Presidential Election of 2024

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      Is This the Summer of the Kamala Harris Coconut Pina Colada?

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      As the vice president’s name is floated as a potential presidential candidate, the internet took a goofy Kamala Harris meme and made it a drink.When things go kerflooey in American political life, the time is always right to reach for a dumb internet trope. Mostly harmless, these are needful distractions from difficult truths. So while the annals will remember this as a summer of reckonings with the nature of democracy, history’s footnotes may also record the Kamala Harris coconut tree meme.Some background: Since early July, the internet (well, X; Instagram has given it a pass) has been abuzz with stories examining and professing to explain a meme involving the vice president and remarks she made a year ago quoting a comment her mother often made during her childhood.“She would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us: ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree,’” Ms. Harris said during a 2023 speech at a White House initiative on advancing educational equity for Hispanic people. Dated without a doubt, the expression was not as incomprehensible as Gen Z commentators had it, its language vaguely Depression-era, when the generationally clueless were often said to have been found “under a cabbage leaf.”When the online chattering classes from the opposition got hold of the clip, it quickly became part of an archive of mostly derogatory Harris kooky-isms — her uproarious and sometimes situationally inappropriate laugh, her dance moves and anecdotes that can seem inapt. Detractors pilloried her. Stans of the KHive hearted her for an individuality seldom on public display in public life.A Kamala Harris coconut piña colada may be fun to consider, but it may not be her drink of choice.David Walter Banks for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump and Zelensky Speak by Phone as Ukraine Worries About U.S. Backing

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      Former President Donald J. Trump and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, spoke over the phone late this week amid mounting concern in Kyiv that a second Trump administration would spell the end of American support in Ukraine’s fight against Russia.Ukrainian officials worry that if a re-elected Mr. Trump kept to his vow to end the war quickly — he has suggested that he could end it in one day — it would allow Russia to keep the territory it occupies and leave it in a position to attack Ukraine again.In a social media post about the call, which took place on Friday, Mr. Trump said that, as president he would “bring peace to the world and end the war that has cost so many lives.” He said both Russia and Ukraine “will be able to come together and negotiate a deal that ends the violence.”Mr. Zelensky said in a statement on Friday that he had underlined in the call “the vital bipartisan and bicameral American support for protecting our nation’s freedom and independence.” He said he and Mr. Trump had agreed “to discuss at a personal meeting what steps can make peace fair and truly lasting.”It was the first call between Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump since the former American president left office in 2020. Although the Ukrainian authorities have tried to remain neutral in the U.S. presidential campaign, officials have started building bridges with Mr. Trump’s camp, hoping to shape his views on Ukraine.Oleksandr Kraiev, the head of the North America Program at Ukrainian Prism, a Kyiv-based think tank, said Ukrainian diplomats had been working on strategies to persuade Mr. Trump to continue supporting Ukraine, mindful that he can be unpredictable in foreign policy. The Republican Party’s platform does not include the word Ukraine, referring only to a broad goal of restoring “peace in Europe.”Mr. Kraiev said that Kyiv could frame its objectives as in being in line with two of Mr. Trump’s top interests: his image as a strong leader and his defense of the American economy.“We can connect with Trump on these two specific topics,” Mr. Kraiev said. More

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      Biden and Trump Have Succeeded in Breaking Reality

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      Four years ago the Republican convention was a bizarre spectacle, a cross between a Napoleonic fantasy and a Leni Riefenstahl movie. The dominant image was of an imperial dynasty laying claim to forever rule. I expected more of the same when I tuned in on Monday night to watch this year’s convention, but amped up even further by the weekend’s terrifying near-miss assassination attempt.What I saw instead was an even-toned, inclusive performance that seemed designed to resemble conventions of a more, well, conventional era, or perhaps just entertainment-world award shows. The lineup of speakers offered racial, gender and even ideological diversity — including the Teamsters’ president, Sean O’Brien, who announced from the main stage that his organization was “not beholden to anyone or any party.”You don’t have to agree with Donald Trump on everything was a consistent talking point. As for the shooting, it had been instantly mythologized as a miracle of survival: Speaker after speaker, including Trump himself, credited the Almighty with saving the former president so he could save America. There was no reference to the speculation, multiplying across the internet, that the deep state was behind the assassination attempt. Even Donald Trump was, by his standards, cogent and calm.While one half of the electorate was being served this bland spectacle, the other half struggled to follow a dispiriting and confusing story in which the stakes in the presidential election are existential — and the only man who can save American democracy is President Biden. Even as more and more funders, political operatives and ordinary Democratic voters said that he should withdraw his candidacy, the campaign told them to put their faith in a frail, diminished man — worse than that, it insisted that he was neither frail nor diminished.In the interview with Lester Holt that was broadcast on the first night of the Republican convention, Biden’s most energetic moment came when he lashed out at the press for criticizing him rather than his opponent — a favorite tactic of demagogues everywhere. If the media criticize him, then the media are bad. If the polls show a lack of support for his candidacy, then the polls are wrong. If his allies are trying to save him from himself, then they are no longer his allies. The president and his campaign have adopted the habits of the monster they promise to save us from.The week felt like an emotional reprise of the early months (or was it years?) of the Trump presidency. Every day, it seemed, brought news that felt like it would change history. We assimilated it and moved on, getting up in the morning, going about our business, pausing to express shock at another piece of news, and starting the cycle over again. We developed the ability to feel simultaneously shaken and bored, dismayed and indifferent. As media outlets engaged with Trump’s lies — some enthusiastically and others because it could not be avoided — we grew accustomed to an ever growing gap between reality as we experienced it and the ways in which it was reflected back to us by politicians and journalists.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Some of the Loudest Cheers for Trump Are Coming From Silicon Valley

