Presidential Election of 2024

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s First Campaign Manager, Is Brought Back for G.O.P. Convention

      by

      Corey Lewandowski, former President Donald J. Trump’s first campaign manager, who was ousted from that campaign in 2016 and then from a pro-Trump super PAC in 2021, has been hired as an adviser for the Republican Party’s nominating convention in July, a person familiar with the decision said.Mr. Lewandowski, a longtime political adviser to Mr. Trump, was pushed out of a pro-Trump super PAC that he had helped lead — Make America Great Again Action — in 2021 after the wife of a donor accused him of making unwanted sexual advances. A spokesman for Mr. Trump said at the time that Mr. Lewandowski would “no longer be associated with Trump World.” His hiring for the Republican National Convention, which will be held in mid-July in Milwaukee, represents his return to Mr. Trump’s circle of political advisers.The hiring was first reported by National Review, and Chris LaCivita, a top official in the Trump campaign, told the conservative outlet that Mr. Lewandowski was “very helpful to me, and he’s helpful to the R.N.C., and he’s helpful to the president.”This month, Paul Manafort, who replaced Mr. Lewandowski as Mr. Trump’s campaign manager in 2016, stepped down from a similar role advising the nominating convention, saying that “the media wants to use me as a distraction to try and harm President Trump and his campaign.” Mr. Manafort was convicted of a range of financial crimes and conspiracy to obstruct justice and spent nearly two years in prison before Mr. Trump pardoned him in December 2020.Mr. Lewandowski was the campaign manager for Mr. Trump when he first jumped into the presidential race in June 2015. Mr. Trump fired him in June 2016 at the urging of allies and his adult children as Mr. Lewandowski faced negative headlines that had overshadowed his boss, including being arrested and charged with misdemeanor battery — a charge later dropped — after he was accused of grabbing a reporter as she approached Mr. Trump. The next year, a pop singer accused Mr. Lewandowski of slapping her twice on the buttocks at a party in Washington.A spokesman for the Democratic National Committee highlighted the allegations against Mr. Lewandowski and said the Trump campaign was “scraping the bottom of the MAGA barrel” by hiring him.Mr. Lewandowski had considered running for a Senate seat in 2020 in New Hampshire, but ultimately backed out of the race. More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      What to Watch in Primaries in Georgia, Kentucky, Idaho and Oregon

      by

      Voters are headed to the polls on Tuesday in several states. In California’s 20th Congressional District, the most conservative in the state, two Republicans will face off in a special election to determine who will temporarily fill the seat of Representative Kevin McCarthy, who was ousted as House speaker last year and then resigned. The winner will serve until January, when the next Congress is sworn in. Vince Fong, a state lawmaker and onetime aide to Mr. McCarthy, had a significant lead in the primary. He will face Mike Boudreaux, the longtime sheriff of Tulare County. (They will face each other again in the fall in the quest for a full term.)Georgia, Kentucky, Oregon and Idaho have primary contests today. In Kentucky and Oregon, voters will also weigh in on the presidential primaries, raising the possibility of protest votes against both President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump.Here is what else to watch.The Trump prosecutor Fani Willis will be on the ballot in Georgia.Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, will face a challenger in the Democratic primary for her position. Her opponent is Christian Wise Smith, a lawyer who placed third in the primary against Ms. Willis in 2020 and was defeated in the 2022 Democratic primary for attorney general in Georgia.Scott McAfee, the judge overseeing Mr. Trump’s trial in Georgia, is also in a competitive race against Robert Patillo II, a civil rights lawyer and radio host. A third candidate, Tiffani Johnson, was disqualified and is fighting that decision.A progressive vies for a rematch in a swing district in OregonJamie McLeod-Skinner, a progressive challenger, knocked out a moderate seven-term Democratic representative in Oregon’s Fifth Congressional District during the 2022 primaries, but ultimately lost to her Republican opponent, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, by a two-point margin — a result that contributed to Republicans’ taking a thin majority in the House that year.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

