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      Beside Ramaswamy, a Doctor Who Listens More and Debates Less

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      Apoorva Ramaswamy, a surgeon and cancer researcher, has balanced weekdays in hospitals with weekends on the trail, with their young sons in tow.Vivek Ramaswamy was holding court before a crowd at a New Hampshire fair, the second of five stops on a typically busy day of barnstorming, when he did something rare: He yielded the spotlight.A nurse had asked Mr. Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur-turned-author-turned-presidential candidate, about nurse staffing shortages at hospitals. But before addressing the question himself, he turned to the doctor nodding emphatically at his side — his wife, Apoorva Tewari Ramaswamy — and handed her the microphone.“Trust me, I’ve been in his ear. He’s heard that from me, too,” Dr. Ramaswamy said reassuringly, both to the nurse and to hundreds of others listening. “We need so many people who are actually interacting with other humans and seeing what is going on.”New to the public eye, Dr. Ramaswamy, 34, holds many titles: Yale-educated surgeon, cancer researcher and professor, mother of two.Yet since her husband, 38, transitioned from making frequent appearances on Fox News to stumping in early primary states, Dr. Ramaswamy has balanced weekdays making hospital rounds with weekends on the trail, adapting to an everywhere-all-the-time campaign that puts their family — including their sons Karthik, 3, and Arjun, 1 — front and center. (One of her husband’s “commandments” reads: “The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.”)Dr. Ramaswamy on the campaign bus with her family between stops in New Hampshire in September.Sophie Park for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Vivek Ramaswamy Struggles to Win Over Iowans, Even With Free Meals

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      The political newcomer’s surge over the summer has fizzled. But Vivek Ramaswamy is still spending freely to keep up a breakneck pace in Iowa and New Hampshire.While many people were heading home for the Thanksgiving holiday, the presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy was making a new, if temporary, one in Iowa.He has rented an apartment in Des Moines, the state’s capitol, and plans to participate in the city’s annual Turkey Trot, a Thanksgiving morning run. In the five days before the holiday, Mr. Ramaswamy, 38, hosted over two dozen events, many offering free breakfast, lunch or dinner, eager to answer voter questions.At recent stops, Mr. Ramaswamy, a political newcomer and millionaire entrepreneur, has made a bold proclamation about his 2024 bid: “If I win Iowa, I’m your next president.”But his odds on either front appear to be growing more remote. He’s campaigning and spending like there’s no tomorrow, buying meals and filling Pizza Ranches with crowds willing to hear him out — but not necessarily winning them over. Stagnation has set in after a fleeting summer spike in popularity, with national polls consistently showing him bogged in the middling single digits. Aggressive debate tactics appear to have hurt him, with his disapproval numbers ticking up after each performance, though he started with little name recognition.In Iowa, he doesn’t fare much better. A recent Des Moines Register survey shows former President Donald J. Trump maintaining a dominant lead and Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, battling Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for second place.And yet Mr. Ramaswamy, who has campaigned in the image of Mr. Trump, says he will hold over 200 events in Iowa between now and the caucuses on Jan. 15 after abandoning his Ohio headquarters and moving staff to Iowa and New Hampshire, as Politico reported this month. He suggests the polls don’t accurately reflect his support.“If what we are seeing in our events translates into the broader caucus-going population, we’re going to have an outstanding result here in Iowa,” he told reporters on Tuesday after speaking to a packed crowd at a Cedar Rapids restaurant.“People really dial in and start talking about this as the caucus date approaches, and so our bet is that’s going to be a bottom-up lift that we get. I truly think we’re going to end up delivering a surprise,” he added.The intensity of his schedule — several states a week, with up to six events each day, not counting frequent media appearances — is coming at what he says is great personal expense. His campaign has picked up the tab for dozens of meals at recent events. At stops attended by a New York Times reporter, representatives for the host restaurants declined to give specifics on the cost. One restaurant in Toledo, Iowa, reached by phone, put the cost at $1,000.Mr. Ramaswamy estimated to reporters Tuesday that he had spent around $20 million on his run so far. As of the end of September, his campaign had spent more than $22 million, and he had contributed more than $17 million, according to the latest filings with the Federal Election Commission.Interviews with voters who heard him speak suggested that while many were intrigued by Mr. Ramaswamy’s proposals, and liked what they heard, they weren’t quite sold with two months to go before the caucuses. Many likened him to Mr. Trump — describing him as “sharper,” “more polite” or having “less baggage.”“He’s another Trump, only a little bit younger,” said Diane Lyphout, a voter from Vinton, Iowa, who is also considering Mr. DeSantis. “He’s going to do really well. The only thing I thought he was maybe just a little bit young yet to have that seasoning and wisdom.”But aspects of Mr. Ramaswamy’s strategy — including his steadfast bolstering of Mr. Trump, who is accused of committing dozens of felonies in four criminal indictments — have baffled some voters and veterans of the Iowa caucuses.His campaign has reserved about $1 million in television ads in Iowa for November — nearly double what his campaign and a super PAC backing him spent in October, according to data from AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. But as of Tuesday evening, neither his campaign nor the super PAC had made buys for subsequent months. Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis, between their campaigns and super PACs backing them, have reserved millions more in Iowa TV ads through January.The hectic travel schedule has often caused delays and, at times, canceled events — alienating potential supporters.“If he can’t show up on time, he can’t be president,” said one man at a diner in Vinton, Iowa, who left before Mr. Ramaswamy, who was 30 minutes late, arrived. At that same event, a woman walked out midway through his stump speech, saying, “Hogwash,” to a campaign staff member on her way out.He has retooled his stump speech to make central his discontent with the Republican National Committee, which he has claimed doesn’t want him in the race, and has recently been prompting crowds to ask him about his foreign policy vision, an area in which his inexperience has been highlighted by Ms. Haley and other rivals. He has used those questions to highlight his closeness to Mr. Trump, while his criticism of the “R.N.C. establishment” offers echoes of Mr. Trump’s own criticisms of the party apparatus.That message resonated with Kristine Pfab, a 57-year-old from Bernard, Iowa, who said Republicans had become “just as swampy” as Democrats. But asked who she would caucus for, she said, “Probably DeSantis.” “But if I could roll Vivek and DeSantis into one person, that would be great,” she added.Jimmy Centers, a Republican strategist in Iowa, said Mr. Ramaswamy’s decision to run as a “Trump lite” candidate, in addition to the backlash for invoking Ms. Haley’s daughter recently on the debate stage, were two factors that could hurt Mr. Ramaswamy. Voters, seeing little daylight between Mr. Trump and Mr. Ramaswamy, frequently ask why he would run against the man he proclaims was the “best president of the 21st century.”“Iowans kick the tires on just about every candidate up until the very last second. Vivek enjoyed a really nice moment in late summer, early fall, and that’s not to say he can’t get it back,” Mr. Centers said. “But for right now, I think it’s really down to two races: How much will Trump win by, and will DeSantis or Haley come in second?”Mr. Ramaswamy tells voters and reporters alike that his path to victory lies in “bringing people along” — meaning potential voters who have not traditionally supported Republicans or skip elections altogether, especially younger voices.The audiences at many of his events, however, are often older and whiter. In Grinnell, Iowa, home to Grinnell College, five students at a town hall on Monday said they were Democrats who came for the spectacle of meeting a presidential candidate for the first time.Seeing Mr. Ramaswamy, they all said, had solidified their support for President Biden.“I feel like a lot of his policies are just kind of identical to a lot of Trump’s policies — he seems just kind of Trump-lite, even with how he speaks,” said Che Glenn, a 19-year-old student from New York. “I just want to know why he thinks anyone would ever consider voting for him over Trump.”Even those whom Mr. Ramaswamy has won over have expressed doubts about his ability to succeed in the Hawkeye State.“I feel that the Republican Party has gone off the rails, and he’s got the message that the party needs to return to,” said Chris Kardos, a 71-year-old from Center Point, Iowa, who plans to caucus for Mr. Ramaswamy. “Unfortunately, I face the reality that his chances of winning the nomination are not great.” More

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      Why Trump Represents a ‘Trifecta of Danger’

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      Brian Klaas, a political scientist at University College London, captures the remarkable nature of the 2024 presidential election in an Oct. 1 essay, “The Case for Amplifying Trump’s Insanity.”Klaas argues that the presidential contest now pitsA 77-year-old racist, misogynist bigot who has been found liable for rape, who incited a deadly, violent insurrection aimed at overturning a democratic election, who has committed mass fraud for personal enrichment, who is facing 91 separate counts of felony criminal charges against him, and who has overtly discussed his authoritarian strategies for governing if he returns to poweragainst “an 80-year-old with mainstream Democratic Party views who sometimes misspeaks or trips.”“One of those two candidates,” Klaas notes, “faces relentless newspaper columns and TV pundit ‘takes’ arguing that he should drop out of the race. (Spoiler alert: it’s somehow *not* the racist authoritarian sexual abuse fraudster facing 91 felony charges).”Klaas asks:What is going on? How is it possible that the leading candidate to become president of the United States can float the prospect of executing a general and the media response is … crickets?How is it possible that it’s not front page news when a man who soon may return to power calls for law enforcement to kill people for minor crimes? And why do so few people question Trump’s mental acuity rather than Biden’s, when Trump proposes delusional, unhinged plans for forest management and warns his supporters that Biden is going to lead us into World War II (which would require a time machine), or wrongly claims that he defeated Barack Obama in 2016?The media, Klaas argues, has adopted a policy in covering Trump of: “Don’t amplify him! You’re just spreading his message.”In Klaas’s view, newspapers and television have succumbed to what he calls the “banality of crazy,” ignoring “even the most dangerous policy proposals by an authoritarian who is on the cusp of once again becoming the most powerful man in the world — precisely because it happens, like clockwork, almost every day.”This approach, according to Klaas,has backfired. It’s bad for democracy. The “Don’t Amplify Him” argument is disastrous. We need to amplify Trump’s vile rhetoric more, because it will turn persuadable voters off to his cruel message.Looking over the eight-and-a-half years during which Trump has been directly engaged in presidential politics, it’s not as if there were no warning signs.Three months after Trump took office, in April 2017, a conference called “A Duty to Warn” was held at the Yale School of Medicine.The conference resulted in a best-selling book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.” A sampling of the chapter titles gives the flavor:“Our Witness to Malignant Normality,” by Robert Jay Lifton.