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      Elon Musk, David Sacks, Marc Andreessen and other influential figures in technology have endorsed former President Donald Trump. How did the Democrats lose Silicon Valley? Or did they?If you read the headlines this week about Elon Musk, David Sacks, Marc Andreessen and other influential figures in technology moving to support former President Trump’s re-election, it appeared a sea change had taken place in Silicon Valley, long considered a Democrat hotbed.The loudest donors in Silicon Valley are promoting Trump at a time when the tech world as a whole is ascending in Washington, with billionaires using their ballooning wealth and media foothold to exert influence. Their voices are made all the more prominent amid the conspicuous neutrality of Big Tech leaders like the Google C.E.O. Sundar Pichai and the Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, who are possibly afraid of invoking Trump’s ire and employee backlash.It wasn’t always this way. But big technology’s relationship with government, once symbiotic, attracted new scrutiny from Silicon Valley’s libertarian masses after social media companies tamped down on misinformation, drawing accusations that they were ceding to an overstepping government.For some, the infractions were more personal. Musk was brushed off by President Biden over his anti-union stance and excluded from an electric vehicle event at the White House in 2021. Now Musk, who has voted for Democrats in the past and has said he created Tesla to help one of Biden’s biggest ambitions, preventing climate change, has become among the party’s biggest detractors.Then there are issues in California, like rising taxes and a crime wave in San Francisco; the anti-woke movement; and regulatory battles over antitrust, crypto, and artificial intelligence that have high stakes in Silicon Valley.The question now is whether Silicon Valley’s Trump boosters are heralding a larger shift in the tech world, or if they’re merely demonstrating that their voices are more powerful in politics than ever.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lord Almighty, Joe, Let It Go!

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      Everyone wants Joe Biden gone.Even the people who don’t want him gone really want him gone.“Everyone’s waiting for Joe,” said one top Democrat. “And he’s sitting at home, stewing and saying, ‘What if? What if? What if?’ We’re doing things the Democratic way. We’re botching it.”I have many happy memories of Rehoboth Beach. I went there growing up and have Proustian recollections of crispy French fries with vinegar sold on the Boardwalk. But now my gladdening images have been replaced by a maddening one: President Biden hunkered down in his house there, recovering from Covid, resisting talking to anyone who will tell him the truth, hoarsely yelling, “Get off my beach!” at the growing list of Democratic lawmakers and donors trying to warn him that he is pulling down his party and the country.It makes me sad that Biden doesn’t see what’s inescapable: If he doesn’t walk away gracefully right now, he will likely go down as a pariah and ruin his legacy.The race for the Oval today is between two delusional, selfish, stubborn old guys, and that’s a depressing state of affairs.As for those D.C. careerists surrounding Biden who a) hid his true condition; b) gaslighted the press for focusing on what they called a nonexistent age issue; c) shielded the president from the truth about his cratering chances of winning; and d) seem to have put their self-interest first?One way or the other, they’ll probably be out of their jobs soon.Shockingly, even as the Republicans roar out of Milwaukee, vibrating with joy, Biden’s brain trust continues to run a lousy campaign, as though nothing has changed. Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s campaign chair, went on “Morning Joe” Friday to say that the polls aren’t as bad as they are, that Biden is “more committed than ever” to running and that, when 100,000 homes got a knock on the door this past week, 76 percent of the respondents “are with Joe Biden.” Then, as Alex Thompson reported for Axios, Dillon went from cable news to a rah-rah call telling staffers not to pay attention to cable news because “the people in our country are not watching cable news.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nancy Pelosi Endorsed ‘Open’ Nomination Process if Biden Drops Out

