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      CNN’s Donald Trump Forum Was a Preview of Political Coverage to Come

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      Criticized for handing Donald Trump a live prime-time platform, CNN faced a divisive response to an occasionally bewildering broadcast.David Zaslav, the chief executive of CNN’s parent company, recently defended the network’s decision to host a live town hall with former President Donald J. Trump, calling the event “important for America.”So it proved to be, but perhaps not for the reasons Mr. Zaslav intended.In a bracing and at times bewildering broadcast on Wednesday night, Mr. Trump — appearing on CNN for the first time since 2016 — unleashed a fusillade of falsehoods, sometimes too quickly for his interlocutor, the anchor Kaitlan Collins, to intervene.Again and again, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that the 2020 election was rigged. He called E. Jean Carroll a “wack job” and attacked her in misogynist terms. He defended the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters.Ms. Collins, composed in the face of Mr. Trump’s turbulence, interrupted, interceded, corrected and called out the former president on his lies. He often responded by talking right over her. When Mr. Trump finally lost patience and derided Ms. Collins as a “nasty person,” some in the live audience applauded.This was a preview of what American journalism can expect from a 2024 campaign featuring Mr. Trump, who despite his ubiquity in political life has rarely appeared on mainstream TV outside of Fox News since leaving office.If the 2016 campaign showed that many Americans could not agree on common facts, the Babel-like nature of Wednesday’s New Hampshire town hall suggested that voters now occupy wholly different universes. Mr. Trump repeated a web of conspiracies about a stolen election and the “beautiful day” of the Capitol riot, language that was likely to befuddle half the viewing audience and resonate as gospel with the rest.“The election was not rigged, Mr. President,” Ms. Collins said at one point. “You cannot keep saying that all night long.” (He kept saying it.)Ms. Collins, a rising star at CNN who is being considered for a prominent 9 p.m. slot at the network, was an able choice as moderator. She has covered Mr. Trump for years, knows his idiosyncrasies, and was not intimidated when Mr. Trump tried to bully her.Even Mr. Trump looked stumped when Ms. Collins asked, succinctly, “Do you want Ukraine to win this war?” (He would not give a straight answer.) She relentlessly pressed him on whether he would sign a federal ban on abortion, pointing out, “You did not say yes or no.” (Again, Mr. Trump would not say.)Still, Ms. Collins could do only so much as the sole journalist on the stage. It quickly became apparent that the crowd of Republican and Republican-leaning independents was deeply skeptical of her efforts to rein in Mr. Trump. The town hall format, where many cheers could be heard as the former president taunted Ms. Collins, made it all the more difficult for her to perform her assignment. (CNN said it assembled the audience in consultation with community groups, faith-based organizations, local Republicans and the Saint Anselm College student government.)When the broadcast ended — after Mr. Trump briefly shook Ms. Collins’s hand and uttered, “Good job” — the cameras cut to a panel of unusually subdued CNN analysts.“We don’t have enough time to fact check every lie he told,” said the anchor Jake Tapper. Some CNN critics had made the same point before Wednesday’s broadcast, and again after it: that it was reckless to allow Mr. Trump to speak live to millions of people in prime-time.Mr. Trump’s inclination to spread falsehoods is well-established. Even Fox News, which has provided the former president friendly forums with conservative stars like Sean Hannity and Mark Levin, has not taken Mr. Trump live for many months.He is also the de facto leader of the Republican Party, meaning his remarks are inherently newsworthy to voters on the cusp of a new presidential campaign. CNN said in a statement late Wednesday that its town hall reflected the network’s “role and responsibility: to get answers and hold the powerful to account.”Producers and journalists at the other major television networks watched CNN on Wednesday with curiosity, skepticism, and maybe a bit of trepidation.If Mr. Trump remains the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, he will be appearing on their airwaves soon enough. More

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      Trump Camp Sees CNN Town Hall as Calculated Risk

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      Follow for live updates on the Trump CNN town hall meeting.No questions will be off-limits on Wednesday night at the CNN town hall with Donald J. Trump. He can put 15 people of his choice in the audience but none are allowed to ask questions. And his team has not had a hand in guiding how the event will go, according to two people briefed on the discussions.All of this adds up to no small amount of risk for the former president during the prime-time event, his advisers say — a risk they see as worth taking.They expect tough questions from the CNN anchor and moderator, Kaitlan Collins — and have been anticipating questions about abortion, investigations into Mr. Trump and a civil jury’s finding him liable for defamation and sexual abuse in the lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll in Manhattan, a verdict handed down a day before the town hall.But they also know he will mostly be facing questions from an audience of Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters in New Hampshire, the state hosting the first primary of the 2024 Republican presidential contest. It was the first state Mr. Trump won in 2016 and a place where he still enjoys popularity among Republicans.Mr. Trump’s advisers say he needs to seek a broader audience as he campaigns for the Republican nomination.Doug Mills/The New York TimesSince the end of his presidency, Mr. Trump has largely been relegated to appearing on right-wing networks and podcasts. He has taken reporters aboard his plane now that he’s a candidate, but his team recognizes that he needs to start venturing beyond the fringe to gain access to a broader audience, particularly as a contrast to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who avoids the mainstream media. And CNN was willing to provide him that opportunity, several advisers said. The town hall will be Mr. Trump’s first appearance on CNN since the 2016 campaign.