“Unbridled and Extreme Hedonism: How the Leader of the Free World Has Proven Time and Again That He Is Unfit for Duty,” by Philip Zimbardo and Rosemary Sword.“Pathological Narcissism and Politics: a Lethal Combination,” by Craig Malkin.In a review of that book, “Twilight of American Sanity: a Psychiatrist Analyzes the Age of Trump” and “Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, a 500-Year History,” Carlos Lozada, now a Times Opinion columnist, wrote in The Washington Post that the political elite in Washington was increasingly concerned about Trump’s mindset:“I think he’s crazy,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) confided to his colleague Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in a July exchange inadvertently caught on a microphone. “I’m worried,” she replied …. Even some Republicans have grown more blunt, with Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.) recently suggesting that Trump “has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence” to succeed as president.The warnings that Donald Trump is dangerous and unstable began well before his 2016 election and have become increasingly urgent.These warnings came during the 2016 primary and general campaigns, continued throughout Trump’s four years in the White House, and remain relentless as he gets older and more delusional about the outcome of the 2020 election.I asked some of those who first warned about the dangers Trump poses what their views are now.Leonard L. Glass, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, emailed me:He acts like he’s impervious, “a very stable genius,” but we know he is rageful, grandiose, vengeful, impulsive, devoid of empathy, boastful, inciting of violence, and thin-skinned. At times it seems as if he cannot control himself or his hateful speech. We need to wonder if these are the precursors of a major deterioration in his character defenses.Glass continued:If Trump — in adopting language that he cannot help knowing replicates that of Hitler (especially the references to opponents as “vermin” and “poisoning the blood of our country”), we have to wonder if he has crossed into “new terrain.” That terrain, driven by grandiosity and dread of exposure (e.g., at the trials) could signal the emergence of an even less constrained, more overtly vicious and remorseless Trump who, should he regain the presidency, would, indeed act like the authoritarians he praises. Absent conscientious aides who could contain him (as they barely did last time), this could lead to the literal shedding of American blood on American soil by a man who believes he is “the only one” and the one, some believe, is a purifying agent of God and in whom they see no evil nor do they doubt.In recent months, Trump has continued to add to the portrait Glass paints of him.In March, he told loyalists in Waco, Texas:I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.“With you at my side,” Trump went on to say,we will totally obliterate the deep state, we will banish the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, and we will cast out the communists and Marxists, we will throw off the corrupt political class, we will beat the Democrats, we will rout the fake news media, we will stand up to the RINOs, and we will defeat Joe Biden and every single Democrat.At the California Republican Convention on Sept. 29, Trump told the gathering that under his administration shoplifters will be subject to extrajudicial execution: “We will immediately stop all the pillaging and theft. Very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store.”Trump has continued to forge ahead, pledging to a crowd of supporters in Claremont N.H. on Nov. 11: “We will root out the communists, Marxist fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible, they’ll do anything whether legally or illegally to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.”Nothing captures Trump’s megalomania and narcissism more vividly than his openly declared agenda, should he win back the White House next year.On Nov. 6, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett reported in The Washington Post that Trump “wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley.”Trump, the Post noted, dismissed federal criminal indictments as “third-world-country stuff, ‘arrest your opponent,’ ” and then claimed that the indictments gave him license, if re-elected, to do the same thing: “I can do that, too.”A week later, my Times colleagues Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage and Jonathan Swan, quoted Trump in “How Trump and His Allies Plan to Wield Power in 2025”: “I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” adding, “I will totally obliterate the deep state.”In an earlier story, Haberman, Savage and Swan reported that Trump allies are preparing to reissue an executive order known as Schedule F, which Trump promulgated at the end of his presidency, but that never went into effect.Schedule F, the reporters wrote,would have empowered his administration to strip job protections from many career federal employees — who are supposed to be hired based on merit and cannot be arbitrarily fired. While the order said agencies should not hire or fire Schedule F employees based on political affiliation, it effectively would have made these employees more like political appointees who can be fired at will.Schedule F would politicize posts in the senior civil service authorized to oversee the implementation of policy, replacing job security with the empowerment of the administration to hire and fire as it chose, a topic I wrote about in an earlier