Presidential Election of 2024

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      A Pro-Trump Crowd, Sensing Disloyalty, Drowns Out Dissent

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      A day after former President Donald J. Trump headlined the Turning Point conference in Florida, two of his Republican opponents were booed and heckled at the same event.Not long ago, the names on the marquee would have been right at home on Fox News: Stephen K. Bannon, Tucker Carlson and Roger J. Stone Jr.But Fox News ousted Mr. Carlson three months ago, and Mr. Bannon, Mr. Stone and a boisterous pro-Trump crowd at the Turning Point Action Conference were eager to take shots at the conservative network, arguing that it has not been sufficiently supportive of former President Donald J. Trump as he seeks to regain the office he lost in 2020.At the two-day gathering, with thousands of pro-Trump activists in attendance this weekend in South Florida, jeers flew on Sunday at the mention of Rupert Murdoch, the Fox media mogul, as well as Speaker Kevin McCarthy.Donald J. Trump spoke to roughly 6,000 attendees for more than an hour and a half on Sunday.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesAnd after Mr. Trump spoke to this crowd on Saturday, any of his Republican rivals for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination took the stage at their own peril.In a speech on Sunday, Mr. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s onetime chief strategist who was found guilty of contempt of Congress, suggested that Mr. Murdoch had been using Fox News to hype Republican governors from battleground states to undermine Mr. Trump’s candidacy. He cited Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Mr. Trump’s main rival in the party, who trails him by roughly 30 percentage points in national polls, as a cautionary tale.“Come on down,” Mr. Bannon said. “Bring it because we’ll destroy you just like we destroyed DeSantis.”Mr. Bannon — the host of a right-wing podcast, which he has used to promote election falsehoods and conspiracy theories — criticized Fox News for its lack of coverage of the pro-Trump conclave and called Mr. Trump’s political battles a “jihad.”“Donald Trump is our instrument for retribution,” he said.While Fox News did not carry the event on its main network, it did show conference speeches by Mr. Trump and the other Republican candidates on Fox Nation, its subscription streaming service. A Fox Corporation spokesman declined to comment on behalf of Mr. Murdoch.Two of Mr. Trump’s long-shot Republican opponents — Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor; and Francis X. Suarez, the mayor of Miami — experienced the wrath of Mr. Trump’s supporters firsthand on Sunday when they were heckled and booed.When Mr. Suarez, whom The Miami Herald has reported as being under F.B.I. investigation in a corruption case, stepped up to the microphone, a few people in the crowd yelled “traitor.”He responded by mentioning his Cuban American heritage and saying that dissenting voices were welcome in America, unlike in his ancestors’ home country.A woman yelling at Francis X. Suarez, the Miami mayor and Republican presidential candidate.Saul Martinez for The New York Times“It’s OK to have a little bit of hate,” Mr. Suarez told the crowd.Saul Martinez for The New York Times“It’s OK to have a little bit of hate,” Mr. Suarez said. Later, he asked conservative activists to chip in to his campaign.Mr. Hutchinson paused his remarks as the crowd began chanting Mr. Trump’s name, and one of his biggest applause lines came when he mentioned his successor in the Arkansas governor’s office: Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Mr. Trump’s onetime White House press secretary.Contending with cross-talk for much of his speech, Mr. Hutchinson said that Republicans needed to have respect for people with different opinions.At the conference, attendees could attach sticky notes to cutouts of the Republican candidates’ heads.A man placed one with a homophobic slur on the face of Mike Pence, Mr. Trump’s former vice president. Later, it appeared to have been removed. But a number of stickers branding Mr. Pence a “traitor” for refusing to overturn the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, covered his face.On a cutout of Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Mr. Trump’s United Nation’s ambassador, one sticky note said: “Woman in Politics? Cringe.”At the event’s apex on Saturday, about 6,000 people filled the Palm Beach County Convention Center to hear Mr. Trump speak for nearly 100 minutes. Mr. Carlson ruminated about his dismissal from Fox News in April.Roger J. Stone Jr. speaking to the pro-Trump crowd.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesIn a speech on Sunday, Mr. Stone, who had a felony conviction pardoned by Mr. Trump, claimed that federal prosecutors had offered him a deal to dredge up dirt implicating Mr. Trump in wrongdoing and recalled a predawn F.B.I. raid at his home in South Florida in 2019 during which he was arrested.“I said, ‘You can go to hell,’” he said. More