“You can’t just stay on certain channels all the time,” said a person close to Mr. Trump who was not authorized to speak publicly about the town hall planning. “You’ve got to start venturing out. And that’s a clear contrast to what other candidates may or may not do.”The town hall has been months in the making.Earlier this year, Mr. Trump’s team had wanted to participate in a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity, a popular pro-Trump anchor. But Mr. Hannity ultimately did an interview with Mr. Trump instead, and the town hall never materialized. Through a Fox News press officer, Mr. Hannity denied there was any obstacle to a Fox town hall, insisting Mr. Trump “preferred to do an interview on this occasion and said he would do a town hall as his campaign progressed.”Several weeks after Mr. Trump declared his candidacy in November, CNN was in touch with the former president’s team about a possible interview, as the network has held with other presidential candidates, said two people familiar with the discussions who requested anonymity to describe the talks. As the conversations about a Fox News town hall fizzled, the Trump team began negotiating with CNN in earnest.“There is no change to our format because of the unique nature of Donald Trump’s candidacy,” said David Chalian, CNN’s political director. “CNN’s role of bringing a candidate into direct touch with voters in this town hall format has been and continues to be a staple of our presidential campaign coverage.”Mr. Trump is not prone to practice sessions. His debate preparations during his two previous presidential campaigns often devolved into him telling old war stories or yelling at aides. For this occasion, Mr. Trump held an informal session with a handful of aides, including his speechwriter, Vince Haley, on Monday in his office at Mar-a-Lago, according to multiple people briefed on the gathering. No one was assigned to play Ms. Collins. Aides have instead discussed questions that might arise.The Trump team has spent considerable time discussing the politics of abortion. Mr. Trump is more responsible than anyone — with the possible exception of the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell — for the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.Yet Mr. Trump himself has at times been privately ambivalent about the consequences of the decision, and has blamed abortion politics for Republicans’ dismal performance in the 2022 midterm elections. He discussed the subject as if he were a pundit or bystander rather than the architect of Roe v. Wade’s demise. And he has troubled some prominent anti-abortion activists in the way he has handled questions about abortion policy since the midterms. Mr. Trump has refused to say he would support a national abortion ban, instead saying abortion policy should be left to the states.On Monday, Mr. Trump met at Mar-a-Lago with leaders of the anti-abortion movement who were worried about his recent comments, including Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. In the meeting, Mr. Trump said his position on abortion was the same as it was when he first ran for president and the same as what he endorsed in office, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversation. Back then, Mr. Trump supported a national ban on most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. As a result of Mr. Trump’s comments in the meeting, Ms. Dannenfelser released a statement praising him.But in the CNN town hall, Mr. Trump might not stipulate a number of weeks at which abortion should be illegal, according to two people familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking. Instead, he is expected to take credit for keeping his anti-abortion promises in office and mention that he supports “the three exceptions”: when necessary to save the life of the mother or when the cases involve rape or incest. He may then turn to attacking Democrats by describing horrific images of late-term abortions, similar to what he did in a 2016 debate with his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. More

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      For Trump, a Verdict That’s Harder to Spin

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      After an indictment in Manhattan, Donald Trump’s supporters fell in line behind him. A jury’s decision in a sexual abuse and defamation case may yet carry a political price.When Alvin L. Bragg secured the indictment of former President Donald J. Trump, it galvanized Trump supporters. Allies of his Republican rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, mark that indictment as the moment that Mr. Trump sped away from his nearest opponent in the polls.Nobody around Mr. Trump is making a prediction publicly or privately that there will be a similar effect after a jury on Tuesday in the lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.The price that Mr. Trump was ordered by the jury to pay his accuser, Ms. Carroll, was $5 million, in a verdict he has promised to appeal. But whether he pays any political price at all is unclear. Mr. Trump was said to be furious about the verdict, and questioning the various decisions that were made by his team in the defense. Far from letting up on Ms. Carroll, his team plans to aggressively attack her claims and tether her to Democrats.There is no world in which the result of that civil trial was a positive development for the project he is most focused on: the presidential campaign for which he remains the Republican front-runner.Mr. Trump has a decades-long history of crude and misogynistic comments — and he has faced repeated accusations of sexual harassment and assault, so many that they most likely would have sunk any other candidate. But a majority in the Republican Party have largely dismissed the accusations against a celebrity former president as irrelevant to how they cast votes.But comments and even allegations are different from a jury verdict.The first real test of his in-person response will come on Wednesday night on a national stage in front of a live television audience — a town hall hosted by CNN in New Hampshire, in a venue filled with about 400 voters who are Republicans or Republican-leaning independents.“Americans heard with their own ears in 2016 Trump brag on tape about sexual assault and still elected him,” said David Axelrod, a former top adviser to President Barack Obama, referring to the “Access Hollywood” tape. “Will this be different, or will his supporters simply dismiss it as one more example of the politically motivated ‘deep state’ beat-down of which he claims to be the victim?”A handful of allies of Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Trump’s closest rival in the Republican primary race, anticipated that this case could prove different from myriad other scandals Mr. Trump has faced.Senators John Kennedy of Louisiana and John Thune of South Dakota essentially averted their gazes when asked to comment by reporters. Among those who publicly defended him was Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama defended Mr. Trump on Tuesday after the jury’s verdict.Kenny Holston/The New York Times“It makes me want to vote for him twice,” Mr. Tuberville told The Huffington Post. “People are going to see through the lines,” he added, saying that with “a New York jury, he had no chance.”Few of Mr. Trump’s opponents were willing to condemn him either, at least so far. Only one Republican candidate, Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, issued a statement.