column.I asked Joshua D. Miller, a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, whether he thought Trump’s “vermin” comment represented a tipping point, an escalation in his willingness to attack opponents. Miller replied by email: “My bet is we’re seeing the same basic traits, but their manifestation has been ratcheted up by the stress of his legal problems and also by some sense of invulnerability in that he has yet to face any dire consequences for his previous behavior.”Miller wrote that he haslong thought that Trump’s narcissism was actually distracting us from his psychopathic traits. I view the two as largely the same but with psychopathy bringing problems with disinhibition (impulsivity; failure to delay gratification, irresponsibility, etc.) to the table and Trump seems rather high on those traits along with those related to narcissism (e.g., entitlement, exploitativeness), pathological lying, grandiosity, etc.).I asked Donald R. Lynam, a professor of psychology at Purdue, the same question, and he emailed his reply: “The escalation is quite consistent with grandiose narcissism. Trump is reacting more and more angrily to what he perceives as his unfair treatment and failure to be admired, appreciated and adored in the way that he believes is his due.”Grandiose narcissists, Lynam continued, “feel they are special and that normal rules don’t apply to them. They require attention and admiration,” adding “this behavior is also consistent with psychopathy which is pretty much grandiose narcissism plus poor impulse control.”Most of the specialists I contacted see Trump’s recent behavior and public comments as part of an evolving process.“Trump is an aging malignant narcissist,” Aaron L. Pincus, a professor of psychology at Penn State, wrote in an email. “As he ages, he appears to be losing impulse control and is slipping cognitively. So we are seeing a more unfiltered version of his pathology. Quite dangerous.”In addition, Pincus continued, “Trump seems increasingly paranoid, which can also be a reflection of his aging brain and mental decline.”The result? “Greater hostility and less ability to reflect on the implications and consequences of his behavior.”Edwin B. Fisher, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, made the case in an email that Trump’s insistence on the validity of his own distorted claims has created a vicious circle, pressuring him to limit his close relations to those willing to confirm his beliefs:His isolation is much of his own making. The enormous pressures he puts on others for confirmation and unquestioning loyalty and his harsh, often vicious responses to perceived disloyalty lead to a strong, accelerating dynamic of more and more pressure for loyalty, harsher and harsher judgment of the disloyal, and greater and greater shrinking of pool of supporters.At the same time, Fisher continued, Trump is showing signs of cognitive deterioration,the confusion of Sioux Falls and Sioux City, several times referring to having beaten and/or now running against Obama, or the odd garbling of words on a number of occasions for it seems like about a year now. Add to these the tremendous pressure and threat he is under and you have, if you will, a trifecta of danger — lifelong habit, threat and possible cognitive decline. They each exacerbate the other two.Fisher noted that he anticipated the movement toward increased isolation in his 2017 contribution to the book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” which I mentioned earlier:Reflecting the interplay of personal and social, narcissistic concerns for self and a preoccupation with power may initially shape and limit those invited to the narcissistic leader’s social network, with sensitivity to slights and angry reactions to them further eroding that network.This process of exclusion, Fisher wrote, becomes self-reinforcing:A disturbing feature of this kind of dynamic is that it tends to feed on itself. The more the individual selects for those who flatter him and avoid confrontation, and the more those who have affronted and been castigated fall away, the narrower and more homogenous his network becomes, further flattering the individual but eventually becoming a thin precipice. President Nixon, drunk and reportedly conversing with the pictures on the White House walls, and praying with Henry Kissinger during his last nights in office, comes to mind.Craig Malkin, a lecturer in psychology at Harvard Medical School, raised a separate concern in an email responding to my inquiry:If the evidence emerging proves true — that Trump knew he lost and continued to push the big lie anyway — his character problems go well beyond simple narcissism and reach troubling levels of psychopathy. And psychopaths are far more concerned with their own power than preserving truth, democracy or even lives.In 2019, leaked memos written by Britain’s ambassador to the United States, Kim Darroch, warned British leaders that the Trump presidency could “crash and burn” and “end in disgrace,” adding: “We don’t really believe this administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept.”In 2020, Pew Research reported that “Trump Ratings Remain Low Around Globe.” Pew found:Trump receives largely negative reviews from publics around the world. Across 32 countries surveyed by Pew Research Center, a median of 64 percent say they do not have confidence in Trump to do the right thing in world affairs, while just 29 percent express confidence in the American leader. Anti-Trump sentiments are especially common in Western Europe: Roughly three-in-four or more lack confidence in Trump in Germany, Sweden, France, Spain and the Netherlands.A recent editorial in The Economist, carried the headline: “Donald Trump Poses the Biggest Danger to the World in 2024.” “A second Trump term,” the editorial concludes:would be a watershed in a way the first was not. Victory would confirm his most destructive instincts about power. His plans would encounter less resistance. And because America will have voted him in while knowing the worst, its moral authority would decline. The election will be decided by tens of thousands of voters in just a handful of states. In 2024 the fate of the world will depend on their ballots.Klaas, who opened this column, concludes that a crucial factor in Trump’s political survival is the failure of the media in this country to recognize that the single most important story in the presidential election, a story that dominates over all others, is the enormous threat Trump poses:The man who, as president, incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol in order to overturn an election is again openly fomenting political violence while explicitly endorsing authoritarian strategies should he return to power. That is the story of the 2024 election. Everything else is just window dressing.