainly have to halt, or at least slow, him in Iowa after spending the better part of a year making their case. A commanding victory by Mr. Trump could create a sense of inevitability around his candidacy that would be difficult to overcome.As Mr. Trump and nearly all of his Republican rivals converge in the coming days at the Iowa State Fair, the annual celebration of agriculture and stick-borne fried food will serve as the latest stage for a nationalized campaign in which the former president and his three indictments have left the rest of the field starved for attention.“You’ve got to do it in Iowa, otherwise it’s gone, it’s all national media,” said Doug Gross, a Republican strategist who was the party’s nominee for governor of the state in 2002. “The chance to show that he’s vulnerable is gone. You’ve got to do it here, and you’ve got to do it now.”At the Iowa State Fair on Wednesday, Dana Wanken, known as Spanky, cleaned the grill outside the pork tent, one of the destinations where Republican presidential candidates will converge in the coming days to compete for the attention of voters.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMost of the Republican candidates are trying to do Iowa the old way, and all of them are less popular and receiving far less visibility than Mr. Trump, who has visited the state just six times since announcing his campaign in November.The same polling that shows Mr. Trump with a wide lead nationally and in Iowa also indicates that his competitors have a plausible path to carve into his support in the crucial first state. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that while Mr. Trump held 44 percent of the support among Iowa Republicans — more than double that of his closest rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — 47 percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters said they would consider backing another candidate.Mr. DeSantis, for all his bad headlines about staff shake-ups, campaign resets and financial troubles, holds significant structural advantages in Iowa.He has endorsements from a flotilla of Iowa state legislators; a campaign team flush with veterans from the 2016 presidential bid of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who beat Mr. Trump in the state; and a super PAC with $100 million to spend. Mr. DeSantis has also said he will visit all 99 counties, a quest that has long revealed a candidate’s willingness to do the grunt work of traveling to Iowa’s sparsely populated rural corners to scrounge for every last vote.Convincing Iowans that they should be searching for a Trump alternative may be Mr. DeSantis’s toughest task.“Trump’s supporters are very vocal, so sometimes being very vocal sounds like there’s a lot of them,” said Tom Shipley, a state senator from southwest Iowa who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the case.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and his family at the Clayton County Fair in Iowa last weekend. While Mr. DeSantis has drawn receptive crowds and has been cheered at the state’s big political events, there is no flood of Iowans rushing to support him.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesYet while Mr. DeSantis has drawn receptive crowds and has been cheered at the state’s big political events, there is no flood of Iowans rushing to support him. Through the end of June, just 17 Iowans had given his campaign $200 or more, according to a report filed to the Federal Election Commission. Nikki Haley, who lags far behind him in polls, had 25 such Iowa donors, while Mr. Trump had 117. Former Vice President Mike Pence had just seven.(The number of small donors Mr. DeSantis had in Iowa is not publicly known because his campaign has an arrangement with WinRed, the Republican donor platform, that effectively prevented the disclosure of information about small donors.)Mr. DeSantis’s supporters are quick to point out that the three most recent winners of competitive Iowa caucuses — Mr. Cruz, Rick Santorum in 2012 and Mike Huckabee in 2008 — each came from behind with support from the same demographic: social conservatives. None of the three won the presidential nomination, but all of them used Iowa to propel themselves into what became a one-on-one matchup with the party’s eventual nominee.Operatives and supporters of the non-Trump candidates warn that Iowa caucusgoers are notoriously fickle. Around this point in 2015, Mr. Cruz had just 8 percent support in a poll by The Des Moines Register. Mr. Trump was first at 23 percent and Ben Carson was second, with 18 percent.“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” said Chris Cournoyer, a Republican state senator from Le Claire who is backing Nikki Haley, who was at 4 percent in the recent Times/Siena poll.What’s different about Iowa this time, according to interviews with more than a dozen state legislators, political operatives and veterans of past caucuses, is that before Republicans consider a broad field of candidates, they are asking themselves a more basic, binary question: Trump or not Trump?Jeanne Dietrich of Omaha, Neb., displayed an autograph from former President Donal J. Trump after attending the opening of his Iowa campaign headquarters in July. Five months from the 2024 caucuses, Mr. Trump holds a comfortable polling lead in the state.Christopher Smith for The New York TimesWhere in the past Iowans might have told those running for president that they were on a list of three or four top contenders, Mr. Trump’s dominance over Republican politics has left candidates fighting for a far smaller slice of voters. The longer a large field exists, the harder it will be for Mr. DeSantis or anyone else to consolidate enough support to present a challenge to Mr. Trump.“These people are absolutely going to vote for the former president, and those people are absolutely not going to vote for the former president,” said Eric Woolson, who has been in Iowa politics so long he was part of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 1988 presidential campaign before working for a series of Republican presidential hopefuls: George W. Bush, Mr. Huckabee, Michele Bachmann and Scott Walker.Now Mr. Woolson, who owns an organic catnip farm in southern Iowa, serves as the state director for Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, who is polling at 1 percent in Iowa. Mr. Woolson said the first hurdle for 2024 campaigns was sorting out which voters would even consider candidates other than Mr. Trump.“In past elections, voters were keeping an open mind of, ‘Well, maybe I can still vote for this candidate, or maybe this one’s my second choice or whatever,’” he said. “Now there’s just such stark lines that have been drawn.”Those lines are compounded by a political and media environment centered not on Iowa’s local news outlets but on conservative cable and internet shows.Nikki Haley, who lags far behind Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump in polls, reported that just 25 Iowans had given her campaign $200 or more through the end of June, according to a report filed to the Federal Election Commission.