“Over the course of my over 25 years of experience in the courtroom, I have seen firsthand how a cavalier and arrogant contempt for the rule of law can backfire,” the statement read. “The jury verdict should be treated with seriousness and is another example of the indefensible behavior of Donald Trump.”Former Vice President Mike Pence told NBC News that it was up to the American public to decide whether Mr. Trump is fit to be president again, but added, “I just don’t think it’s where the American people are focused.”For years, Mr. Trump’s approach to his business and his political life has been to portray himself as inevitable, to give off the impression that challengers or critics shouldn’t even bother trying to best him. He has handled the 2024 Republican primary in much the same manner, encouraged by his polling lead and Mr. DeSantis’s stumbles. Still, some of his critics and even some allies concede that the various legal challenges could risk becoming too much freight for him to carry.Mr. Trump’s advisers have recently conducted extensive polling to explore how deeply the various legal cases are resonating with primary voters, according to people briefed on the efforts.Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers were nervously anticipating the verdict before deliberations began. One was candid in private that while they were relieved Mr. Trump had been found not liable of the specific claim of rape, the rest of the jury’s verdict was “not good.”For Mr. Trump and his allies, describing him as the victim of a “deep state” plot by his government opponents and prosecutors could be much harder to accomplish in this case. A federal jury of six men and three women gave legitimacy to an accusation of sexual abuse made by Ms. Carroll, a writer who was photographed with Mr. Trump in New York yet whom he continues to maintain he does not know.One of the most damaging aspects of the trial for Mr. Trump was his videotaped deposition. People close to him acknowledge the comments were a self-inflicted wound, and are aware Democrats in particular may put them in television ads where independent and suburban voters whom Mr. Trump long ago alienated would see them.In his deposition, he burrowed into his remarks on the “Access Hollywood” tape, when asked by Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, if it was true as he said on that recording that stars can grab women by the genitals.“Well, if you look over the last million years, I guess that’s been largely true,” Mr. Trump said. “Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately, or fortunately.” More

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      Trump Is Mainstream, Whether We Like It or Not

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      Hunker down, America. Here we go again.The presidential election is still a year and a half away. But on Wednesday evening, Donald Trump will elbow his way back into the campaign mainstream. At a town hall event in New Hampshire hosted by CNN, the former president will field questions from audience members and the network anchor Kaitlan Collins.The whole spectacle sounds downright chilling. The event will be live, leaving Mr. Trump more or less free to inject his lies straight into viewers’ veins. He will be coming off the E. Jean Carroll verdict, upping his odds of saying something awful about women or witch hunts and how everyone is always out to get him. And even if he dials down the crazy, his re-emergence on a major prime-time platform raises vexing questions. After everything this antidemocratic, violence-encouraging carnival barker has put America through, are we really going to treat him like a normal candidate this time? How can CNN and other media outlets justify giving him a megaphone from which to dominate and degrade the political landscape? Have we learned nothing from the past eight years?Short answer: We have in fact learned much about Mr. Trump and the threat he poses to American democracy. But trying to shut him out of the public discussion or campaign process would bring its own dangers. Not only would it play into the politics of victimhood that he peddles with such infuriating effectiveness. It risks further undermining public faith in the democratic process — making the system look too weak to deal with one aspiring autocrat — and even the process itself. As with so much about the MAGA king, there are no easy fixes.Nothing that Mr. Trump has done so far legally prevents him from pursuing, or serving, another term in the White House. Yes, many voters consider his double impeachments, his role in the Jan. 6 riot and his glut of legal troubles to be disqualifying. But many others do not. Polls consistently put the former president at the front of the current Republican presidential pack. A recent CBS News-YouGov survey gave him a whopping 36 point advantage over Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida (58 percent to 22 percent) among likely G.O.P. primary voters. No other contender cracked double digits. As for the general election, a new ABC News-Washington Post poll showed him with a six-point edge — seven points with undecided leaners — over President Biden.While early polling has its shortcomings, it does serve as a reminder of Mr. Trump’s enduring appeal for millions of Americans. He is a serious contender for the White House — even, heaven help us, a formidable one. To treat him otherwise would be a breach of duty by the news media, democratic institutions and voters.It’s not as though Mr. Trump can be stuffed in a storage closet like a bunch of classified documents. Today’s mediascape includes a host of conservative players eager to fawn all over him in the hopes of making his fans theirs as well. Just think of the embarrassing tongue bath he received from Tucker Carlson in their April sit-down. Such slobberfests should not be the primary means by which voters assess Mr. Trump. He needs to be put through his paces, like any horse in the race.Just to be clear: No one is daft enough to think that Mr. Trump and CNN are linking arms out of a selfless, high-minded commitment to the public good. They are using each other. Under new leadership, the network is looking to rebuild its reputation, and ratings, as a less crusading, more balanced news source.As for the former president, CNN is just one piece of his grand media strategy. His team has been