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      Senate Democrats Outpace Republicans in Fund-Raising in Key States

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      The 2024 election map is a challenging one for Democrats — especially in states they need to hold for a majority. But the incumbents made a strong financial showing this quarter.Senate Democrats staring down tough re-election fights can look to one bright spot: sizable fund-raising hauls and cash stockpiles more than a year before Election Day.In states where they are most vulnerable in 2024 — Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wisconsin — Democratic incumbents have raised more money than they previously have at this stage in earlier cycles, the latest campaign filings show. Saturday was the deadline for campaigns to file spending and fund-raising reports for the three months between April 1 and June 30.Most of the vulnerable incumbent Democratic senators also topped their prospective Republican challengers in fund-raising and will head into the fall with several million dollars in cash on hand.The race for Senate control is in its earliest months, and Republicans are still building campaigns. Yet the Democrats’ relative financial strength in the second quarter of an off year suggests significant energy as the party aims to protect its slim majority next year.The electoral map, however, will be one of the most challenging the party has faced in years. Nearly two dozen Democratic seats are up for re-election in 2024, with eight incumbents seen as vulnerable, while just 10 Republicans face re-election — and all of the G.O.P. incumbents won by comfortable margins in previous cycles.In their Senate re-election bids, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana both brought in more than $5 million. Mr. Brown had $8.7 million in cash on hand, and Mr. Tester $10.5 million. Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin raised $3.2 million, the most ever raised in a Wisconsin Senate contest in an off year, according to her campaign.Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a conservative Democrat who has not yet publicly said whether he will run for re-election — and is flirting with a third-party presidential run — raised $1.3 million over the last three months and has more than $10 million in the bank, expanding his cash advantage over Gov. Jim Justice and Representative Alex Mooney, Republicans who have already begun campaigns to unseat him.In Pennsylvania, Senator Bob Casey posted his best fund-raising quarter to date, bringing in more than $4 million for his re-election bid.Republicans have been preparing their own money machines and recruiting candidates in five states with vulnerable Democrats. Republican confidence has also been bolstered by the 2024 Senate map.The Democrats “are trying to use money to defy gravity,” said Stu Sandler, a political consultant and former political director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “This is a lopsided map for them,” he added, pointing to former President Donald J. Trump’s 2020 victories in Ohio, Montana and West Virginia — all states Mr. Trump won decisively. And, he said, Republicans have some “very credible favorites” to challenge the incumbents.Democrats view this fund-raising as a crucial show of strength that will fortify their candidates ahead of a difficult 2024 cycle for the party.“Voters and grass-roots supporters are once again supporting battle-tested Senate Democratic candidates in record ways because they recognize the stakes of this election and the importance of stopping Republicans from implementing their toxic agenda,” said Tommy Garcia, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.In Arizona, Representative Ruben Gallego raised more than Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who has changed her party affiliation from Democrat to independent, by two-to-one — the second time this year Mr. Gallego has notched such a ratio. He still trails Ms. Sinema in cash on hand by more than $7 million. Ms. Sinema has not yet announced whether she will run for re-election.Even Democrats in safe Republican territory had strong showings. In Texas, Representative Colin Allred raised $6.2 million in his challenge to Senator Ted Cruz. Mr. Allred, who announced his campaign in May, brought in more money in a shorter period of time than Mr. Cruz, who raised $4.4 million in the last three months. More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Airs Bigoted New Covid Conspiracy Theory About Jews and Chinese

