Presidential Election of 2024

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      For Executives, ‘Defending Democracy’ Can Seem Risky

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      Even seemingly anodyne sentiments supporting fair elections have become politically charged.Republicans have spent months laying the groundwork to challenge a defeat of Donald Trump in the presidential election. During a fund-raising call organized by corporate lawyers in September, Douglas Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, asked for help if those efforts veer outside legal grounds.According to two people on the call, Emhoff asked the lawyers to reiterate to their corporate clients the risks posed by efforts to undermine the integrity of the election.The request underlines the pressure some executives are feeling to repeat public calls they made four year ago, urging politicians to respect the results of the 2020 presidential election. But making those kinds of public statements may have gotten more complicated. Executives, who were outspoken during the pandemic, have resumed their efforts to stay out of politics. And seemingly anodyne sentiments are now politically charged: Only one of two candidates has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. That candidate has support of roughly half the country. And he has made it clear that if he takes power, he’s willing to go after his enemies.Democracy, as a term, “has become kind of loaded” for executives, Charles Elson, the founding director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, told DealBook.“I think that’s why you haven’t heard anything from them. But you got two weeks to go.”The landscape has changed. The Blackstone C.E.O. Stephen Schwarzman and the hedge fund boss Nelson Peltz, two billionaires who condemned Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, have since offered him their support. And one of his most high-profile supporters, Tesla C.E.O. Elon Musk, has questioned the accuracy of elections themselves: “When you have mail-in ballots and no proof of citizenship, it’s almost impossible to prove cheating,” Musk said at a rally in Pennsylvania this week.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’s Charity Toward None

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      The cardinal should go to confession.Timothy Dolan let a white-tie charity dinner in New York showcase that most uncharitable of men, Donald Trump.At the annual Al Smith dinner, Dolan suffused the impious Trump in the pious glow of Catholic charities. Dolan looked on with a doting expression as Trump made his usual degrading, scatological comments about his foils, this time cloaked as humor.“We have someone in the White House who can barely talk, barely put together two coherent sentences, who seems to have mental faculties of a child,” Trump told the New York fat cats. “It’s a person who has nothing going, no intelligence whatsoever. But enough about Kamala Harris.”Trump also offered this beauty: “I used to think the Democrats were crazy for saying that men have periods. But then I met Tim Walz.” When Trump joked about keeping Doug Emhoff away from nannies, even he admitted it was “too tough.”As he did in 2016 when he crudely attacked Hillary Clinton as she sat on the dais, Trump added a rancid cloud to what used to be a good-tempered bipartisan roast.Dolan could have stood up and told Trump “Enough!” We have been longing for that voice of authority who could deliver the Joseph Welch line — “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” — to our modern Joe McCarthy. It is the church’s job, after all, to teach right from wrong.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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      American Business Cannot Afford to Risk Another Trump Presidency

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      Throughout American history, business leaders have been able to assume that an American president of either party would uphold the rule of law, defend property rights and respect the independence of the courts. Implicit in that assumption is a fundamental belief that the country’s ethos meant their enterprises and the U.S. economy could thrive, no matter who won. They could keep their distance from the rough-and-tumble of campaign politics. No matter who won, they could pursue long-term plans and investments with confidence in America’s political stability.In this election, American business leaders cannot afford to stand passive and silent.Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, have sketched out versions of their parties’ traditional positions on issues like taxation, trade and regulation that are well within the give-and-take of politics. In this election, however, stability itself is also at stake.Mr. Trump denies the legitimacy of elections, defies constitutional limits on presidential power and boasts of plans to punish his enemies. And in these attacks on America’s democracy, he is also attacking the foundations of American prosperity. Voting on narrow policy concerns would reflect a catastrophically nearsighted view of the interests of American business.Some prominent corporate leaders — including Elon Musk, a founder of Tesla; the investors David Sacks and Bill Ackman; and the financier Stephen Schwarzman — have been supportive of Mr. Trump’s candidacy. Beyond pure cynicism, it’s nearly impossible to understand why.Business leaders, of course, may be skeptical of Ms. Harris’s policies, uneasy because they don’t feel they know enough about how she would govern or worried that she may not be open to hearing their concerns — a frequent criticism of the Biden administration. They may be reluctant to offend or alienate employees, customers or suppliers who have different political views. Most of all, they may be afraid of angering Mr. Trump, who has a long track record of using the levers of power to reward loyalty.They should be more afraid of the consequences if he prevails.This week Donald Trump provided a stark reminder that this election is different. In remarks that ought to alarm any American committed to the survival of our democratic experiment, the Republican nominee again refused to commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election. That comes on the heels of remarks in which he declared that he regards his political opponents as an “enemy from within” and that he would consider deploying the military against them merely for opposing his bid for the presidency. The implication is that participation in the democratic process is treason, and the threat is a fresh indication that if he is elected to a second term, Mr. Trump intends to deploy government power in new and dangerous ways.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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      A Cowed Establishment Toasts Trump at a Manhattan Charity Dinner