talking up how their guy wants to push the reset button on his relationship with the fourth estate. Journalists from mainstream outlets are being invited to travel on his campaign plane. And the campaign is negotiating with other top outlets, including NBC, for face time with the candidate.This is the least surprising move ever. Mr. Trump has always been a media creation. Without the “fake news” he so loves to bash, he’d just be another failed real estate scion hawking mediocre steaks and worthless degrees from his “university.”More specifically, Mr. Trump’s people are flogging the idea that his willingness to play with the media is proof of his bravery and manliness. “Going outside the traditional Republican ‘comfort zone’ was a key to President Trump’s success in 2016,” one toady recently told The Hill. “Some other candidates are too afraid to take this step in their quest to defeat Joe Biden and are afraid to do anything other than Fox News.”Take that, “Pudding Fingers” DeSantis.More targeted still: Mr. Trump’s canoodling with CNN twists the knife in the gut of Fox News, which of late has not been obsequious enough for his taste. This isn’t simply an issue of personal spite. Threatening/scaring/cajoling Fox News back into line is important to Mr. Trump’s 2024 fortunes. Whatever the network’s recent drama, there is no other conservative platform like it.It’s hard to know how Mr. Trump’s forays beyond his MAGA bubble will go, especially starting out. The guy was an appalling president, but he has always been a top-notch pitchman with a freaky sort of charisma. And a huge part of running for — and even being — president is compelling salesmanship. That said, he is out of practice interacting with people who aren’t there simply to lick his boots. He has spent the past couple of years largely cocooned in a fantasyland of his own creation, which can be tough to come back from.That makes these early appearances all the more important. CNN has as much on the line on Wednesday as the candidate — maybe more. This is about more than real-time fact-checking the candidate, though it must be established early and firmly that no disinformation will go unrebutted. Mr. Trump cannot be allowed to grandstand or slither away from awkward topics: He needs to face tough and skeptical questioning from the get-go.I do wish that CNN had waited a bit longer before relaunching Mr. Trump. Firing up the prime-time campaign coverage machine this early in the cycle isn’t healthy for the American psyche under normal circumstances, much less with this singularly toxic character in the mix.But now that the Trump Show is back, the media — everyone really — needs to be demanding more from this season than past ones. The former president should be expected to undergo the same vetting rituals as other candidates: debates, town halls, non-softball interviews, candidate cattle calls — the works. He cannot be left to the fuzzy realm of social media and schmoozing with Sean Hannity-style sycophants.Voters deserve the opportunity to take a clear measure of this man’s candidacy, no matter how nauseating some of us may find that process.Source photographs by Sophie Park for The New York Times and ozgurdonmaz, via Getty Images.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Liz Cheney Attacks Trump in New Hampshire Ad

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      The former Republican congresswoman, a leading adversary of Donald J. Trump’s, accused him of “dereliction of duty” on Jan. 6, 2021.The political action committee of former Representative Liz Cheney began broadcasting an attack on Donald J. Trump’s fitness for office on Tuesday in the key state of New Hampshire, using her narration to accuse the former president of the greatest “dereliction of duty” in American presidential history.It is unclear whether the advertisement by Ms. Cheney’s leadership PAC, The Great Task, is another hint that she may run for president or a stand-alone effort to soften Mr. Trump’s support in the state that will hold the first Republican primary in February. Ms. Cheney’s memoir, “Oath and Honor,” will publish in November, and she has said she will hold back any announcements until then.But at this political moment, when Mr. Trump’s rivals for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 have been reluctant to attack the front-runner, Ms. Cheney has fired an opening salvo, demanding that Republican voters rebuff the former president’s effort to return to power.In the ad, which includes graphic and violent footage of his supporters at the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, Ms. Cheney says Mr. Trump refused to accept his re-election defeat. When all his efforts to cling to power failed, she says, “he mobilized a mob to come to Washington and march on the Capitol.”“Then he watched on television while the mob attacked law enforcement, invaded the Capitol and hunted the vice president,” she said.Ms. Cheney also warned:“Donald Trump is a risk America can never take again.”Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, responded by calling Ms. Cheney “a stone-cold loser who is now trying to grift her way to relevance.”The advertisement is running exclusively on CNN in New Hampshire, Ms. Cheney’s leadership PAC said in a statement. Its debut was timed to precede Mr. Trump’s appearance on the network Wednesday night in a town hall devised to reach beyond the conservative news audience that remains in Mr. Trump’s camp and address the broader electorate he would need to return to the presidency. That town hall will be broadcast from New Hampshire.Mr. Trump teased the appearance on Tuesday with a jab at CNN. “They made me a deal I couldn’t refuse!!!” he wrote on his social media site. “Could be the beginning of a New & Vibrant CNN, with no more Fake News, or it could turn into a disaster for all, including me.”Ms. Cheney hinted that she would return to politics after a crushing primary defeat in August by a pro-Trump Republican challenger, Harriet Hageman, who jettisoned her from the House seat in Wyoming she held for three terms. The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, Ms. Cheney was once considered a potential speaker of the House. But her own party conference banished her from her senior Republican leadership post over her stalwart opposition to Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6 attack. She went on to become one of two Republicans who served on the House committee that investigated the riot at the Capitol.Her party and its core voters remain implacably opposed to her position on Mr. Trump, as evidenced by the former president’s commanding lead in party presidential polling. Those same polls have consistently put the party’s support for her at around 2 percent.But Ms. Cheney has said that her mission for now will be to do everything she can to keep Mr. Trump out of the Oval Office.“We have seen the danger that he continues to provoke with his language,” she told reporters in 2021 as she was leaving Congress. “We have seen his lack of commitment and dedication to the Constitution.” More