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesFor decades, presidential candidates from both parties have flocked to The Des Moines Register’s state fair soapbox, a centrally located stage that has served as a gathering spot for the political news media and passers-by on their way to the Ferris wheel and the butter cow. It was at the soapbox in 2011 where Mitt Romney responded to a heckler with his infamous quip, “Corporations are people, my friend.”Mr. Trump skipped The Register’s soapbox in 2016 in favor of a far more dramatic appearance — landing at the fair in his helicopter and offering rides to children.This year, only lower-polling candidates — Ms. Haley, Mr. Pence and Vivek Ramaswamy, among others — are scheduled to speak at the soap box. All of the contenders except Mr. Trump will instead sit for interviews at the fairgrounds with Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, a Republican who has pledged to stay neutral but has clashed with Mr. Trump. The scripted nature of those appearances is likely to cut down on the kinds of viral moments that once drove politics at the fair.Mr. Trump does not need to participate in Iowa’s retail politics, his supporters say, because he is already universally known and has been omnipresent on the conservative media airwaves as he fights against his indictments.“Trump can rely on the network that’s out here already,” said Stan Gustafson, a Republican state representative from just south of Des Moines. “It’s already put together.”Yet at least a few Iowa Republicans supporting Mr. Trump say they are looking to the future — just a bit further out than next year’s caucuses. Mr. Gustafson, who has endorsed Mr. Trump, said he was eyeing which candidates he might support in 2028.Tim Kraayenbrink, a state senator who also backs Mr. Trump, said Iowa’s turn in the campaign cycle was a good opportunity to judge which candidates would make a good running mate — as long as it is not Mr. Pence, he clarified.“He’s going to have some quality people to choose from for vice president,” Mr. Kraayenbrink said of Mr. Trump.Andrew Fischer More

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      Pence Qualifies for First G.O.P. Debate, His Campaign Says

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      The former vice president had appeared at risk of missing out on the debate, but he reached the required donor threshold on Monday, his campaign said.Former Vice President Mike Pence on Monday crossed the threshold of 40,000 unique donors required to take part in the first Republican presidential primary debate, his campaign said.Mr. Pence had already met a polling threshold required by the Republican National Committee, his team has said. Hitting both benchmarks means that Mr. Pence is the eighth candidate to qualify for the debate stage on Aug. 23.A spokesman for Mr. Pence did not respond to a message seeking comment. Fox News earlier reported Mr. Pence’s qualification; a person familiar with the matter confirmed the report, which said that the Pence campaign had made a point of noting it was the first to submit its information to the R.N.C. to be verified.The question of whether Mr. Pence would make the debate stage in Milwaukee for the first face-off of the primary season has lingered for weeks, since shortly after he entered the race.Others who have said they have qualified for the debate are Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida; former Gov. Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott, both of South Carolina; former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey; the businessman Vivek Ramaswamy; and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota. Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami also said on Monday that he had reached the donor threshold, but he has not yet met the polling requirement.Former President Donald J. Trump qualified long ago, but he has made clear that he is not inclined to attend the debate. However, Mr. Trump told party officials at a recent meeting that he was keeping an open mind about it.Like other non-Trump contenders, Mr. Pence needs the debate stage to try to gain traction.Mr. Pence is running as a traditional, Reagan-esque conservative in a party transformed by the man he served as vice president.Mr. Pence has been in headlines for the past week, since Mr. Trump was indicted on four counts related to his efforts to thwart the transfer of power to Joseph R. Biden Jr. and remain in office. Mr. Pence’s refusal to go along with Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign, in which Mr. Trump sought for the vice president to use his ceremonial role overseeing the Electoral College certification in Congress to reverse the election outcome, factors heavily into the indictment. More

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      Trump Calls for Recusal of Judge as His Lawyer Denies Pence’s 2020 Claims

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      Former President Donald J. Trump spent the weekend on the attack on Truth Social while his lawyer, John F. Lauro, ran through a gantlet of interviews Sunday morning.Appearing on five television networks Sunday morning, a lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump argued that his actions in the effort to overturn the 2020 election fell short of crimes and were merely “aspirational.”The remarks from his lawyer, John F. Lauro, came as Mr. Trump was blanketing his social media platform, Truth Social, with posts suggesting that his legal team was going to seek the recusal of Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, the federal judge overseeing the case, and try to move his trial out of Washington.With his client facing charges carrying decades in prison after a federal grand jury indicted Mr. Trump for his role in trying to overturn the election, his third criminal case this year, Mr. Lauro appeared in interviews on CNN, ABC, Fox, NBC and CBS. He endeavored to defend Mr. Trump, including against evidence that, as president, he pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to reject legitimate votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in favor of false electors pledged to Mr. Trump.“What President Trump didn’t do is direct Vice President Pence to do anything,” Mr. Lauro said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “He asked him in an aspirational way.”Mr. Lauro used the same defense on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” when asked about Mr. Trump’s now-infamous call to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. During that call, President Trump pressured Mr. Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” to win the state and suggested that Mr. Raffensperger could face criminal repercussions if he did not.“That was an aspirational ask,” Mr. Lauro said.His portrayal of Mr. Trump’s approach is at odds with two key moments in the indictment.In one, prosecutors say that on Jan. 5, 2021, Mr. Trump met alone with Mr. Pence, who refused to do what Mr. Trump wanted. When that happened, the indictment says, “the defendant grew frustrated and told the Vice President that the defendant would have to publicly criticize him.”Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, then alerted the head of Mr. Pence’s Secret Service detail, prosecutors said.That same day, after The Times reported that Mr. Pence had indeed told Mr. Trump that he lacked the authority to do what Mr. Trump wanted, the president issued a public statement calling the report “fake news.” According to the indictment, Mr. Trump also falsely asserted: “The Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.”As Mr. Lauro made the rounds on all five Sunday news shows — what is known as the “full Ginsburg,” from when Monica Lewinsky’s lawyer, William Ginsburg, did the same amid allegations about her affair with President Bill Clinton — Mr. Trump waged his own campaign on Truth Social.“WOW, it’s finally happened! Liddle’ Mike Pence, a man who was about to be ousted as Governor Indiana until I came along and made him V.P., has gone to the Dark Side,” Mr. Trump wrote on Saturday. A few days earlier, he mocked Mr. Pence, now a 2024 rival, for “attracting no crowds, enthusiasm or loyalty from people who, as a member of the Trump Administration, should be loving him.”Mr. Trump went on: “I never told a newly emboldened (not based on his 2% poll numbers!) Pence to put me above the Constitution, or that Mike was ‘too honest.’”His attack came after a judge warned Mr. Trump against intimidating witnesses and after prosecutors flagged another Truth Social post by Mr. Trump as potentially threatening.On Sunday, Mr. Trump also attacked Jack Smith, the special counsel in the Jan. 6 case, and Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, calling Mr. Smith “deranged” and Ms. Pelosi “sick” and “demented.”In one all-caps message, Mr. Trump accused Mr. Smith of waiting to bring the case until “right in the middle” of his election campaign.In the other posts, Mr. Trump attacked Ms. Pelosi, the former House speaker, who recently said that the former president had seemed like “a scared puppy” before his arraignment. “She is a sick & demented psycho who will someday live in HELL!” Mr. Trump wrote.And he channeled his grievances with the court process toward Judge Chutkan and toward the population of Washington, D.C., writing that he would never get a “fair trial.”For his part, Mr. Pence has been criticizing Mr. Trump’s actions in carefully calibrated terms. He has repeatedly used the same phrases, arguing that anyone who “puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.” He repeated similar lines on Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” following Mr. Lauro’s appearance, and on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”“What I want the American people to know is that President Trump was wrong then and he’s wrong now: that I had no right to overturn the election,” Mr. Pence told the CNN anchor Dana Bash. “I had no right to reject or return votes, and that, by God’s grace, I did my duty under the Constitution of the United States, and I always will.”Maggie Haberman More

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      Coup-Coup-Ca-Choo, Trump-Style

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      WASHINGTON — The man who tried to overthrow the government he was running was held Thursday by the government he tried to overthrow, a few blocks from where the attempted overthrow took place and a stone’s throw from the White House he yearns to return to, to protect himself from the government he tried to overthrow.Donald Trump is in the dock for trying to cheat America out of a fair election and body-snatch the true electors. But the arrest of Trump does not arrest the coup.The fact is, we’re mid-coup, not post-coup. The former president is still in the midst of his diabolical “Who will rid me of this meddlesome democracy?” plot, hoping his dark knights will gallop off to get the job done.Trump is tied with President Biden in a New York Times/Siena College poll, and if he gets back in the Oval, there will be an Oppenheimer-size narcissistic explosion, as he once more worms out of consequences and defiles democracy. His father disdained losers and Trump would rather ruin the country than admit he lost.The Trump lawyer John Lauro made it clear they will use the trial to relitigate the 2020 election and their cockamamie claims. Trump wasn’t trying to shred the Constitution, they will posit; he was trying to save it.“President Trump wanted to get to the truth,” Lauro told Newmax’s Greg Kelly after the arraignment, adding: “At the end he asked Mr. Pence to pause the voting for 10 days, allow the state legislatures to weigh in, and then they could make a determination to audit or re-audit or recertify.”In trying to debunk Jack Smith’s obstruction charges, Lauro confirmed them. Trying to halt the congressional certification is the crime.Smith’s indictment depicts an opéra bouffe scene where “the Defendant” (Trump) and “Co-Conspirator 1” (Rudy Giuliani) spent the evening of Jan. 6 calling lawmakers attempting “to exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol” by sowing “knowingly false allegations of election fraud.” Trump melodramatically tweeted about his “sacred landslide election victory” being “unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots.”Giuliani left a voice mail message for a Republican senator saying they needed “to object to numerous states and raise issues” to delay until the next day so they could pursue their nefarious plan in the state legislatures.Two words in Smith’s indictment prove that the putz knew his push for a putsch was dishonest: “too honest.” Bullying and berating his truant sycophant, Mike Pence, in the days leading up to Jan. 6, Trump told his vice president, “You’re too honest.”The former vice president is selling “Too honest” merchandise, which, honestly, won’t endear him to the brainwashed base. Pence’s contemporaneous notes helped Smith make his case.It’s strange to see Pence showing some nerve and coming to Smith’s aid, after all his brown-nosing and equivocating. He and Mother, who suppressed her distaste for Trump for years, were the most loyal soldiers; in return, according to an aide, Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows said Trump felt Pence “deserved” to be hanged by the rioters.Pence told Fox News on Wednesday that Trump and his advisers wanted him “essentially to overturn the election.”“It wasn’t just that they asked for a pause,” Pence said, at odds with Lauro. “The president specifically asked me and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me to literally reject votes.”Ron DeSantis, another presidential wannabe who enabled Trump for too long, acknowledged on Friday that “all those theories that were put out did not prove to be true.” But Trump and his henchmen were busy ratcheting up the lunacy.“IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” Trump threatened on Truth Social on Friday.On the same day and platform, he accused “the corrupt Biden DOJ” of election interference. Exquisite projection. In Trump’s warped view, it’s always the other guy who’s doing what Trump is actually doing.Kari Lake told House Republicans to stop pursuing a Biden impeachment and just decertify the 2020 election because Biden is not “the true president.” Lake said of Trump: “This is a guy who’s already won. He won in 2016. He won even bigger in 2020. All that Jan. 6 was, was a staged riot to cover up the fact that they certified a fraudulent election.”Before laughing off this absurdity, consider the finding from CNN’s new poll: Sixty-nine percent of Republicans and those leaning Republican believe Biden is an illegitimate president, with over half saying there is “solid evidence” of that.While Trump goes for the long con, or the long coup — rap sheet be damned, it’s said that he worries this will hurt his legacy. He shouldn’t. His legacy is safe, as the most democracy-destroying, soul-crushing, self-obsessed amadán ever to occupy the Oval. Amadán, that’s Gaelic for a man who grows more foolish every day.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      On the Campaign Trail, an Impossible Task: Ignoring Trump’s Latest Charges

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      Voters pressed them to weigh in. Reporters asked about pardons. Mike Pence was heckled. Republicans found it’s not easy to escape the fallout from Donald J. Trump’s legal peril.Days after the front-runner was indicted on charges of trying to subvert an election, Republican candidates in their presidential primary returned to the campaign trail acting as if nothing had changed.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida scooped ice cream in Iowa as he pitched his economic plans. Senator Tim Scott met community leaders at the southern border with a promise to get tough on immigration. Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, showed up in Ukraine, a dramatic attempt to focus on foreign policy. And former Vice President Mike Pence talked up the “Trump-Pence administration” record at a town hall in New Hampshire.But their dogged attempts to create a political safe space — an indictment-free zone, where they are not asked to defend or attack former President Donald J. Trump, the dominant leader in the race and the party’s most powerful figure — kept failing.Reporters asked questions about stolen-election lies and presidential pardons. Voters wanted to know what they thought of the new charges. Trump supporters greeted Mr. Pence with a sign calling him a “traitor.” Mr. Trump, too, had thoughts.“Every time they file an indictment, we go way up in the polls,” he said at a Republican Party dinner in Montgomery, Ala., on Friday night. “We need one more indictment to close out this election.”The scenes demonstrated the nearly impossible challenge before the Republican field as the candidates soldier on in a primary like no other. As Mr. Trump rallies Republicans to his side against what he says is a political persecution, how can they move beyond a past election to talk about the future?For months, their strategy has been simple: Ignore, deflect and change the subject. But it’s an approach that became significantly harder this week, as the felony counts against Mr. Trump grew to number 78 across three criminal cases with the addition of a federal indictment in a Washington, D.C., federal court accusing him of conspiring to defraud the government and to obstruct an official proceeding, as well as other crimes.Addressing voters at a brewery in northeast Iowa on Friday morning, Mr. DeSantis focused on his usual themes: his record as Florida governor, his biography as a father and a military veteran, and his plans on immigration and economic policy. But he could not entirely escape the drumbeat of news from Washington.When a member of the audience asked whether he thought Mr. Trump’s latest indictment was a “witch hunt,” Mr. DeSantis responded that the case was “politically motivated, absolutely,” and pledged to end the “weaponization” of federal government.Mr. DeSantis tried to steer the conversation away from former President Donald J. Trump while at a brewery in Decorah, Iowa.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesLater, a reporter asked whether he would pardon Mr. Trump, should the former president be convicted in the election case. Mr. DeSantis suggested he would — before quickly trying to recast the race as about the future.“I don’t think it’s in the best interest of the country to have a former president that’s almost 80 years old go to prison,” the governor, 44, told reporters at a tire shop in Waverly, Iowa. “And just like Ford pardoned Nixon, sometimes you’ve got to put this stuff behind you, and we need to start focusing on things having to do with the country’s future.”He added: “This election needs to be about Jan. 20, 2025, not Jan. 6, 2021.”Still, there were some signs that the newest charges had pushed Mr. DeSantis, whose campaign is under pressure to appeal to more moderate voters, to inch toward criticism of Mr. Trump. After his event, he acknowledged that claims about the 2020 election’s having been stolen were “unsubstantiated” — a more direct response than he typically gives when asked about Mr. Trump’s defeat.“All those theories that were put out did not prove to be true,” Mr. DeSantis said in response to a reporter’s question.Part of the challenge for Mr. Trump’s opponents is that even Republicans who want to move past the former president defend him. Sandy Lloyd, a 61-year-old fourth-grade teacher, said she did not plan to vote for Mr. Trump, having grown tired of the frequent controversies surrounding him. Yet she said that she thought the election had been stolen and that she didn’t want to see Mr. DeSantis attack Mr. Trump.“If I’m going for a new job, I don’t go into my interview and attack everybody else — I tell them why they want me,” Ms. Lloyd said. “That’s what I want to hear. Why do I want you as president?”Others took a different view, arguing that the criminal charges against Mr. Trump would weaken him in a general election.James Smith, a supporter of Mr. DeSantis who drove from Wisconsin to see the governor, said he wanted the Florida governor to be aggressive.“I would love for him to go harder against Trump,” Mr. Smith said. “You’re not going to win the Republican nomination by not going after the leader. The only way to shake up the race is by attacking.”Supporters of Mr. Trump outside a town hall event featuring former Vice President Mike Pence in Londonderry, N.H.Joe Buglewicz for The New York TimesBut no candidate has a harder time escaping the political realities of the Trump indictments than Mr. Pence, who told prosecutors that Mr. Trump had pressured him to reject electoral votes in an attempt to disrupt the transfer of power.About a dozen Trump supporters gathered outside the American Legion post where Mr. Pence spoke Friday evening. They heckled him as he entered.