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      The long-shot candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination has a history of embracing conspiracy theories. His latest comments claimed the virus spared certain ethnic and religious groups.A conspiracy-filled rant by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that the Covid-19 virus was engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people has stirred accusations of antisemitism and racism in the Democratic candidate’s long-shot run for president.“Covid-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. Covid-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Mr. Kennedy said at a private gathering in New York that was captured on videotape by The New York Post. “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”Mr. Kennedy has made his political career on false conspiracy theories about not just Covid-19 and Covid vaccines but disproved links between common childhood vaccines and autism, mass surveillance and 5G cellular phone technology, ill health effects from Wi-Fi and a “stolen” election in 2004 that gave the presidency back to George W. Bush.But his suggestion that the coronavirus pandemic spared Chinese people and Jews of European descent strayed into new and bigoted territory.Asian Americans suffered through a brutal spate of assaults at the beginning of the Covid pandemic by people who blamed the Chinese for intentionally releasing the virus on the world. And Mr. Kennedy’s remarks about Ashkenazi Jews hit antisemitic tropes on multiple levels.Ashkenazi Jews generally descend from those who settled in Eastern Europe after the Roman Empire destroyed the Jewish state around 70 A.D. Sephardic Jews went to the Middle East, North Africa and Spain.The idea that Ashkenazi Jews are somehow separate from Caucasians has fueled deadly bigotry for centuries, and the conspiracy of Jewish immunity from tragedy has been part of antisemitic attacks as far back as the Black Plague and as recently as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.Abraham Foxman, who worked for decades as the head of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights organization, condemned “antisemitic stereotypes going back to the Middle Ages that claimed Jews protected themselves from diseases.”“It cannot be ignorance because he is not ignorant, so he must believe it,” Mr. Foxman said Saturday night.Mr. Kennedy responded to The New York Post story with a defense that only deepened his conspiratorial theories. He wrote on Twitter that he “accurately pointed out” that the United States is “developing ethnically targeted bioweapons” — a point he made in his remarks captured on video, when he repeated Russian propaganda that the United States is collecting D.N.A. in Ukraine to target Russians with tailored bioweapons.Mr. Kennedy also linked to a scientific paper that he said showed the structure of the Covid-19 virus made Black and Caucasian people more susceptible, and “ethnic Chinese, Finns and Ashkenazi Jews” were less receptive.But the study he linked to, published in July 2020, early in the pandemic and before effective treatments had emerged, made no reference to Chinese people as more receptive to the virus, nor did it speak of targeting the virus. It said one particular receptor for the virus appeared not to be present in Amish and Ashkenazi Jews.His conclusions were roundly dismissed by scientists.“Jewish or Chinese protease consensus sequences are not a thing in biochemistry, but they are in racism and antisemitism,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan.Mr. Kennedy returned to Twitter just after midnight on Sunday to call charges of antisemitism against him “a disgusting fabrication.”“I understand the emotional pain that these inaccurate distortions and fabrications have caused to many Jews who recall the blood libels of poison wells and the deliberate spread of disease as the pretext for genocidal programs against their ancestors,” he wrote in a lengthy post. “My father and my uncles, John F. Kennedy and Senator Edward Kennedy, devoted enormous political energies during their careers to supporting Israel and fighting antisemitism. I intend to spend my political career making those family causes my priority.”Mr. Kennedy’s comments are not the first time he has strayed into the intersection of Judaism and Covid. In his zeal for condemning steps to stem the spread of the virus, he spoke last year at an anti-vaccination mandate rally in Washington, saying, “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did,” suggesting Covid restrictions were worse.Even his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, condemned the comment about Anne Frank.“My husband’s reference to Anne Frank at a mandate rally in D.C. was reprehensible and insensitive,” she wrote on Twitter.The anger from Jewish leaders over his Covid remarks was immediate.The Anti-Defamation League wrote, “The claim that Covid-19 was a bioweapon created by the Chinese or Jews to attack Caucasians and Black people is deeply offensive and feeds into sinophobic and antisemitic conspiracy theories about Covid-19 that we have seen evolve over the last three years.”Representative Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey, wrote on Twitter, “RFK Jr. is a disgrace to the Kennedy name and the Democratic Party. For the record, my whole family, who is Jewish, got Covid.” More

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      Biden’s Campaign Fund-Raising Filing Shows Sluggish Small Donations