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      Representative Nancy Mace Is Trying to Change the Republican Party

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      It was just after Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, had fired off a blunt text to the No. 3 House G.O.P. leader — featuring two f-bombs and four demands that needed to be met to gain her vote for the party’s debt limit plan — that she experienced a momentary flash of dread.“Now I’ll look like a flip-flopper,” Ms. Mace worried aloud.Speaker Kevin McCarthy was planning within hours to hold a vote on his proposal to lift the debt ceiling for a year in exchange for spending cuts and policy changes, and Ms. Mace had just published an op-ed declaring herself a hard no. Now the second-term congresswoman from a swing district, who had already established something of a reputation for publicly breaking with her party but ultimately falling in line behind its policies, was privately negotiating her way to yes.Ms. Mace would, in fact, vote for the bill after meeting with Mr. McCarthy and extracting several promises from him, including to hold future votes on two of her top priorities: addressing gun violence and women’s issues related to contraceptives and adoption. She anticipated criticism for the turnabout, but consoled herself with the fact that she had leveraged her vote to force her party to take on issues she cared about.“This is a way I can drive the debate,” she said as she walked back to her office. “It’s a way of using my position to push those issues.”It was a typical day for Ms. Mace, 45, who represents Charleston and the Lowcountry along South Carolina’s coast, and whose political profile — she is a fiscal conservative but leans toward the center on some social issues — puts her at odds with the hard-right Republicans who now dominate the House.Ms. Mace has said Republicans will lose control of the House if they fail to temper their most extreme stances on abortion and guns.Sean Rayford for The New York TimesMs. Mace, who last year beat a Trump-backed candidate in a primary, is constantly pivoting as she figures out how to survive and play a meaningful role as a mainstream Republican in today’s MAGA-heavy House G.O.P., where extreme members of the party have greater power than ever.She often styles herself as a maverick independent in the mold of Senator Joe Manchin III, the West Virginia Democrat whose tendency to buck his party has earned him outsize power in the closely divided chamber — and the political fame that goes with it. But she has built the voting record of a mostly reliable Republican foot soldier, even as she publicly criticizes her own party and racks up television hits and social media clicks. And Ms. Mace — savvy and irreverent — has become fluent in the art of the political troll, finding ways to signal to the MAGA base that she hasn’t forsaken it.She has repeatedly, and baselessly, accused the Biden family of being involved in “prostitution rings.”Above all, Ms. Mace, a high school dropout and former Waffle House waitress who went on to become the first woman to graduate from the Citadel, is hyper-aware of how she is perceived and of her precarious place in her party.Ms. Mace with her father, J. Emory Mace, a retired Army brigadier general. She was the first woman to graduate from the Citadel.Paula Illingworth/Associated PressDuring Mr. McCarthy’s prolonged fight for this job, Ms. Mace and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene — who have publicly feuded — huddled together on the House floor chatting about how to secure his victory. When a male lawmaker noticed them and said their joint effort was something Republicans would like to see more of, Ms. Mace dryly disagreed.“Who do you think you’re kidding?” she said. “The only thing people want to see of me and Marjorie is if we’re wrestling in Jell-O.”Behind all the tacking back and forth, Ms. Mace insisted, a bigger project is at work. She said she was trying to create a model for a “reasonable” and re-electable Republican in a purple district, and demonstrating that there was a path to winning back moderate and independent voters.“I’m trying to show how you can bring conservatives and independents along to be on the same page,” she said. “Americans want us to work together. That’s not what’s happening. There’s very little that we’ve done that’s going to get across the finish line to Biden’s desk to sign.”Ms. Mace has yet to prove that it’s possible.The debt ceiling vote was the third time in four months that Ms. Mace had publicly threatened to break with her party on an issue where her vote was critical, before ultimately falling in line. In January, Ms. Mace had threatened to oppose the House rules package for the new Republican majority, but ended up supporting it. She had said she would oppose removing Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, from the Foreign Affairs Committee, but reversed course.In both instances, she insisted that she had pried promises from Mr. McCarthy in exchange for her support, such as a vow to institute due process for committee removals in the future. She is aware of the danger of becoming the congresswoman who cried wolf.“Every handshake I’ve taken with Kevin has been legit,” she said of the speaker. “I haven’t gotten rolled. If I were to get rolled, I’d go nuclear. I’m just trying to move the ball in the right direction — that’s what matters to me.”Some of her constituents view her tactics in a less flattering light.Ms. Mace, who has two teenage children, says she does not have any hobbies and rarely takes vacations.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York Times“You live around Nancy long enough, she will talk about being bipartisan and reaching across the aisle and working together until the cows come home,” said David Rubin, a Democrat and a retiree who moved to the district six years ago and attended a “coffee with your congresswoman” event with Ms. Mace last week in Summerville. “When it comes down to the actual votes, she always sticks with the party.”A Strategy to ‘Shut Up’Ms. Mace voted to certify the 2020 election and vociferously condemned President Donald J. Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but she did not join the small group of Republicans who supported his impeachment. These days, she avoids the subject of Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, at all costs.