“What Pence did is, he committed treason — that’s the bottom line,” said Derek Arnold, a protester from Derry, N.H. “He had the choice to do the right thing. And that man knows right from wrong, and we’re here to let him know that he did us wrong.”When Mr. Pence told a standing crowd of around 100 people that he had “stood loyally by President Trump,” his comment prompted scoffing from some in the room. But he was applauded after he finished his thought: “And I never changed my commitment to him until the day came that my oath to the Constitution required me to do otherwise.”Mr. Pence answering questions during a campaign town hall event Friday night in Londonderry, N.H.Joe Buglewicz for The New York TimesAsked if he would pardon Mr. Trump, Mr. Pence was noncommittal.“I really don’t understand why some candidates in the Republican primary are assuming that the president is going to be found guilty in these various cases,” Mr. Pence said. “Let him make his case in court, and if I have the privilege of being president of the United States, whatever pardon request comes before me, I’ll always give a thoughtful, prayerful consideration.”Around a dozen people in the crowd said they were still making up their minds on whom to support. Some were looking for a Trump alternative, but not all considered the charges against him disqualifying.“I feel bad that the country has to go through that, never mind Trump himself,” Fran York said of the prosecutions of Mr. Trump. “I’m not sure that what he did was so bad that he should be indicted.”Mr. York, who is supporting Mr. Pence, said he would vote for Mr. Trump again if he won the nomination.Mr. Scott, who has said little about the election indictment, went to Yuma, Ariz., to promote his plan to spend $10 billion on the border wall started by Mr. Trump. There, too, he repeated his accusation that the Justice Department was “hunting Republicans.”“My perspective is that the D.O.J. continues to weaponize their power against political opponents,” he said, deflecting a question from an NBC reporter about whether Mr. Trump’s legal cases were dominating the campaign.Perhaps the only candidate other than Mr. Trump who was eager to talk about the indictment was Mr. Christie, who has focused his campaign on undercutting the former president. Mr. Christie has struggled to break 3 percent in recent polling of the contest.“It’s an aggressive indictment,” he said from a train headed to Kyiv, Ukraine, on Thursday night. “But what I believe is a much more important question than the criminality, in the context of this campaign season, is the fact that he’s morally responsible for Jan. 6.”Charles Homans More

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      Pence Reaches Fork in Road of 2024 Campaign With New Trump Indictment

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      Through four years as Donald J. Trump’s vice president, or perhaps three years and 350 days, Mike Pence brandished a peerless talent: insisting that all was going smoothly amid plain evidence to the contrary.His 2024 campaign, he has long insisted, is going smoothly.“I have great confidence in Republican primary voters,” he said in an interview, riding to an Iowa hog roast last weekend. “I’m confident we’re going to get a fresh look.”It seemed notable that Mr. Trump, never shy about knocking anyone he views as a threat, had barely bothered to attack him in the race to that point.It was early, Mr. Pence suggested.“I think we’re coming,” he said calmly, “to a fork in the road.”The fork has arrived.As the former lieutenant to the Republican front-runner and a critical witness to that front-runner’s alleged crimes against democracy, Mr. Pence is campaigning now as many things: anti-abortion warrior, unbending conservative, believer in “heavy doses of civility.”Yet he is running most viscerally, whether he intends to or not, as a cautionary tale — a picture of what can happen when anyone, even someone as loyal as he was, defies Mr. Trump.“Anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president,” Mr. Pence said on a campaign conference call on Wednesday, during which supporters were reassured that he was on track to qualify for the first Republican debate. “Anyone who asks someone else to put them over their oath to the Constitution should never be president again.”At minimum, he has gotten his former running mate’s attention.“I feel badly for Mike Pence,” Mr. Trump posted on Wednesday on his social media site, Truth Social, repeating unfounded election claims. His former vice president, he said, was “attracting no crowds, enthusiasm or loyalty from people who, as a member of the Trump administration, should be loving him.”Mr. Pence’s most prominent turns this summer have been in court documents regarding his former boss, not in early states.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMr. Pence’s early difficulties are not shocking. Mr. Trump continues to dominate among Republicans, and much of the party’s base despises Mr. Pence for his lone act of major public defiance: resisting efforts to reverse Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss.But to see Mr. Pence up close, at stops across Iowa and New Hampshire in recent weeks, is to absorb the bracing particulars of a campaign not sparking — the creaky score of polite clapping in modest rooms — and of a candidate convinced he will be judged kindly by history, unable to hustle that history along.His most prominent turns this summer have been in court documents, not in early states. Many key details in the federal indictment against Mr. Trump, which said that Mr. Pence took “contemporaneous notes,” are culled from conversations between them. At one point, the indictment recounted, Mr. Trump let fly a three-word rebuke: “You’re too honest.”If so, this does not seem to have done Mr. Pence many favors as a candidate (though the campaign has already repurposed the “Too Honest” label for T-shirts and hats). His fund-raising has been meager. He is polling, at best, a very, very distant third or fourth.While his team says the campaign has gone according to plan, noting his late entry in the race compared with some competitors’, seven other Republicans say they have qualified for the debate later this month, a group that includes two rivals who joined the primary the same week he did in June.At a candidate forum last week in Des Moines, where multiple extended ovations greeted Mr. Trump, Mr. Pence strained to coax applause at times even while serving up the reddest of meat. (“Americans are facing one man-made crisis after another, and that man’s name is Joe Biden,” he said, to near silence.)Mr. Pence has compelled supporters to worry openly about the size of his venues as he speaks in modest rooms.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesHe has failed to dissuade voters from ascribing foreboding meaning to the mundane. (“Is that a sign?” a woman whispered in Hudson, N.H., noticing a small snake near Mr. Pence’s foot as he spoke outdoors.)He has compelled some supporters to worry openly about the size of his venues.