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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      El lenguaje de Trump alarma por su tendencia al autoritarismo

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      El expresidente está centrando sus ataques más feroces en sus oponentes políticos internos, lo que genera nuevas preocupaciones entre los expertos en autocracia.Donald Trump llegó al poder en Estados Unidos con campañas políticas que atacaban sobre todo objetivos del exterior, como la inmigración procedente de países de mayoría musulmana y del sur de la frontera con México.Pero ahora, en su tercera campaña presidencial, ha dirigido algunos de sus ataques más despiadados y degradantes contra sus contrincantes a nivel nacional.Durante un discurso en el Día de los Veteranos, Trump utilizó un lenguaje que recordaba a los líderes autoritarios que ascendieron al poder en Alemania e Italia en la década de 1930, al degradar a sus adversarios políticos con palabras como “alimañas” que debían ser “erradicadas”.“La amenaza de fuerzas externas es mucho menos siniestra, peligrosa y seria que la amenaza desde el interior”, dijo Trump.Este giro hacia el interior ha alarmado a los expertos en autocracia que desde hace tiempo están preocupados por los elogios de Trump a dictadores extranjeros y su desdén por los ideales democráticos. Dijeron que el enfoque cada vez más intenso del expresidente en los enemigos internos era un sello distintivo de los líderes totalitarios peligrosos.Académicos, demócratas y republicanos que no apoyan a Trump vuelven a preguntarse qué tanto se parece el exmandatario a los actuales autócratas en otros países y cómo se compara con los líderes autoritarios del pasado. Quizá lo más urgente sea que se pregunten si su giro retórico hacia una narrativa que suena más fascista solo es su más reciente provocación pública a la izquierda, una evolución de sus creencias o una revelación.“Hay ecos de la retórica fascista y son muy precisos”, dijo Ruth Ben-Ghiat, profesora de la Universidad de Nueva York que estudia el fascismo. “La estrategia general es hacia una evidente deshumanización para que el público no proteste tanto por lo que quieres hacer”.El giro de Trump se produce mientras él y sus aliados idean planes para un segundo mandato que cambiaría algunas de las normas más arraigadas de la democracia estadounidense y el Estado de derecho.Estas ambiciones incluyen utilizar el Departamento de Justicia para vengarse de sus rivales políticos, planear una vasta expansión del poder presidencial y nombrar abogados alineados con su ideología en puestos clave para que respalden sus acciones polémicas.Los aliados de Trump tachan las preocupaciones de alarmismo y cínicos ataques políticos.Steven Cheung, un vocero de la campaña, respondió a las críticas sobre los comentarios de las “alimañas” con el argumento de que provenían de liberales reactivos cuya “triste y miserable existencia será aplastada cuando el presidente Trump regrese a la Casa Blanca”. Cheung no respondió a las solicitudes de comentarios para este artículo.Algunos expertos en autoritarismo comentaron que, aunque el lenguaje reciente de Trump ha empezado a parecerse al utilizado por líderes como Hitler o Benito Mussolini, no refleja del todo a los líderes fascistas del pasado. Sin embargo, afirman que presenta rasgos similares a los de los autócratas actuales, como el primer ministro húngaro, Viktor Orbán, o el presidente turco, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.Las opiniones relativamente aislacionistas de Trump son contrarias al ansia de imperio y expansión que caracterizó los gobiernos de Hitler en Alemania y Mussolini en Italia. Como presidente, nunca pudo utilizar al ejército con fines políticos y encontró resistencia cuando intentó desplegar a los soldados contra los manifestantes.“Es demasiado simplista referirse a él como neofascista o autócrata o cualquier otra cosa: Trump es Trump y no tiene una filosofía particular que yo haya visto después de cuatro años como presidente”, comentó el exsecretario de Defensa Chuck Hagel, un republicano que formó parte del gabinete del presidente Barack Obama después de servir 12 años como senador de Nebraska.A pesar de eso, el estilo de campaña de Trump es “condenadamente peligroso”, dijo Hagel.“Continúa arrinconando a la gente y dándole voz a la polarización en nuestro país y el verdadero peligro es que eso siga creciendo y se apodere de la mayoría del Congreso, los estados y los gobiernos”, continuó Hagel. “En una democracia deben hacerse concesiones, porque solo hay una alternativa para ello: un gobierno autoritario”.Las multitudes que acuden a los eventos de Trump han respaldado sus llamados a expulsar a la clase política tradicional, destruir los “medios de noticias falsos” y rehacer agencias gubernamentales como el Departamento de Justicia.Sophie Park para The New York TimesTrump se ha vuelto cada vez más desenfrenado con cada campaña, un patrón que va en paralelo con los crecientes riesgos personales y políticos para él.En 2016, era un candidato arriesgado y con poco que perder, y sus andanadas a menudo iban acompañadas de burlas que provocaban risas en el público. Cuatro años después, el enfoque de Trump se volvió más iracundo mientras buscaba aferrarse al poder, y su mandato terminó en el ataque