“I’ll support the nominee — that’s what I say,” she said while talking on the phone in her car between events in her district. “And then I shut up.”That silence is a deliberate contrast to former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, another Republican who tried to move her party — and failed miserably, ultimately losing her seat because she refused to stay quiet about her unrelenting opposition to Mr. Trump and his election lies. In fact, Ms. Mace ultimately joined Republicans in voting to oust Ms. Cheney from her leadership post.Still, as Ms. Cheney did in her final days in Congress, Ms. Mace regularly warns her party that it is at risk of losing its way. She argues that Republicans will lose control of the House if they fail to temper their most extreme stances on abortion and guns.“Signing a six-week ban that puts women who are victims of rape and girls who are victims of incest in a hard spot isn’t the way to change hearts and minds,” Ms. Mace said last month on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” responding to a new six-week abortion ban instituted by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. “It’s not compassionate.”On guns, she supports improved alert systems and stronger background checks.But Ms. Mace has also co-sponsored legislation that would ban transgender women and girls from participating in athletic programs designated for women. On fiscal issues, she is aligned with the hard-right Freedom Caucus.And while she criticized Republicans for choosing an abortion-related bill as one of their first acts in the majority, saying it would hurt the party and alienate many of her constituents, she voted for the legislation, which could subject doctors who perform abortions to criminal penalties.Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, who serves with Ms. Mace on the Oversight Committee, said he found her effective in trying to find common ground while working within the constraints of her party.“She doesn’t do things that would marginalize her and make her completely ineffective in her party,” Mr. Khanna said. “There’s only so much she can do to push the party. If the Republican conference had everyone of Nancy Mace’s temperament and ideology, we’d be in a much better place in our country.”Yet Ms. Mace’s approach comes with political risks.In 2020, she won election to Congress by narrowly defeating a Democrat. Last year, she won by 14 points, after her district was redrawn to make the electorate more conservative. But the seat could shift again in 2024; federal judges ordered South Carolina to redraw its congressional maps after ruling that the lines split Black neighborhoods and diluted their votes in the last election.Ms. Mace represents Charleston and the Lowcountry along South Carolina’s coast.Sean Rayford for The New York TimesConservative voters in her district are increasingly skeptical of Ms. Mace.“Sometimes I think she speaks out, particularly on the abortion thing, she needs to let that go,” said Paula Arrington, a retiree who attended an event with Ms. Mace in her district last week and who is of no relation to Ms. Mace’s former Trump-backed challenger, Katie Arrington. “We’re real conservatives and we support the Republican Party.”‘Nasty,’ ‘Disloyal’ and VictoriousOver a skinny margarita and tacos at a waterside restaurant in Mount Pleasant near her district office, Ms. Mace credited Mr. Trump with fueling her political rise, but unlike other Republicans, it was his wrath — not his backing — that made the difference.She worked for Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, but after she broke sharply with him after the Jan. 6 attack, the former president called her “nasty” and “disloyal.” He supported her opponent in last year’s Republican primary, in which he savaged Ms. Mace for fighting with her own party and said she was “despised by almost everyone.”“He defined me as an independent voice in a way that I couldn’t have,” she said. “I would not have won by 14 points had Donald Trump not come after me, and had I not been outspoken when Roe v. Wade was overturned.”Ms. Mace, who sold commercial real estate before being elected to the statehouse and then to Congress, is obsessed with her work and has huge ambitions.Ms. Mace often styles herself as a maverick independent.Sean Rayford for The New York TimesShe only halfheartedly denies that she’s thinking about a run for Senate at some point — “La la la la la,” she said, putting her fingers in her ears, when asked about running for a statewide office — while her aides half-jokingly pass along an article that floats her as a potential presidential running mate to former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.In a party shaped by extremists who view the middle ground with disdain, the day-to-day can be pretty “lonely,” she said, noting that she has few friends on Capitol Hill. She got a dog during the pandemic, a Havanese named Liberty, and started carrying a gun at all times when threats against her increased after she voted to certify the election. She said that only “emboldens me,” as does the fact that she’s not the popular girl at the lunch table. She calls herself “a caucus of one.”Her hardened exterior is in part the result of personal trauma. She was molested at a swimming pool when she was 14 and said that for years she blamed herself, because she had been wearing a two-piece bathing suit. She was raped when she was 16, leading her to drop out of high school.“I was in a really bad situation for a long time,” she said. She was on Prozac and then self-medicated with marijuana, which she credits with reducing her anxiety and saving her life.“You carry it for a lifetime,” she said. “When I want to punch a bully in the face, it’s all still there. I’ll bring a gun to a knife fight, and that’s overkill. It’s still there.”Yet Ms. Mace is anything but aloof. As she took meetings across her district on a recent Wednesday, she shared personal details, joking with a reporter about doing the “walk of shame” home from her fiancé’s house and talking openly about her struggle with long Covid.“I overshare because I do want to connect with people on a personal level,” she said, explaining why she had told several groups throughout the day that she had gained the “freshman 15” during her first term in Congress and subsequently cut out bread. “Everyone struggles with their weight.”Ms. Mace visiting the office of Representative Kevin McCarthy, now the House speaker, in 2021.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMs. Mace, who has two teenage children, said she does not read books or have any hobbies. She rarely takes vacations. She is divorced and engaged to be married to an entrepreneur, but has set no wedding date.The grind is worth it, she said, if she can shift her party even a touch.“The message matters,” Ms. Mace said. “I’m trying to move the national narrative.” More

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      Tim Scott Was Given a Chance to Attack Biden as Too Old. He Didn’t.