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      Wealthy Democrats have thrown their money behind the president’s re-election bid, but for many reasons, the party’s small donors have yet to step up their contributions.When President Biden traveled to San Francisco last month, he raised more than $10 million in 36 hours from wealthy Democrats. Trips to Chicago and New York netted millions more, as did fund-raising events around Washington, proving that the party’s big-donor class is fully committed to Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign.But the small-dollar online money spigot that helped Mr. Biden smash fund-raising records during his 2020 presidential campaign has not yet turned on, and there are ample signs that it may be months before it does.The Biden campaign and the Biden Victory Fund, its joint fund-raising vehicle, collected $10.2 million from small donors — defined as those who gave $200 or less — during the three-month fund-raising period that ended June 30, according to a Federal Election Commission report filed Saturday. That figure is about half of the $21 million President Barack Obama’s campaign raised during the same period of his 2012 re-election effort.Democrats involved with Mr. Biden’s campaign and the world of online fund-raising detailed a host of reasons for Mr. Biden’s relatively low small-dollar haul.Google and Apple have made it harder for email senders to see data about who has opened solicitations. Inflation slowed political donations across the board. Donors are exhausted by the unending flow of emails asking for money, and recipients are responding to far fewer of them.At the moment, Democrats aren’t quite as fired up as they were in 2018 and 2020, when Donald J. Trump’s presidency opened floodgates of liberal money, or ahead of the 2022 midterms, when the Capitol riot, the rise of the election-denial movement and the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade all motivated donors.And Mr. Biden is not an insurgent candidate who is motivating students to put up posters of him on dorm-room walls, as Mr. Obama or Senator Bernie Sanders did in their campaigns. His low-key White House and bare-bones campaign haven’t yet motivated supporters to rage-donate to his campaign.“Right now there’s there is no day-to-day competition combat going on,” said Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul, whom Mr. Biden named a co-chairman of his campaign. “So these are the most loyal, most dedicated believers and supporters. It’ll build over time.”Mr. Biden’s campaign highlighted an array of statistics to promote its grass-roots donor operation. Nearly a third of its 394,000 donors did not contribute to Mr. Biden in 2020, the campaign said.Yet the president’s finance reports show that he is far more dependent on the wealthiest donors than Mr. Trump was in his re-election bid or Mr. Biden’s opponents were in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary contest.Ten donors, including Mr. Katzenberg, Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, and Stewart W. Bainum Jr., the Maryland hotel magnate, gave $500,000 or more to the Biden Victory Fund. Another 82 donors contributed $100,000 or more.Four years ago, 35 percent of the money raised by Mr. Trump and the two joint committees his campaign formed with the national committee — Trump Victory and Trump Make America Great Again Committee — came from donors who gave $200 or less. For Mr. Biden, 21 percent of funds to his campaign and the joint finance committee came from small donors.Small-dollar contributions are down across the political spectrum. An analysis conducted by Middle Seat, a digital fund-raising firm with an array of Democratic clients, found that small donors had given less money during the first fund-raising period of 2023 than they had in nearly four years — since early 2019.“If I were on the Biden team right now, I’d be really happy with the numbers,” said Kenneth Pennington, a partner at Middle Seat. “It’s a terrible fund-raising environment, and he’s not launching a new campaign.”While Mr. Biden’s total fund-raising was roughly on par with the Republican candidates, he outpaced them with small donors. Combined, the G.O.P. candidates raised $7.5 million from small donors to his $10.2 million.The percentage of contributions of less than $200 is typically at its high point at the beginning of a campaign and drops as campaigns proceed, because when the amount an individual donor has given exceeds $200, it triggers a federal disclosure requirement.When Mr. Biden began his 2020 campaign for president, 38 percent of the money his campaign raised during the comparable reporting period came from small donors. Democratic online fund-raising experts said they expected the pace of online giving to the Biden campaign to pick up early next year, once voters begin to pay more attention to the Republican primary race and the nominee to oppose Mr. Biden emerges.“Once Democratic donors become focused on the Republican primary and what’s at stake in the 2024 election, the Biden campaign will have no problem raising record amounts of money online,” said Lauren Miller, who served as digital director to Elizabeth Warren’s Senate campaigns.Mr. Trump’s small-dollar percentage cannot be discerned until his joint fund-raising committees, into which most of his online solicitations direct money, report finances. They are not required to do so until July 31.Finance reports for the other Republican candidates reveal a party that, even more than Mr. Biden, is heavily reliant on large donors.Among the other Republican candidates, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida reported $2.9 million from small donors, but that figure accounts for a mere 14 percent of what his campaign raised. The small-dollar percentages among other candidates ranged from 34 percent for former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to 2 percent for Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, who is largely self-financing his campaign.Unlike the Obama and Trump campaigns, the Biden campaign didn’t begin with a digital fund-raising team in place. Instead, it has relied on the Democratic National Committee for its online solicitations. The campaign advertised last week that it was seeking a “director of email and SMS” to lead a division that typically would have more than a dozen people. The campaign recently hired a grass-roots fund-raising director, an official said Saturday.Mr. Biden’s campaign has plowed at least $3.3 million into advertising on Facebook and Google, according to data compiled by Bully Pulpit Interactive, a marketing and communications agency. That figure is far more than any Republican candidate has spent on the platforms and suggests that the campaign is investing in its search for small donors.Two of Mr. Biden’s top advisers, Anita Dunn and Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, who are overseeing his re-election campaign from the White House, this week formally blessed a super PAC, Future Forward, as the chief outlet for large sums of cash from supportive billionaires and multimillionaires. More

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      Which Presidential Candidates Are Leading the 2024 Money Race?