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      There were grudge matches and sycophancy in equal measure at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner. “Isn’t it just exciting, what’s going on,” Donald Trump said.Donald J. Trump and the assorted fat cats to whom he was speaking seemed to be processing many complicated emotions all at once.“You think this is easy?” the former and perhaps future president asked. “Standing up here in front of half a room that hates my guts, and the other half loves me?”There he stood, the godhead of a populist revenge movement, tucked into his satiny cummerbund, a black bow tie around his neck. It was the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in Midtown Manhattan.This charity event, held Thursday evening in the ballroom of the Hilton Hotel, has been a stop for presidential candidates ever since 1960. That’s when John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon showed up, at the dawn of the television age, to make self-deprecating jokes while courting the Roman Catholic vote. In 1970s New York, the era in which Mr. Trump came up, the dinner was one of the glitziest events on the social calendar, attended by governors and mayors and media machers and real estate titans.In 2016, he came as a presidential candidate himself. But when Mr. Trump’s remarks about his then-opponent, Hillary Clinton, veered into nasty territory, he was booed. He and his wife, Melania Trump, slunk out of the room the second it was over.Eight years later, the dinner he returned to was not the same. Like so much else in the Trump era, the Catholic charity event had become savage, warped by blunt force politics. There were all sorts of open wounds and grudges on display among the tuxedoed and the begowned. There were sycophants and there were outcasts. You could see the ones who had submitted to Mr. Trump, sitting beside members of a gorgonized establishment still unsure how to treat him, much less stop him.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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      Tesla Self-Driving System Will Be Investigated by Safety Agency

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      The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration said it was looking into what Elon Musk’s electric car company called the full self-driving system.Tesla’s plan to build fleets of self-driving cars suffered a setback on Friday when the main federal auto safety regulator said it was investigating whether the technology was to blame for four collisions, including one that killed a pedestrian.The regulator, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, said it was examining whether the software, which Tesla calls supervised full self-driving, had safeguards in place to require drivers to retake control of their cars in situations the autonomous technology could not handle on its own.As sales of Tesla’s electric cars have slowed, Elon Musk, the company’s chief executive, has staked the company’s future on software that allows cars to navigate, steer and brake without human supervision. Last week, the company held an event at the Warner Bros. studios near Los Angeles to unveil what it called a cybercab, which Mr. Musk promised would be able to ferry passengers without a human driver.But such software has faced persistent criticism from regulators and safety experts who say it does not do enough to make sure drivers remain alert and ready to take over if the system makes a mistake. Tesla faces numerous lawsuits from people who blame the software for injuries or deaths of loved ones.Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.The crashes highlighted by the safety agency on Friday took place when road visibility may have been limited by glare from the sun, fog or dust, the federal safety agency said. Tesla’s self-driving software depends on cameras to operate, unlike other manufacturers who also use radar or laser technology that are often better at detecting objects and people when the view is obscured by poor weather or bright sunshine.The agency said it would “examine the system’s potential failure to detect and disengage in specific situations where it cannot adequately operate.”In one of the collisions, a pedestrian died. In another, a person was injured, the agency said.The investigation covers 2.4 million Tesla vehicles, including cars manufactured as far back as 2016. All of Tesla’s passenger models are involved, the agency said, including the Model 3 and Model S sedans, the Model X and Model Y sport utility vehicles, and the Cybertruck.Federal officials have also been investigating a less capable Tesla system known as Autopilot for several years. These investigations may not survive if former President Donald J. Trump is elected next month. Mr. Trump has said he will appoint Mr. Musk, one of his most prominent supporters in the business world, to lead a “government efficiency commission.” More