“So tiny — you’re a vice president, for heaven’s sake,” Shirley Noakes, 84, said before he arrived to another crowd of dozens in Meredith, N.H.For those who once considered Mr. Pence the chief enabler in Mr. Trump’s White House — buoying him through relentless executive chaos that rattled democratic institutions well before January 2021 — any campaign stumbles amount to a well-earned comeuppance.Mr. Trump was the nation’s essential man, Mr. Pence long attested, and more than that, “a good man.” (He does not use that adjective anymore.)Asked in the interview if he saw himself as an example to other Republicans who remain devoted to the former president, Mr. Pence did not say no. He reiterated his pre-Jan. 6 dedication to Mr. Trump “through thick and thin, until my oath to the Constitution required me to do otherwise.”“I would leave to others,” he said, “any judgment about what that says about the president.”Among some who admire Mr. Pence, for his stand at the Capitol and otherwise, his campaign thus far has been confounding, a mission without a near-term political rationale.“He doesn’t really have a unique selling proposition,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, who has both praised Mr. Pence for what he did on Jan. 6 and been accused of helping to perpetuate Mr. Trump’s election lies. “In terms of John F. Kennedy’s ‘Profiles in Courage,’ I think that Pence is a very admirable person. In terms of that being a way to win the Republican nomination, I think it doesn’t have any traction.”Mr. Pence said he thought Mr. Gingrich was “not giving Republican primary voters enough credit.”But regardless, Mr. Pence said, this race is a calling for him and his wife, Karen Pence, no matter how it ends. “Campaigns should be about something more important than the candidate’s election,” he said.Mr. Pence and his wife, Karen Pence, during the opening prayer at the Iowa hog roast. Jordan Gale for The New York TimesAnd this one, at least, is poised to answer some questions in the interim.What do Americans think of Mike Pence now, without someone else blocking their view? What should they think?“You want to take a picture or something?” he asked with a smile recently in Barrington, N.H., arriving unannounced to a home décor shop whose Republican proprietors appreciated the visit, they said later, but did not support him. “Just in case I turn out to be somebody important.”Trump’s opposite ‘in every way’Mr. Pence has imagined himself as a prospective president for some time, entertaining White House runs during his years as a congressman and Indiana governor.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMr. Pence looks like a presidential candidate who knows that he looks like a presidential candidate.“Out of central casting,” Mr. Trump used to say of him, in happier times, and the Pence 2024 team seems inclined to sustain the aesthetic.He still shakes hands with his whole body — leaning, nodding, left palm on a voter’s upper back.He still remembers names and local favorites, pandering with impunity. (In New Hampshire: “I stopped by Dunkin’ Donuts the other day …” In Iowa: “I look forward to seeing you at Casey’s and Pizza Ranch…”)He is still liable to point straight ahead suddenly, as if drawing a firearm in the credits of a Hoosier James Bond, for the closing flourish of his remarks.“The best” — point! — “days for the greatest nation on earth are yet to come.”Mr. Pence, 64, has imagined himself as a prospective president for some time, entertaining White House runs during his years as a congressman and Indiana governor. In his 2022 memoir, he said he had developed “a healthy distrust of my own ambition.”Much of Mr. Pence’s career can read now as a study in suboptimal timing, with a politician who could seem almost ostentatiously out of step with the moment.In 2004, dismayed at the spending decisions of a Republican administration, Mr. Pence said he felt like “the frozen man” as a lonely voice for fiscal restraint in Congress. “Frozen before the revolution, thawed after it was over,” he said then. “A minuteman who showed up 10 years too late.”In 2016, he endorsed Senator Ted Cruz of Texas for president days before Mr. Cruz dropped out. “Cruz’s vision of our party hewed the closest to mine,” he reasoned in his book.It was Mr. Trump who gave Mr. Pence a timely lifeline anyway, inviting him on the ticket during a tough re-election race in Indiana.For all of Mr. Trump’s volatility, people who know both men said, their relationship was often buttressed by genuine affection.Robert Jeffress, the senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas, recalled Mr. Trump’s glee at introducing him to Mr. Pence shortly after their election in 2016. “He said, ‘Robert, he is absolutely fantastic,’” Mr. Jeffress remembered. “‘He is opposite me in every way.’”Surely it helped relations that the dynamic between the two was never ambiguous: There was one star, one principal, one sun around which the operation would orbit.Mr. Trump gave Mr. Pence a timely lifeline when he invited him on the ticket during a tough re-election race back home.Damon Winter/The New York TimesIn his stump speech, Mr. Pence speaks about being “well-known” but “not known well,” a man often seen standing quietly behind another man.“Just a half-step off,” he told a couple dozen supporters in Ames, Iowa, “off the shoulder of the president.”In the interview, he noted: “I don’t believe that we ever agreed to a single profile interview in four years. Because I never wanted the story to be about me.” (As it happened, Mr. Trump did not want that, either.)Eventually, nightmarishly, the story became about him.Mr. Pence said he sensed in the days after the Capitol riot that Mr. Trump was “deeply remorseful about what had occurred.”The former president offers no apology for his role in the violence that surrounded Mr. Pence and his family that day.Breaking a vise grip he helped createMr. Pence at a first-responder round table meeting in Nevada, Iowa, last month, where he repeated a mantra of his on the campaign trail: “So help me God.”Jordan Gale for The New York TimesFour words accompany almost any public appearance by Mr. Pence.“So help me God,” he said in Nevada, Iowa, convening with first responders.“So help me God,” he said in Napa, Calif., at a gathering of Catholic conservatives.“So help me God,” he said in Meredith, N.H. “Which happens to be the title of my book.”Friends say Mr. Pence was always cleareyed about — and unmoved by — his steep odds in 2024. That he joined the field anyway, they suggest, says more about his faith than his ego.“My sense is there was a really long and interesting discussion with God,” said Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who decided against a run himself, speaking highly of Mr. Pence after watching the candidate forum in Des Moines.But a vexing political irony for Mr. Pence has persisted: Mr. Trump’s unyielding support among many conservatives — a vise grip that the former vice president must break to have any electoral hope — can be traced in large measure to Mr. Pence.Mr. Jeffress said the symbolic resonance of Mr. Pence’s 2016 selection by Mr. Trump was immeasurable to evangelical voters especially, enshrining a stalwart of the right beside an ideologically flexible nominee. “And now, the overwhelming majority of evangelicals still support Trump,” he added, “because he has a track record.” (Mr. Jeffress is supporting Mr. Trump.)Mr. Pence suggested that this history is partly why he felt called to the 2024 campaign. In 2016, he said, Mr. Trump made “a tacit promise” to govern as a conservative.