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      Federal disclosures on Saturday provided a first glimpse of the money race between the presidential candidates for 2024, showing who has amassed the most campaign cash so far. Cash on Hand on June 30 (in millions) Donald J. Trump $22.5 Tim Scott 21.1 Joseph R. Biden Jr. 20.1 Ron DeSantis 12.2 Vivek Ramaswamy 9.0 + […] More

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      DeSantis Sheds Staff Amid Heavy Spending

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      The dismissals come as his campaign for the Republican nomination for president struggles to gain traction against former President Donald J. Trump, who is leading in polls.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has started cutting campaign staff just months into his presidential bid, as he has struggled to gain traction in the Republican primary and lost ground in some public polls to former President Donald J. Trump.The exact number of people let go by the DeSantis team was unclear, but one campaign aide said it was fewer than 10. The development was earlier reported by Politico.The dismissals are an ominous sign for the campaign and also underscore the challenges that Mr. DeSantis faces with both his fund-raising and his spending, at a time when a number of major donors who had expressed interest in him have grown concerned about his performance.An aide, Andrew Romeo, described the campaign’s circumstances in an upbeat tone.“Americans are rallying behind Ron DeSantis and his plan to reverse Joe Biden’s failures and restore sanity to our nation, and his momentum will only continue as voters see more of him in person, especially in Iowa,” he said in a statement. “Defeating Joe Biden and the $72 million behind him will require a nimble and candidate-driven campaign, and we are building a movement to go the distance.”The race is still in its early days, and past campaigns have reshuffled in the months before voting begins. Former Senator John McCain blew up his campaign in the summer of 2007 before winning the Republican nomination. Mr. Trump’s went through three iterations in his successful bid, although none came during the primary races. Several top DeSantis fund-raisers have said the Florida governor is in it for the long haul, with a focus on the upcoming debates and contests that begin in January.But Mr. DeSantis’s moves are coming unusually early. And the fund-raising numbers — filed Saturday — show a campaign that will need to make several adjustments, including to travel schedule and to staff size, if it plans to make up lost momentum that began to fade months before Mr. DeSantis formally entered the race.The DeSantis campaign is also expected to make further changes, according to aides. Policy speeches are planned, along with interviews with the kind of news outlets he has broadly derided, as soon as this week, according to two people familiar with the strategy.Mr. DeSantis’s struggles appear to be not just about the numbers, but also with the campaign’s message. Late last week, two top DeSantis advisers, Dave Abrams and Tucker Obenshain, were announced to be leaving to join an outside group supporting Mr. DeSantis.Mr. DeSantis’s campaign finance disclosure with the Federal Election Commission shows he raised roughly $20 million but spent almost $8 million, a so-called burn rate that leaves him with just $12 million in cash on hand. Only about $9 million of that cash can be spent in the primary, with the rest counting toward the general election if he is the nominee. The filing indicated a surprisingly large staff for a campaign so early in a candidacy, particularly for one with a super PAC that has made a show of how much of the load it is prepared to handle. More than $1 million in expenditures were listed as “payroll” and payroll processing.Mr. DeSantis’s top expenditures included $1.3 million earmarked for travel, including private jet rental services. The campaign also spent more than $800,000 apiece on digital fund-raising consulting, media placement and postage. The campaign also paid nearly $1 million to WinRed, the online donation-processing company.Recent Republican primary races have been littered with examples of candidates with early sizzle followed by significant struggles. Scott Walker, who was the governor of Wisconsin, quit the presidential race in September 2015 as he was amassing debt. Jeb Bush, one of Mr. DeSantis’s predecessors as Florida governor and perhaps the biggest donor draw in the 2016 campaign, began shedding payroll amid struggles as well, though much later in the race.Still, Mr. DeSantis’s allies note that he is further ahead in polls in Iowa than Mr. Bush was in the fall of 2015 and that he has a more natural constituency in Iowa than other challengers. The caucuses will be held on Jan. 15, 2024, and it’s the state where candidates seeking to blunt Mr. Trump must fare well.Rachel Shorey contributed reporting. More