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      Mr. Scott, a Republican senator from South Carolina weighing a 2024 bid, told a questioner that the president deserves to be criticized on his policies, not his age.During a town hall on Monday at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina received a question about President Biden’s fitness for office, putting his stated desire to run a positive campaign to the test. Mr. Scott, who is expected to formally begin his presidential campaign at the end of the month, offered an answer that criticized Mr. Biden on the merits of his leadership, rather than his age or mental fitness.A Question for Tim ScottPaul Hardy, 77, a Republican voter and retired behavioral neurologist, first read Mr. Scott an excerpt from a message that President Lyndon B. Johnson sent to Congress about invoking the 25th Amendment, which lays out the presidential order of succession, should a president be deemed mentally or physically unable to serve. Mr. Hardy then lamented what he felt is a lack of action from Congress in providing standards for a president’s mental health.“There’s no way of assessing the competency of the commander in chief. Any major league owner of whatever sports team demands a detailed report on their health and capabilities. We as American people should expect this of our commander in chief, to have a full understanding of what their medical record is. As a potential candidate for the office of the presidency, what is your opinion on that?”The SubtextRepublicans have made Mr. Biden’s age and mental fitness a feature of their campaign messaging. If he is re-elected in 2024, Mr. Biden would be 82 at his second inauguration, and he is already the oldest president in U.S. history. Leagues of conservative commentators and several presidential candidates have used this fact to question whether Mr. Biden would be physically or mentally fit to serve a second term. And Mr. Biden himself has been presenting his age as an asset, not a hindrance. But his age is a major concern of voters across the political spectrum.Tim Scott’s Answer“I do not give the president a pass. I think he’s failing his job because he’s incompetent. I refuse to say it’s because he’s too old or he’s too frail. I think the bottom line is he has been co-opted by the radical left in his party. He ran as a uniter, he’s become a divider. You look at his policy positions. You look at the last State of the Union. What he said was that ‘I’m going to do what the radical left of my party wants to do.’ The problem that we have in the White House is an issue of competency. We just need an election. The 25th Amendment is one that takes into consideration folks who are unable to do their jobs. I believe he is unwilling to stand up to the party — the radical left of his party.”The SubtextMr. Scott’s response was in keeping with his overall strategy at this point in his nascent campaign of not engaging in personal attacks. He was tossed a softball question on a personal and base-animating issue that both Donald J. Trump and Nikki Haley, another Republican presidential contender, have eagerly swung at in recent speeches and interviews. Mr. Scott instead chose to go after Mr. Biden for things the president has under his control, like his policies and his ideology, rather than all that’s out of his control.Mr. Hardy, asked for his thoughts after the event, was less than satisfied with Mr. Scott’s answer: “He sidestepped it.” More

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      Biden Casts Himself as the Trump Beater. Polls Suggest That’s No Sure Thing.

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      While the president argues that he is the one best positioned to stop his predecessor from returning to the White House, surveys indicate that he starts the 2024 race facing enormous challenges.WASHINGTON — Boiled down, President Biden’s argument for running for a second term rather than ceding the ground to the next generation is that he is the Democrat most assured of beating former President Donald J. Trump next year.But a striking new poll challenged that case in a way that had much of the capital buzzing the last couple of days. Taken at face value, the poll showed Mr. Biden trailing Mr. Trump by six percentage points in a theoretical rematch, raising the question of whether the president is as well positioned as he maintains.No single poll means all that much, especially so early in an election cycle, and the president’s strategists as well as some independent analysts questioned its methodology. But even if it is an outlier, other recent surveys have indicated that the race is effectively tied, with either Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump holding narrow leads within the margin of error. Taken together, they suggest that the president opens the 2024 campaign facing enormous challenges with no guarantee of victory over Mr. Trump.The data has left many Democrats feeling anywhere from queasy to alarmed. Mr. Biden’s case for being the pair of safe hands at a volatile moment is undermined in their view if a president who passed major legislation and presides over the lowest unemployment in generations cannot outperform a twice-impeached challenger who instigated an insurrection, has been indicted on multiple felonies, is on civil trial accused of rape and faces more potential criminal charges in the months to come.“The poll demonstrates that the president still has work to do, not only in convincing the American people that he’s up for the job that he wishes to complete,” said Donna Brazile, a former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee who said she lost sleep over the “ominous signs” in the latest survey results. “More importantly, it’s a good forecast of the challenges he will face in rebuilding the remarkable coalition that elected him in 2020.”“I don’t think that they should panic because you can’t panic after one poll,” said Ms. Brazile, who managed Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 2000. A survey is “just one gauge” among many on the long road to the voting booth. “But it’s an important barometer of where the electorate is today, some 547 days away from the November 2024 election.”The survey by The Washington Post and ABC News found that president’s approval rating has slipped to 36 percent and that Mr. Trump would beat him by 44 percent to 38 percent if the election were held today. Just as worrisome for Democrats, respondents considered Mr. Trump, 76, more physically and mentally fit than Mr. Biden, 80, and concluded that the former president managed the economy better than the incumbent has.Critics of the poll disparaged it for including all adults in its sample of 1,006, rather than just registered voters, and maintained that its results among subgroups like young people, independents, Hispanics and Black Americans were simply not credible.