contra el Capitolio perpetrado por sus seguidores.En este ciclo electoral, Trump enfrenta más presión que nunca. En parte, su decisión de iniciar una campaña temprana por la Casa Blanca fue un intento de protegerse de múltiples investigaciones, que desde entonces han formulado la mayor parte de los 91 cargos por delitos graves que enfrenta.Políticamente, Trump corre el riesgo de convertirse en un histórico perdedor en dos ocasiones. En los casi 168 años de historia del Partido Republicano, solo un candidato presidencial, Thomas Dewey, ha perdido dos candidaturas a la Casa Blanca.Los ataques de Trump abarcan desde las más altas esferas de la política hasta los burócratas de bajo nivel a los que ha considerado poco leales.Ha insinuado que el máximo general de la nación debería ser ejecutado y ha pedido la “terminación” de partes de la Constitución. Ha declarado que si recupera la Casa Blanca no tendrá “más remedio” que encarcelar a sus oponentes políticos.Ha puesto a prueba el sistema legal con ataques a la integridad del poder judicial, además de arremeter contra fiscales, jueces y, de manera más reciente, contra una asistente legal en su juicio por fraude en Nueva York, a quienes ha tachado de “parcialidad política” y de estar “fuera de control”.En general, las multitudes que asisten a los actos de Trump han apoyado sus llamados a expulsar a la clase política dominante y destruir los “medios de noticias falsas”. Sus seguidores no se inmutan cuando elogia a líderes como Orbán, el presidente de China, Xi Jinping, y el presidente de Rusia, Vladimir Putin.De pie en medio de casi dos decenas de banderas estadounidenses en una celebración del Día de la Independencia en Carolina del Sur en julio, Trump prometió represalias contra Biden y su familia.“Estoy listo para la batalla”, dijo. La multitud le respondió con una sonora ovación.Los seguidores gritaron en señal de aprobación cuando Trump calificó a los demócratas en Washington como “un nido enfermo de gente que necesita ser limpiado, y limpiado de inmediato”.Mientras la base de seguidores de Trump sigue apoyándolo férreamente, su regreso a la Casa Blanca podría decidirse por cómo los votantes indecisos y los republicanos moderados responden a sus posturas. En 2020, esos votantes hundieron su candidatura en cinco estados clave que estaban disputados y causaron la derrota de los republicanos en las elecciones de mitad de mandato del año pasado y en las legislativas de este mes en Virginia.Pero Trump y su equipo se han animado ante los indicios de que esos votantes parecen estar más abiertos a su campaña de 2024. Una encuesta reciente de The New York Times y el Siena College reveló que Trump supera a Biden en cinco de los estados más competitivos.En varias ocasiones, Biden ha tratado de presentar a Trump como extremista; hace poco declaró que el expresidente estaba usando un lenguaje que “hace eco de las mismas frases utilizadas en la Alemania nazi”. Biden también señaló los comentarios xenófobos que Trump hizo el mes pasado durante una entrevista con The National Pulse, un sitio web conservador, en la que dijo que los inmigrantes estaban “envenenando la sangre” de Estados Unidos.“Hay muchas razones para estar en contra de Donald Trump, pero caray, no debería ser presidente”, dijo Biden en San Francisco, en un evento para recaudar fondos.La preocupación por Trump se extiende a algunos republicanos, aunque son minoría en el partido.“Está subiendo el tono y eso muy preocupante”, comentó el exgobernador por Ohio John Kasich, quien en 2016 se presentó a la candidatura presidencial republicana contra Trump. “Simplemente no hay límite para la ira y el odio en su retórica y este tipo de atmósfera venenosa ha bajado nuestros estándares y daña mucho nuestro país”, aseveró.Trump y su equipo se han sentido respaldados por las señales de que los votantes indecisos y los republicanos moderados, que ayudaron a frenar su candidatura a la reelección de 2020, ahora parecen estar más abiertos a su campaña de 2024.Jordan Gale para The New York TimesLa llegada de Trump al poder estuvo acompañada por debates sobre si su ascenso, y el de otros líderes de todo el mundo con opiniones políticas similares, indicaba un resurgimiento del fascismo.El fascismo generalmente se entiende como un sistema de gobierno autoritario y de extrema derecha en el que el hipernacionalismo es un componente central.También se caracteriza por el culto a la personalidad de un líder fuerte, la justificación de la violencia o las represalias contra los oponentes y la repetida denigración del Estado de derecho, dijo Peter Hayes, un historiador que ha estudiado el ascenso del fascismo.Los líderes fascistas del pasado apelaron a un sentimiento de victimización para justificar sus acciones, dijo. “La idea es: ‘Tenemos derecho porque hemos sido víctimas. Nos han engañado y robado’”, dijo.Encuestas recientes han sugerido que los estadounidenses pueden ser más tolerantes con los líderes que violan las normas establecidas. Una encuesta publicada el mes pasado por el Instituto Público de Investigación Religiosa encontró que el 38 por ciento de los estadounidenses apoyaban tener un presidente “dispuesto a romper algunas reglas” para “arreglar las cosas” en el país. Entre los republicanos encuestados, el 48 por ciento respaldó esa opinión.Jennifer Mercieca, profesora de la Universidad Texas A&M que ha investigado la retórica política, dijo que Trump había utilizado el lenguaje como un cincel para socavar las normas democráticas.“Normalmente, un presidente utilizaría la retórica de guerra con el fin de preparar al país para la guerra contra otro país”, dijo. “Donald Trump usa la retórica de guerra en temas nacionales”.Michael C. Bender es corresponsal político y autor de Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost. @MichaelCBenderMichael Gold es corresponsal político del Times y cubre las campañas de Donald Trump y otros candidatos a las elecciones presidenciales de 2024. Más de Michael Gold More

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      Colorado Supreme Court Agrees to Take Up Trump 14th Amendment Case