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      Trump Taunts DeSantis Onstage at Turning Point Action Conference

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      Former President Donald J. Trump taunted Gov. Ron DeSantis, his chief Republican rival, for his absence from the conservative Turning Point Action Conference.On the home turf of his chief Republican rival and in his adopted state, former President Donald J. Trump told a sprawling conservative gathering in Florida on Saturday night that it was futile for Gov. Ron DeSantis to keep battling him for the party’s presidential nomination.In a prime-time speech at the Turning Point Action Conference in West Palm Beach, Fla., Mr. Trump claimed that his polling lead over Mr. DeSantis and every other G.O.P. candidate was insurmountable, and suggested that the Florida governor should stand down for the good of the party.Mr. Trump, who leads Mr. DeSantis by roughly 30 percentage points in national polls, dismissed Mr. DeSantis’s early momentum before he officially entered the race in May as a mirage.“He was never that close, by the way,” Mr. Trump told about 6,000 grass-roots activists at the Palm Beach County Convention Center. Turning Point Action is a political arm of Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump grass-roots group focusing on millennial conservatives that was founded by Charlie Kirk.Mr. Trump seized on his rival’s absence from the two-day event, which drew about a third of the Republican presidential field as speakers.“I don’t know why he’s not here,” he said. “He should be here representing himself.”In a statement on Saturday, Bryan Griffin, the campaign press secretary for Mr. DeSantis, shrugged off Mr. Trump’s criticism.“Governor DeSantis spent the day with Iowans and spoke to a packed house at the Tennessee G.O.P. Statesman Dinner later that night,” he said. “This was a day after he delivered the strongest interview at the Family Leadership Summit, which Donald Trump notably skipped. Ron DeSantis is campaigning to win.”Mr. Trump was greeted onstage with pyrotechnics and a nearly three-minute video montage of the former president. While organizers prepared the stage for his entrance, Mr. Trump’s supporters, many in their ubiquitous red caps, watched musical performances of Elvis and Pavarotti on giant screens.Mr. DeSantis declined an invitation to speak at the end of the conference on Sunday, according to organizers, who noted that he had worked closely with Turning Point Action during the midterm elections last year and took part in several rallies that supported Trump-endorsed candidates.Mr. Trump spoke for nearly 100 minutes at the conference, meeting a warm reception from the conservative crowd of about 6,000.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesBut on the same day that Mr. DeSantis announced his campaign in May, the conservative group announced that Mr. Trump would headline its conference in Florida, perhaps miffing the host governor.The lineup of speakers on Saturday may have given Mr. DeSantis further pause. It included three Republican House members from Florida who have endorsed Mr. Trump’s candidacy: Representatives Byron Donalds, Anna Paulina Luna and Matt Gaetz.In succession, each professed their loyalty to the former president, as booming subwoofers and smoke machines added to the theatrical effect.Mr. Gaetz, the provocateur who nominated Mr. Trump for House speaker earlier this year during the G.O.P.’s protracted leadership fight, got a roar from the crowd when he said that Mr. Trump’s allies were unflinching.“Of course, we ride or die with President Donald John Trump,” he said.And when Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News commentator, dared to suggest at the event that the Republican nominating contest was probably a two-candidate race between Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis, several thousand activists booed.Ms. Kelly, who famously tangled with Mr. Trump in a G.O.P. debate in 2015, relented.“The vast majority of the Republican Party wants Trump,” she said, adding that Mr. Trump’s indictments had only burnished his stock with conservative voters. “We all know who the best middle-finger candidate is.”In a nearly 100-minute speech, Mr. Trump noted that Mr. DeSantis had once been his ally and had sought his endorsement in his first race for governor in 2018.“I got him elected,” he said. “He was dead. He begged me to endorse him.”Mr. Trump said that he had been taken aback when Mr. DeSantis later declined to say whether he might challenge him for the Republican nomination, using an expletive to refer to the Florida governor.Tucker Carlson, who was fired from Fox News in April, whipped the audience into a frenzy with an appearance immediately before the former president.“I don’t think most unemployed people get a reception like that,” Mr. Carlson said.Mr. Carlson doubled down on his baseless claims that voting machines had been rigged during the 2020 election and expressed sympathy for the Capitol rioters, saying that a country that squashes discussions about the electoral process was not a democracy.Vivek Ramaswamy, the multimillionaire entrepreneur running for the Republican nomination, also spoke on Saturday. Three other long-shot candidates — Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas; Francis X. Suarez, the mayor of Miami; and Perry Johnson, a wealthy businessman from Michigan — are scheduled to speak on Sunday.So are Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s onetime chief strategist who was found guilty of contempt of Congress; and Roger J. Stone Jr., the pro-Trump operative who was convicted of obstruction but had his sentence commuted by Mr. Trump. In the convention center’s lobby, Mr. Stone took selfies with Mr. Trump’s supporters.“All the cool people are here,” Mr. Carlson said. More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Covid Remarks Raise Questions of Antisemitism