“The poll really is trash, and I don’t say that lightly because I’ve had respect for their polling in the past,” said Cornell Belcher, who was President Barack Obama’s pollster. “However, their methodological decision here is problematic,” he added of the way the survey was constructed.Mr. Biden has dismissed the importance of polls, saying that he is no different from other presidents at this point in their terms.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOthers cautioned against overanalyzing data this early, noting that anything can happen in the next 18 months and recalling that projections based on polling — or misinterpretations of polling — proved to be poor predictors in recent cycles, including the 2022 midterm elections when a forecast “red wave” did not materialize.“Polls in May 2024 will be of dubious value,” said David Plouffe, who was Mr. Obama’s campaign manager. “Polls in May 2023 are worth as much as Theranos stock.”The White House expressed no concern over the latest surveys. “President Biden’s average job approval is higher now than in early November when poll-based reporting widely prophesied a supposedly inevitable red wave that never arrived,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman.Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for the fledgling Biden campaign, said the president would win on issues like lowering prescription drugs and protecting Social Security. “Americans voted for Joe Biden’s America in 2020 and 2022, and regardless of what today’s Beltway insider says, they will again in 2024,” he said.While not predictive, recent surveys provide a foundational baseline at the start of a race potentially between two universally known figures, foreshadowing a campaign without a clear front-runner. Polls by Yahoo News, The Wall Street Journal and Morning Consult have found the president slightly ahead while surveys by The Economist and the Harvard University Center for American Political Studies found him tied or trailing by several points. Mr. Biden faces similarly mixed results against Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the strongest challenger to Mr. Trump for the Republican nomination.The results point to a calcification in American politics where the leaders of both parties have a similarly sized core of support among voters not open to the other side regardless of developments in the news. The days when presidents could enjoy approval ratings above 50 percent or double-digit leads over challengers for any sustained period of time appear to be long over. And so if widespread support is no longer achievable, the challenge for Mr. Biden is to reassemble the coalition that provided him a 4.5-percentage-point victory nearly three years ago.Mr. Biden has dismissed the importance of polls, saying that he is no different from other presidents at this point in their terms. “Every major one who won re-election, their polling numbers were where mine are now,” he told Stephanie Ruhle on “The 11th Hour” on MSNBC on Friday.But in fact, only two of the past 13 presidents had approval ratings lower than Mr. Biden has at this point, according to an aggregate compilation by FiveThirtyEight.com — Mr. Trump and Jimmy Carter, both of whom lost re-election. More encouraging for Mr. Biden is the example of Ronald Reagan, who was just one-tenth of a point above where the current president is at this stage of his presidency, but came back to win a landslide re-election in 1984.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is the strongest challenger to Mr. Trump for the Republican nomination.Scott Eisen/Getty Images; Christopher Lee for The New YorkWhit Ayres, a Republican consultant, said it was telling that Mr. Biden was essentially tied or behind “a former president carrying more baggage than a loaded 747” and warned Democrats against complacency.“Democrats are in denial if they think Biden cannot lose to Trump in 2024,” he said. “Trump can most certainly win. Joe Biden is asking the country to elect a candidate who will be 82 years old, who has clearly lost a step, running with a vice president whom almost no one in either party thinks is ready for prime time.”The Post-ABC poll and other surveys contain grim news for Republicans as well. While Mr. Trump leads or keeps relatively even with the president, he may have a ceiling beyond which he cannot rise, while Mr. Biden can still win over ambivalent independents who dislike the former president, analysts said.“While the poll is not great news for Biden, it’s not great news for the Republicans either,” said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster. “Only about a third say they are strong supporters for Biden, DeSantis and Trump. It feels more unsettled than anything else.”She said that the real choice between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, should it come to that, would force ambivalent Democrats and independents to come off the fence. “I noticed more softness among Democrats, but I have no doubt that no matter what skepticism Democrats tell pollsters right now, they are going to vote for Joe Biden,” she said.Stuart Stevens, who ran Mitt Romney’s campaign against Mr. Obama in 2012 and is a vocal critic of Mr. Trump, noted that the Republican establishment worries that the former president cannot win even though he leads in some polls. “We seem to be in this weird moment when Republican elite are panicked that Trump can’t beat Biden,” he said. “I think that’s because they know that Trump is deeply flawed.”David Axelrod, the former Obama senior adviser who was on the other side of that race from Mr. Stevens, agreed with his assessment. “What Biden has that no one else does is a record of having beaten Trump, which weighs heavily in conversations among Democrats about the race,” Mr. Axelrod said. “He also has a record to run on and a party out of the mainstream on some important issues to run against, with a deeply flawed front-runner.”“The worry for Democrats is that the re-elect is subject to a lot of variables Biden can’t entirely control — including his own health and aging process,” Mr. Axelrod added. “Any setback will exacerbate public concerns already apparent in the polls about his condition and ability to handle four more years.” More