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      A state judge ruled last week that the former president had engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, but allowed him to remain on the ballot.The Colorado Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to take up an appeal of a state judge’s ruling allowing former President Donald J. Trump to remain on the state’s primary ballot, in a nationwide battle over his eligibility to run for president again.Plaintiffs, citing Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, argued that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment disqualifies anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution after having taken an oath to support it.Judge Sarah B. Wallace ruled that Mr. Trump had engaged in insurrection with his actions before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. But she allowed Mr. Trump to remain on the ballot anyway on the narrow grounds that the disqualification clause of the 14th Amendment did not apply to the president of the United States.A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Steven Cheung, said in a statement after Judge Wallace’s ruling last week that it was “another nail in the coffin of the un-American ballot challenges.”The plaintiffs filed their appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court on Monday evening, and the court agreed to hear the case on an accelerated timetable. Mr. Trump’s lawyers must file a brief in the case by next Monday, and oral arguments are scheduled to begin on Dec. 6.Jena Griswold, the Colorado secretary of state and a Democrat, has previously said she would follow whatever ruling was in place on Jan. 5, 2024, the state’s deadline for certifying candidates on the ballot for the March 5 primary.Mario Nicolais, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said that the fast pace of the court schedule indicated that “the Supreme Court has taken this with the seriousness that it requires,” adding that “we are confident that we will come away from the Colorado Supreme Court with a victory and that he will be barred from being on the ballot.” More

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      Trump’s Dire Words Raise New Fears About His Authoritarian Bent

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      The former president is focusing his most vicious attacks on domestic political opponents, setting off fresh worries among autocracy experts.Donald J. Trump rose to power with political campaigns that largely attacked external targets, including immigration from predominantly Muslim countries and from south of the United States-Mexico border.But now, in his third presidential bid, some of his most vicious and debasing attacks have been leveled at domestic opponents.During a Veterans Day speech, Mr. Trump used language that echoed authoritarian leaders who rose to power in Germany and Italy in the 1930s, degrading his political adversaries as “vermin” who needed to be “rooted out.”“The threat from outside forces,” Mr. Trump said, “is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within.”This turn inward has sounded new alarms among experts on autocracy who have long worried about Mr. Trump’s praise for foreign dictators and disdain for democratic ideals. They said the former president’s increasingly intensive focus on perceived internal enemies was a hallmark of dangerous totalitarian leaders.Scholars, Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans are asking anew how much Mr. Trump resembles current strongmen abroad and how he compares to authoritarian leaders of the past. Perhaps most urgently, they are wondering whether his rhetorical turn into more fascist-sounding territory is just his latest public provocation of the left, an evolution in his beliefs or the dropping of a veil.“There are echoes of fascist rhetoric, and they’re very precise,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor at New York University who studies fascism. “The overall strategy is an obvious one of dehumanizing people so that the public will not have as much of an outcry at the things that you want to do.”Mr. Trump’s shift comes as he and his allies devise plans for a second term that would upend some of the long-held norms of American democracy and the rule of law.These ambitions include using the Justice Department to take vengeance on his political rivals, plotting a vast expansion of presidential power and installing ideologically aligned lawyers in key positions to bless his contentious actions.Mr. Trump’s allies dismiss the concerns as alarmism and cynical political attacks.Steven Cheung, a campaign spokesman, responded to criticism of the “vermin” remarks by saying it came from reactive liberals whose “sad, miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.” Mr. Cheung did not respond to requests for comment for this article.Some experts on authoritarianism said that while Mr. Trump’s recent language has begun to more closely resemble that used by leaders like Hitler or Benito Mussolini, he does not quite mirror fascist leaders of the past. Still, they say, he does exhibit traits similar to current strongmen like Viktor Orban of Hungary or Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.Mr. Trump’s relatively isolationist views run counter to the hunger for empire and expansion that characterized the rule of Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy. As president, he was never able to fully wield the military for political purposes, meeting resistance when he sought to deploy troops against protesters.“It’s too simplistic to reference him as a neofascist or autocrat or whatever — Trump is Trump, and he has no particular philosophy that I’ve seen after four years as president,” said former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, a Republican who served in President Barack Obama’s cabinet after 12 years as a senator from Nebraska.Still, Mr. Trump’s campaign style is “damn dangerous,” Mr. Hagel said.