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      The long-shot candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination has a history of conspiracy theories. His latest comments claimed the virus spared certain ethnic and religious groups. A conspiracy-filled rant by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that the Covid-19 virus was engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people has stirred accusations of antisemitism and racism in the Democratic candidate’s long-shot run for president.“Covid-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. Covid-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Mr. Kennedy said at a private gathering in New York that was captured on videotape by The New York Post. “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”Mr. Kennedy has made his political career on false conspiracy theories about not just Covid-19 and Covid vaccines but disproved links between common childhood vaccines and autism, mass surveillance and 5G cellular phone technology, ill health effects from Wi-Fi and a “stolen” election in 2004 that gave the presidency back to George W. Bush.But his suggestion that the coronavirus pandemic spared Chinese people and Jews of European descent strayed into new territory that struck many as bigoted. Asian Americans suffered through a brutal spate of assaults at the beginning of the Covid pandemic by people who blamed the Chinese for intentionally releasing the virus on the world. And Mr. Kennedy’s remarks about Ashkenazi Jews hit antisemitic tropes on multiple levels. Ashkenazi Jews generally descend from those who settled in Eastern Europe after the Roman Empire destroyed the Jewish state around 70 A.D. Sephardic Jews went to the Middle East, North Africa and Spain.The idea that Ashkenazi Jews are somehow separate from Caucasians has fueled deadly bigotry for centuries, and the conspiracy of Jewish immunity from tragedy has been part of antisemitic attacks as far back as the Black Plague and as recently as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.Abraham Foxman, who worked for decades as the head of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights organization, condemned “antisemitic stereotypes going back to the Middle Ages that claimed Jews protected themselves from diseases.”“It cannot be ignorance because he is not ignorant,” Mr. Foxman said Saturday night.Mr. Kennedy responded to The New York Post story with a defense that only deepened his conspiratorial theories. He wrote on Twitter that he “accurately pointed out” that the United States is “developing ethnically targeted bioweapons” — a point he made in his remarks captured on video, when he repeated fanciful Russian propaganda that the United States is collecting Russian D.N.A. in Ukraine to target Russians with tailored bioweapons.Mr. Kennedy linked to a scientific paper that he said showed the structure of the Covid-19 virus made Black and Caucasian people more susceptible, and “ethnic Chinese, Finns and Ashkenazi Jews” were less receptive.But the study he linked to made no reference to “Ashkenazi Jews” and his conclusions were roundly dismissed by scientists.“Jewish or Chinese protease consensus sequences are not a thing in biochemistry, but they are in racism and antisemitism,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan.Mr. Kennedy’s comments are not the first time he has strayed into the intersection of Judaism and Covid. In his zeal for condemning steps to stem the spread of the virus, he spoke last year at an anti-vaccination mandate rally in Washington, saying, “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did,” suggesting Covid restrictions were worse.Even his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, condemned the comment about Anne Frank.“My husband’s reference to Anne Frank at a mandate rally in D.C. was reprehensible and insensitive,” she wrote on Twitter.The anger from Jewish leaders over his Covid remarks was immediate. The Anti-Defamation League wrote, “The claim that Covid-19 was a bioweapon created by the Chinese or Jews to attack Caucasians and Black people is deeply offensive and feeds into sinophobic and antisemitic conspiracy theories about Covid-19 that we have seen evolve over the last three years.”Representative Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey, wrote on Twitter, “RFK Jr. is a disgrace to the Kennedy name and the Democratic Party. For the record, my whole family, who is Jewish, got Covid.” More