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      Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former speaker, recently told her colleagues in the California delegation that if President Biden were to end his campaign she would favor the “competitive” process of an open primary rather than an anointment of Vice President Kamala Harris as the new Democratic presidential nominee.In one of the delegation’s weekly closed-door meetings earlier this month, a small group of members were discussing the party’s stressful state of affairs, in which Mr. Biden appears defiant in the face of concerns from lawmakers and leaders in his own party who want him to step aside.Ms. Pelosi, who arrived late to the meeting, spoke up in response to questions from members. When asked about Mr. Biden, she said she did not think he could win, citing polling data, an assessment that she has shared privately with the president himself. Ms. Pelosi said that if he stayed on the ticket, Democrats would lose any shot they might have of winning back control of the House, according to three people familiar with the confidential conversation who insisted on anonymity to describe it. Lawmakers in attendance then pressed her on what the landscape would look like if Mr. Biden ultimately decided to step aside under pressure. Ms Pelosi told them she favored a competitive process. Ms. Pelosi, according to a source familiar with her thinking, is a friend and fan of Ms. Harris, a former senator from California. But she believes even Ms. Harris would be strengthened to win the general election by going through a competitive process at the convention.A second person briefed on Ms. Pelosi’s views, who also declined to be named discussing private conversations, said her desire for an open primary process is driven by polling data about who can win the election, and that she believes the Democratic Party has a deep bench of talent to draw from, including governors and senators in competitive states. Ms. Pelosi’s comments at the meeting regarding her preference for an open primary were first reported by Politico.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Can’t Help Himself. Will That Help Him Win?

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      The R.N.C. ended with uncertainty about whether Trump can capitalize on the opportunity ahead.The latestPresident Biden is maintaining his public defiance as more Democratic lawmakers call for him to exit the presidential race.A call with Vice President Kamala Harris struggled to reassure major donors that there was little to worry about.More than 25 million people watched former President Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention.It was all going so well.The delegates in front of former President Trump were euphoric. The fake White House gleamed behind him. Everyone there, from the show runners to Hulk Hogan to Melania Trump, had nailed their role in a glitzy production aimed at returning Trump to the real Oval Office.Well, almost everyone.“I’d better finish strong,” Trump said, nearly 45 minutes into his acceptance speech. “Otherwise, we’ll blow it, and we can’t let that happen.”More than forty-six minutes later, when he finally finished a winding speech that grew heavy with grievance, it was clear that the person most likely to stop him from becoming the 47th president, the person most likely to blow it, was Trump himself. He couldn’t help it.Until then, the four-day spectacle that unfolded in Milwaukee had been a smooth celebration of the rise and astonishingly good luck of a former president who has consolidated the support of his party. But now, with the balloons popped and the T-R-U-M-P lights turned off, Trump has shown Republicans that he might be unable to seize fully the opportunity that has been laid out in front of him.An earthly celebrationAs Trump took the stage in Milwaukee, Democrats were having a full-on meltdown over President Biden and were trading polling showing that he could not win. They will spend much of the weekend with their eyes trained on Rehoboth Beach, Del., looking for white smoke as a president isolated by Covid-19 and the screaming doubts of his party drags out a Shakespearean drama over the future of his ambition.In Milwaukee, by contrast, it seemed as if nothing could go wrong. The week was an ode to a former president that a bullet had missed, and a sacrament for a man who many at the convention believed was protected by God. Earthly factors were working in his favor, too: Television screens had showed battleground polls leaning Trump’s way. And the convention itself was going off without a hitch.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      11 Days in July: Inside the All-Out Push to Save the Biden Campaign

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      President Biden has repeatedly tried to erase the concerns over his age and mental acuity. But nothing has changed the narrative.Nothing President Biden did seemed to work.He delivered an angry, defensive rant on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” He showed foreign policy chops at a news conference. He wrote a long letter to “fellow Democrats” demanding an end to the calls for him to step aside. He confronted lawmakers on a Zoom call that devolved into a tense, heated exchange about his age and mental competency.Eleven days ago, the president and his closest family members and advisers went on the offensive, determined to end what already had been nearly two weeks of hand-wringing over his listless performance at a debate on June 27. The result was a flurry of interviews, rallies, defiant meetings with his closest allies and impromptu campaign stops — all intended to rebut the premise that he was too old and frail to win a second term.But almost every step was undercut by his own fumbles and the steady drumbeat of calls from his friends and allies for him to step aside, even from loyalists like the actor George Clooney. Together, it was evidence that nothing he was doing was having much impact. Mr. Biden was racing from place to place, but nothing was changing.This story of the 11 days that Mr. Biden has spent trying to rescue his hopes for a second four years in the Oval Office is based on interviews with people close to him, including lawmakers, current and former aides, friends and others. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss one of the most difficult periods in Mr. Biden’s political life.At the end of two hectic days in the 110-degree heat of Las Vegas this week, it all seemed to catch up with him. Mr. Biden was coughing during interviews and seemed almost as tired and scattered as he did during the debate on June 27. At a campaign stop at a restaurant, he looked pale. He tested positive for Covid, canceled his final speech and flew back to his beach house in Delaware.By Thursday, Mr. Biden’s flashes of anger had given way to what allies perceived as the beginnings of acceptance that he might lose. People close to him began privately predicting that the end of the campaign was near, and that he might even drop out of the race within days.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More