“He makes no such promise today,” Mr. Pence said.As other candidates, including Mr. Trump, hedge and deflect their positions on abortion restrictions, Mr. Pence has eagerly promoted his role in vetting the Trump-nominated Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade.“He has forced the other contenders to step up and say where they stand,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America. “I think he has the potential to do that as well on other issues.”Mr. Pence has tried to reach conservative voters by taking a stand on abortion, an issue other candidates, including Mr. Trump, have avoided.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesA smattering of encouragement has come from the nonvoting set. In Meredith, where several guests thanked Mr. Pence for his actions on Jan. 6, a 15-year-old named Quinn Mitchell sent the Q. and A. session into a brief hush.Given the former president’s conduct, he asked, “do you think Christians should vote for Donald Trump?”Mr. Pence held for a beat, proceeding carefully.“I’m running for president of the United States because I think I should be the next president,” he said to applause.The young attendee understood, he said later, that the candidate was probably best served avoiding a clean yes or no.But when the two met afterward, Mr. Pence took care to commend the questioner.“You have a bright future,” he wrote on a poster the teen had brought. “God bless.” More

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      Pence Says Trump Pushed Him ‘Essentially to Overturn the Election’

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      The remarks are some of the former vice president’s most pointed about what happened in the lead up to Jan. 6, 2021.Former Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday said that former President Donald J. Trump and his advisers had tried to get him “essentially to overturn the election” and that the American people needed to know it.The remarks, made in an interview with Fox News, are some of Mr. Pence’s most pointed to date about what he experienced in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, when he presided over the congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.And they came as Mr. Pence, who is trailing his former boss, the G.O.P. front-runner, in the Republican primary, has faced a slog in his attempt to get enough small-donor donations to qualify for the first Republican debate on Aug. 23. An adviser to Mr. Pence said he got more than 7,000 donations on Wednesday, the day after Mr. Trump’s indictment on charges of conspiring to overthrow the 2020 election.The new remarks are less of a pivot than a subtle shift in Mr. Pence’s language on a topic over which he has long walked a delicate tightrope — condemning Mr. Trump’s behavior while saying he hoped an indictment would not be in the offing, describing it as divisive for the country.But in the hours after the indictment, Mr. Pence became somewhat more explicit publicly about some of the pressure campaign tactics that Mr. Trump and his allies engaged in while attempting to persuade Mr. Pence to use his ceremonial role overseeing the certification of Electoral College votes to toss out the results.In a campaign speech earlier Wednesday at the Indiana State Fair, Mr. Pence reiterated his stance that “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.” Mr. Trump, in a post on his social media site, Truth Social, said he feels “badly” for Mr. Pence as he struggles to gain traction in his presidential bid.The effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to push Mr. Pence to reject the 2020 election results is laid out in detail in the indictment that the special counsel Jack Smith brought on Tuesday. The indictment focuses extensively on Mr. Trump’s attempts to twist Mr. Pence’s arm, with details provided by Mr. Pence in an interview with investigators and in contemporaneous notes that he provided under subpoena.The indictment references an episode where Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, alerted the lead Secret Service agent on Mr. Pence’s detail that he was “concerned for the Vice President’s safety” after Mr. Trump told Mr. Pence he would have to “publicly criticize” him for refusing to go along with Mr. Trump’s request after a meeting on January 5.Mr. Pence told Fox News: “I never considered it. ““I was clear with President Trump throughout all the way up to the morning” of Jan. 6, 2021, he told Fox News. “It wasn’t just that they asked for a pause. The president specifically asked me and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me to literally reject votes.”He said that people can read the indictment, which he had hoped wouldn’t have to happen.“I don’t know if the government can meet the standard, the burden of proof beyond reasonable doubt for criminal charges,” he said. “But the American people deserve to know that President Trump and his advisers didn’t just ask me to pause. They asked me to reject votes, return votes, essentially to overturn the election.” More

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      Mike Pence, the Indictment and the Chaos of Donald Trump

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      What if he’s president again? Who will be around for that, inside a second Trump administration, when he asks why the military can’t shoot protesters in the legs, or when he wants to withdraw all military dependents from South Korea and throw Asia into an economic crisis?Nobody, outside his supporters, wants to talk about the eventuality — not probable but definitely not impossible — that Donald Trump will be re-elected. His former cabinet secretaries don’t. The people — the foreign ministers and former national security officials — at the Aspen Security Forum don’t.And the closer you get to presidential campaign events, elections can become a kind of dreamscape, a contained universe where meta attacks are signaled yet nothing seems that weird about Mr. Trump’s dominance. After Friday night’s Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines — a fund-raiser for the Iowa Republican Party, held in the city’s convention center — the candidates hosted after-parties off a long hallway, producing an animatronicesque gallery effect.In one room, for about an hour, Mr. Trump stood grinning and shaking hands and posing for photos, with an ever-replenishing line of dozens waiting to get in, and dozens wandering out, ice cream in hand and wearing “TRUMP COUNTRY” stickers. In the next room, Senator Tim Scott, a putting green and cornhole game. In the next, Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami and a live band, with a foursome playing