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      Meet the Candidate: Elon Musk

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      The billionaire is spending a fortune to support former President Donald J. Trump. But at a town hall event in Pennsylvania, he looked an awful lot like a politician himself.Is Elon Musk running for president?Of course not. A South African-born billionaire, Mr. Musk cannot legally run and, anyway, he has invested over $75 million in trying to get Donald J. Trump elected.Somehow that mission brought Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person, to a high school auditorium in suburban Philadelphia on a surreal Thursday evening where, if you blinked, you might have forgotten momentarily that he was not the candidate himself.There was a military-grade security apparatus that protected his every movement. There was a crowded press riser, crummy Wi-Fi (at least for those who couldn’t procure the secret Starlink password), and a well-organized advance staff on headsets and production aides wielding professional video cameras. There was a giant American flag in the middle of a stage and a country and rock playlist straight out of a town hall in Iowa or New Hampshire during the Republican nominating season.Mr. Musk walked onto the stage to Brooks & Dunn’s “Only in America,” a staple of Trump campaign rallies. “I haven’t been politically active before,” he said to a rapturous and sometimes rowdy crowd. “I’m politically active now because I think the future of America, the future of civilization is at stake.”Mr. Musk was there to encourage Pennsylvanians to “go hog wild” on voter registration and to convince their friends to sign up before the state’s deadline, on Monday. But, still, much of the event ended up being about himself.Never known for his humility, Mr. Musk is betting on his own persuasive powers to help Mr. Trump win, just as he has bet on himself during existential crises at his companies, like X, SpaceX and Tesla. Mr. Musk has described Pennsylvania as the “linchpin” to Mr. Trump’s hopes of returning to the White House.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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      Is the Trump Trade Back?

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      Market observers see signs that investors increasingly believe Donald Trump will win the election, but there may be alternate explanations for a shift in sentiment. A rally in some stocks, cryptocurrencies and Donald Trump’s social media company are some signs of investors betting on the former president to win in November.Brendan Mcdermid/ReutersA trade makes a comeback The election polls may be deadlocked. But in the markets, some investors are indicating that they see Donald Trump as increasingly likely to win the White House, a belief that seems to mirror a swing in the prediction markets.Market observers see the return of the so-called Trump trade, which posits that certain industry sectors and financial assets — think oil drillers and cryptocurrencies — would benefit from the former president bringing in lower taxes and less regulation.The signs that the Trump trade is gaining steam: Stanley Druckenmiller, the billionaire financier, told Bloomberg yesterday that over the past 12 days, markets appeared “very convinced Trump is going to win.” (It’s worth noting that Druckenmiller said he didn’t plan to vote for either candidate.)Among the evidence Druckenmiller pointed to:A rally in bank stocks, which are up 8.5 percent over the past two weeks. (That said, banks have so far reported better-than-expected earnings.)Shares in Trump Media & Technology Group, the former president’s unprofitable social media company, have soared since late September, adding nearly $2 billion to its market value. But the stock’s volatile trading hasn’t always correlated with polls or prediction markets, and it’s unclear whether the company would draw more advertisers if Trump won. Some companies might flock to the platform to curry political favor; others might stay away.Bitcoin has risen about 13 percent in the past week. The cryptocurrency world has largely bet on a second Trump administration being friendlier to digital assets, though Vice President Kamala Harris has made appeals to the industry.Also, the dollar approached a two-and-a-half month high this morning as currency traders appear to be pricing in a Trump victory, betting that his economic policies would drive up inflation, lower the price of bonds and strengthen the dollar. (That said, Trump wants a weak greenback.)But there are potential pitfalls to betting on Trump. “It is a thing in the financial markets,” Holger Schmieding, the chief economist at Berenberg, a German bank, said of the Trump trade.He told DealBook: “I don’t agree with it in the long run. Higher tariffs and less immigration would hurt U.S. vitality.”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