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      How Trump’s Hush-Money Case Failed to Capture America’s Imagination

      by

      If I’d pictured Donald Trump’s first criminal trial a few years ago, I’d have imagined the biggest, splashiest story in the world. Instead, as we lurch toward a verdict that could brand the presumptive Republican nominee a felon and possibly even send him to prison, a strange sense of anticlimax hangs over the whole affair.In a recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll, only 16 percent of respondents said they were following the trial very closely, with an additional 32 percent following it “somewhat” closely. “Those numbers rank as some of the lowest for any recent news event,” wrote Yahoo News’s Andrew Romano. When people were asked how the trial made them feel, the most common response was “bored.” TV ratings tell a similar story. “Network coverage of Donald Trump’s hush money trial has failed to produce blockbuster viewership,” Deadline reported at the end of April. Cable news networks, Deadline said, saw a decline in ratings among those 25 to 54 since the same time last year. At the courthouse last week, I met news junkies who’d lined up at 3 a.m. to get a seat at the trial and maybe score selfies with their favorite MSNBC personalities, but it felt more like wandering into a subcultural fandom than the red-hot center of the zeitgeist. A block or so away, you wouldn’t know anything out of the ordinary was happening.Perhaps the trial would have captured more of the public’s attention had it been televised, but lack of visuals alone doesn’t explain America’s collective shrug. The special counsel Robert Mueller’s report didn’t have images, either, but when it was published, famous actors like Robert DeNiro, Rosie Perez and Laurence Fishburne starred in a video breaking it down. I’m aware of no similar effort to dramatize this trial’s testimony, and I almost never hear ordinary people talking about it. “Saturday Night Live” tried, last weekend, to satirize the scene at the courthouse with a cold open mocking Trump’s hallway press appearances, but it ended with an acknowledgment of public exhaustion: “Just remember, if you’re tired of hearing about all of my trials, all you’ve got to do is vote for me, and it will all go away.”It wasn’t a particularly funny line, but it gets at something true that helps explain why this historic trial doesn’t seem like that big a deal. When Trump was president, his opponents lionized lawyers and prosecutors — often in ways that feel retrospectively mortifying — because liberals had faith that the law could restrain him. That faith, however, has become increasingly impossible to sustain.Mueller punted on the question of whether Trump obstructed justice in trying to impede the Russia probe. The jury in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case found that he committed sexual abuse, but it had little discernible effect on his political prospects. A deeply partisan Supreme Court, still mulling its decision on his near-imperial claims of presidential immunity, has made it highly unlikely that he will face trial before the election for his attempted coup. A deeply partisan judge appointed by Trump has indefinitely postponed his trial for stealing classified documents. With the Georgia election interference case against Trump tied up in an appeal over whether District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified over an affair with a member of her team, few expect that trial to start before 2025 — or 2029, if Trump wins the election. And should he become president again, there’s little question that he’ll quash the federal cases against him once and for all.In theory, the delays in Trump’s other criminal cases should raise the stakes in the New York trial, since it’s the only chance that he will face justice for his colossal corruption before November. But in reality, his record of impunity has created a kind of fatalism in his opponents, as well as outsize confidence among his supporters. In a recent New York Times/Siena poll, 53 percent of voters in swing states said it was somewhat or very unlikely that Trump would be found guilty. That included 66 percent of Republicans but also 42 percent of Democrats.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