dominoes, red wine on the table. Through another door, at a more subdued valence, you could see Mike Pence talking to little groups of people, mostly older couples, a father and son, a nod, a hand on a shoulder, a photo. Nikki Haley signed books and posters in the hall, and 20-something aides holding red “DESANTIS 2024” signs roamed, directing people to his room, where Republicans threw baseballs at pyramids of Bud Light cans. Step, repeat.This looked fun and vaguely normal — like something from the past. In reality, Mr. Pence is disappearing, politically, before our eyes. Mr. Scott says he can hold only the rioters who were violent, and not Mr. Trump, responsible for the events of Jan. 6. The physical distance between all three of them on Friday night was roughly the distance that separated that mob from Mr. Pence, or the mob from the Senate chamber, that day.That wasn’t that long ago. You can read all about it, across 45 pages in the federal indictment against Mr. Trump for events some of which unfolded in public. We know what happens to people around Mr. Trump. To preserve influence, those hired by him either exist on a total MAGA wavelength, or else have to dodge or lie sometimes to beat back chaos. And in the indictment, the frayed and unnerving interpersonal dynamics abound: Consider the case of Co-conspirator 4, whose description matches Jeffrey Clark, and who prosecutors say kept pressing to send a letter claiming the Justice Department had concerns — or had even found — “significant irregularities” in the 2020 election.It’s hard not to flash back and then forward, to that surreal period when politicians joined the first administration and to think about the even more uncertain future. Recall the photo of Mitt Romney and Mr. Trump eating dinner after the 2016 election; despite having opposed Mr. Trump’s nomination, there was Mr. Romney, offering himself as secretary of state. Mr. Romney’s expression captured a strong public sentiment toward people who joined the Trump administration: at best, it was seen as a slightly embarrassing exposure of the pursuit of power and personal ambition.The last year of the Trump administration concentrated how bad and complex this situation was: The government transformed into a body that had to handle crisis, but also one in which officials’ intentions could not be always known by the public, and one in which the act of joining government service came with deep personal repercussions. The pandemic required, for instance, a massive collaboration across departments and the private sector to produce a vaccine. Things had to stop, or start, with government employees at moments of intense crisis.And, in books, committee depositions and now in this latest indictment, the months after the 2020 election sound especially abysmal — a White House ghost town deserted by people tired of dealing with Mr. Trump and his break with reality about election’s outcome. They left behind a few panicked people who remained grounded in reality like former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Mr. Pence, and then Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and the rest. Again and again, people describe desperate circumstances, arguments about doing things like seizing the voting machines, or trying to persuade Mr. Trump to call off the riot. According to prosecutors, at 7:01 p.m. on Jan. 6, Mr. Cipollone called Mr. Trump and asked him to withdraw his objections to certification; Mr. Trump refused. Would there be more Clarks or Cipollones in a future administration? The idea for many around Mr. Trump is to use a second administration as a path to clearing out parts of the government and reorganizing it around a stronger executive, with true believers underneath him. Jonathan Swan has written extensively about those plans, most recently in an article about the expansive efforts Trump allies want to undertake, like placing the Federal Trade Commission under presidential control, or using Schedule F to fire federal employees. The idea for the next term, in Mr. Trump’s telling, is also retribution.This only ups the anxiety around, basically, who might be involved in such an administration and what the broader American public would tolerate from them. In his book, “Why We Did It,” Tim Miller debates this question with Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former White House communications official. “Governing is happening under him whether we want it to be or not,” she argues, citing the prospect of whatever goon would serve instead of her, which Mr. Miller concedes is true. But, he counters: “This logic is circular. It justifies anything! Alyssa was a flack; she wasn’t securing loose nukes.” She counters again, ticking off different things people had talked Mr. Trump out of: invoking the Insurrection Act during the George Floyd protests or firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper.In these circumstances, the line between “responsible influence, working to contain the worst impulses in private” and “passive bystander” and “amoral chump” is difficult to discern.Mr. Pence’s experience highlights the dangers for the individual and the public. In his book, Mr. Esper describes the way Mr. Pence represented a sane, normal presence in meetings. But, Mr. Esper writes, he could never discern how much their boss even considered the vice president’s views: “He was part cheerleader and part sounding board, though I could never tell how much influence he really had with Trump. He often didn’t say much in meetings that the president attended, and he rarely disagreed with Trump in front of us.”Mr. Trump’s first vice president ended up trapped inside the Capitol with a mob calling for his death by hanging. Now people talk about the other Republican presidential candidates as though they might be his running mate this time around, as though all this didn’t just happen. And now, as Mr. Pence runs for president himself, the reward for coming through in a central moment of American history is a kind of surround-sound aversion.At first, at that dinner in Iowa last week, Mr. Pence talked brightly, in the expectation of applause, which came, sort of, at muted levels, muted even for the kinds of things — like his abortion politics — that resulted in applause for others.This was tepid, indifferent clapping, a kind of subtle hell worse than booing, where people who knew you have forgotten you. Mr. Pence kept talking, the delivery staying even and polished, the brightness fading, talking about restoring civility. “So I thank you for hearing me out tonight,” he said, almost somber.On Tuesday evening, Mr. Pence was one of few Republican candidates to put the situation plainly: “Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.” At the moment, Mr. Pence has not yet qualified for the debates, and is polling badly.As Mr. Trump told him when he balked at the idea of returning votes to the states, according to the indictment, “You’re too honest.”Katherine Miller is a staff writer and editor in Opinion.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More