    • 113 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      What the Dow Jones Hitting 40,000 Points Tells Us

      by

      Last week, for the first time in history, the Dow Jones industrial average closed above 40,000.Unlike many right-wing commentators, I don’t consider the stock market the best indicator of the economy’s health, or even a good indicator. But it is an indicator. And given the state of American politics, with hyperpartisanship and conspiracy theorizing running rampant, I’d argue that this market milestone deserves more attention than it has been getting.Not to put too fine a point on it, but do you have any doubt that Republicans, across the board, would be trumpeting the Dow’s record high from every rooftop if Donald Trump were still in the White House?The background here is the gap between what we know about the actual state of our economy and the way Trump and his allies describe it.By the numbers, the economy looks very good. Unemployment has now been below 4 percent for 27 months, a record last achieved in the late 1960s, ending in February 1970. Inflation is way down from its peak in 2022, although by most measures it’s still somewhat above the Federal Reserve’s target of 2 percent. U.S. economic growth over the past four years has been much faster than in comparable major wealthy nations.Yet Trump says that the economy is “collapsing into a cesspool of ruin.” How can such claims be reconciled with the good economic data?Well, the numbers I just cited come from official agencies — the Bureau of Labor Statistics (which produces labor market data) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (which estimates gross domestic product). And if you were a hard-core MAGA partisan inclined to conspiracy theories — but I repeat myself — you might tell yourself that the good economic numbers are fake, concocted by a corrupt deep state to help President Biden win the election.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

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      A Former Leader of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Gang Joins Trump in Court

      by

      An entourage of more than a dozen supporters who joined President Donald J. Trump in a Manhattan courthouse on Monday included a former president of an outlaw motorcycle gang in New York City who spent years in prison on drug charges.The man, Chuck Zito, helped found in the early 1980s the New York Nomads chapter of the Hells Angels, the infamous club that started in California. The Justice Department described the organization as a criminal enterprise and linked the New York chapter to the Gambino crime family. Mr. Zito later left the biker group to try become a movie star in Hollywood.Mr. Trump has long shown an affection for macho bikers, and addressed a rally of them in Washington in 2016 before the election. (“Do we love the bikers? Yes. We love the bikers,” he told the crowd.) A group called Bikers for Trump took part in several so-called Stop the Steal rallies after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election.Mr. Zito was joined in the courtroom on Monday by several Trump allies who have been charged with crimes.They included Boris Epshteyn, a legal adviser indicted in an Arizona case related to attempts to keep Mr. Trump in power after the 2020 election, and Bernard Kerik, the former commissioner of the New York Police Department, who was imprisoned for tax-related charges and later pardoned by Mr. Trump. The entourage was so large that Mr. Epshteyn helped coordinate seating.Mr. Zito has experience with the criminal justice system, having served a prison term from 1985 to 1991 on drug conspiracy charges. In recent decades, he has created a new career as a stuntman and occasional actor, starring most prominently as Chucky “The Enforcer” Pancamo in the HBO prison drama “Oz.”Mr. Zito is also something of a professional tough-guy-about-town with many acquaintances in New York and Hollywood. He once served as a boxing trainer for the actor Mickey Rourke, and when the mob boss John Gotti died of cancer in 2002, Mr. Zito was one of the few non-Mafia members to attend the wake at a funeral home in Queens. More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      This Is What Worries Me About the Trump Trial

      by

      I can’t remember when I’ve been more disturbed by a criminal trial than I have been by the Manhattan trial of Donald Trump. The prosecutors are painting a vivid picture of Trump as a vile and dishonest person, and the daily pilgrimages of Republican politicians to the Manhattan courthouse, in spite of horrific testimony against Trump, demonstrates that the party has a broken soul.At the same time, the underlying legal theory supporting the prosecution’s case remains dubious. The facts may be clear, but the law is anything but — and that could very well mean that the jury convicts Trump before the election, an appeals court reverses the conviction after the election, and millions of Americans, many of them non-MAGA, face yet another crisis of confidence in American institutions.Let’s first discuss the dreadful facts. Stormy Daniels’s testimony crystallized, better than that of any other witness, the prosecution’s theory that Trump ordered Michael Cohen to pay off Daniels to save his campaign and then fraudulently disguised the reimbursements. It helped answer a key question: Why would a known playboy, a person who has boasted of his affairs with his friends’ wives, suddenly be so keen to suppress details of his encounter with a porn star?Consider the timeline. On Oct. 7, 2016, the “Access Hollywood” story broke. The Washington Post released the infamous recording in which Trump told Billy Bush, one of the show’s hosts, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” Trump went on, saying he could grab women by the genitals. “You can do anything.”The next day, a representative for Daniels told The National Enquirer that Daniels was willing to talk on the record about her encounter with Trump. We now know from Daniels’s sworn testimony that her story was going to essentially affirm the “Access Hollywood” tape. Trump used his star power to draw in Daniels and then exploited her.At trial, she did not testify to a frivolous or joyful encounter with Trump; she testified to something far more distressing. He invited her to his hotel room, and after she went to the bathroom, she walked out to find Trump on the bed in just his boxers and a T-shirt. She did not claim he forced himself on her, but she said she left “shaking” and testified that she was ashamed.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

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Seven Theories for Why Biden Is Losing (and What He Should Do About It)

      by

      It’s not Joe Biden’s poll numbers that worry me, exactly. It’s the denial of what’s behind them.Among likely voters, Biden is trailing Donald Trump by one point in Wisconsin and three points in Pennsylvania. He’s ahead by a point in Michigan. Sweeping those three states is one route to re-election, and they’re within reach.Still, Biden is losing to Trump. His path is narrowing. In 2020, Biden didn’t just win Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He also won Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. Now he’s behind in those states by six points, nine points and 13 points in the latest Times/Siena/Philadelphia Inquirer poll. Have those states turned red? No. That same poll finds Democrats leading in the Arizona and Nevada Senate races. The Democrats are also leading in the Senate races in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.National polls find Democrats slightly ahead of Republicans for control of congress. The “Never Biden” vote now looks larger than the “Never Trump” vote. The electorate hasn’t turned on Democrats; a crucial group of voters has turned on Biden.This week, the Biden team appeared to shake up the race by challenging Trump to two debates. One will take place early, on June 27. The other will be in September. Biden’s video was full of bluster. “Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020,” he said. “Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I’ll even do it twice.”Biden, it seemed, was calling Trump’s bluff. He wanted the fight. But Biden wants fewer debates, not more. On the same day, he pulled out of the three debates scheduled by the Commission on Presidential Debates for September and October. He rebuffed the Trump campaign’s call for four debates. “I’ll even do it twice” is misdirection. He’ll only do it twice.This is bad precedent and questionable politics. Debates do more to focus and inform the public than anything else during the campaign. Biden is cutting the number of debates by a third and he’s making it easier for future candidates to abandon debates altogether.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

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Accepting N.R.A. Endorsement, Trump Pledges to Be Gun Owners’ Ardent Ally

      by

      Former President Donald J. Trump, accepting the endorsement of the National Rifle Association on Saturday, cast himself as a powerful ally for gun owners and gun businesses, contending that under President Biden the right to bear arms was “under siege.”“If the Biden regime gets four more years, they are coming for your guns,” Mr. Trump said in Dallas, where he headlined the N.R.A.’s annual meeting.Mr. Trump addressed the group as he is on trial in Manhattan on criminal charges that he falsified business records related to a hush-money payment to a porn star. Onstage in Dallas, he contended that he knew “better than anybody” what it was like to have rights taken away.“In my second term, we will roll back every Biden attack on the Second Amendment,” he said to loud applause.The annual gun rights gathering appeared far more muted than the last time Mr. Trump attended it, in 2022, in Houston, just days after the mass shooting of 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Greg Abbott, the state’s governor, and John Cornyn, its senior senator, did not attend that year’s convention, citing other commitments. Several marquee musical performers pulled their participation out of respect, they said, for the victims and their families.The N.R.A., the nation’s most prominent gun rights group and once a potent political force, has found itself in a hobbled state. In recent years, it has shed members and been besieged by setbacks, defections and internal strife. In February, a Manhattan jury ruled that its leaders had engaged in a yearslong pattern of financial misconduct and corruption.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