“He continues to push people into corners and give voice to this polarization in our country, and the real danger is if that continues to bubble up and take hold of a majority of Congress and statehouses and governorships,” Mr. Hagel went on. “There must be compromise in a democracy because there’s only one alternative — that’s an authoritarian government.”Crowds at Mr. Trump’s events have generally affirmed his calls to drive out the political establishment, destroy the “fake news media” and remake government agencies like the Justice Department.Sophie Park for The New York TimesMr. Trump has become increasingly unrestrained with each successive campaign, a pattern that parallels the escalating stakes for him personally and politically.In 2016, he was a long-shot candidate with little to lose, and his broadsides were often paired with schoolyard taunts that drew laughs from his audiences. Four years later, Mr. Trump’s approach became angrier as he sought to cling to power, and his term ended in a deadly riot by his supporters at the Capitol.This election cycle, Mr. Trump faces more pressure than ever. In part, his decision to open an early White House campaign was an attempt to shield himself from multiple investigations, which have since resulted in the bulk of the 91 felony charges he now faces.Politically, Mr. Trump risks becoming a historic two-time loser. In the Republican Party’s nearly 168-year history, only one presidential nominee — Thomas Dewey — has lost two White House bids.Mr. Trump’s attacks sweep from the highest echelons of politics to low-level bureaucrats whom he has deemed insufficiently loyal.He has insinuated that the nation’s top military general should be executed and called for the “termination” of parts of the Constitution. If he wins back the White House, he has said, he would have “no choice” but to imprison political opponents.He has tested the legal system with broadsides against the integrity of the judiciary, railing against prosecutors, judges and, more recently, a law clerk in his New York fraud trial as “politically biased” and “out of control.”Crowds at Mr. Trump’s events have generally affirmed his calls to drive out the political establishment and to destroy the “fake news media.” Supporters do not flinch when he praises leaders like Mr. Orban, Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.Standing amid nearly two dozen American flags at an Independence Day celebration in South Carolina in July, Mr. Trump promised retribution against Mr. Biden and his family.“The gloves are off,” he said. The crowd unleashed a resounding cheer.Supporters roared in approval when Mr. Trump called Democrats in Washington “a sick nest of people that needs to be cleaned out, and cleaned out immediately.”While Mr. Trump’s fan base remains solidly behind him, his return to the White House may be decided by how swing voters and moderate Republicans respond to his approach. In 2020, those voters tanked his bid in five key battleground states, and dealt Republicans defeats in last year’s midterm elections and this month’s legislative contests in Virginia.But Mr. Trump and his team have been energized by signs that such voters so far appear to be more open to his 2024 campaign. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found Mr. Trump leading Mr. Biden in five of the most competitive states.Mr. Biden has often sought to paint Mr. Trump as extreme, saying recently that the former president was using language that “echoes the same phrases used in Nazi Germany.” Mr. Biden also pointed to xenophobic remarks that Mr. Trump made last month during an interview with The National Pulse, a conservative website, in which he said immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of America.“There’s a lot of reasons to be against Donald Trump, but damn, he shouldn’t be president,” Mr. Biden said at a fund-raiser in San Francisco.Worries about Mr. Trump extend to some Republicans, though they are a minority in the party.“He’s absolutely ratcheting it up, and it’s very concerning,” said former Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 against Mr. Trump. “There’s just no limit to the anger and hatred in his rhetoric, and this kind of poisonous atmosphere has lowered our standards and hurts our country so much.”Mr. Trump and his team have been energized by signs that swing voters and moderate Republicans, who helped tank his 2020 re-election bid, so far appear to be more open to his 2024 campaign.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s rise to power was almost immediately accompanied by debates over whether his ascendancy, and that of other leaders around the world with similar political views, signaled a revival of fascism.Fascism is generally understood as an authoritarian, far-right system of government in which hypernationalism is a central component.It also often features a cult of personality around a strongman leader, the justification of violence or retribution against opponents, and the repeated denigration of the rule of law, said Peter Hayes, a historian who has studied the rise of fascism.Past fascist leaders appealed to a sense of victimhood to justify their actions, he said. “The idea is: ‘We’re entitled because we’ve been victimized. We’ve been cheated and robbed,’” he said.Recent polls have suggested that Americans may be more tolerant of leaders who violate established norms. A survey released last month by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 38 percent of Americans supported having a president “willing to break some rules” to “set things right” with the country. Among Republicans surveyed, 48 percent backed that view.Jennifer Mercieca, a professor at Texas A&M University who has researched political rhetoric, said Mr. Trump had wielded language as a chisel to chip away at democratic norms.“Normally, a president would use war rhetoric to prepare a nation for war against another nation,” she said. “Donald Trump uses war rhetoric domestically.” More

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      Happy Thanksgiving, Hermit Billionaires!

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      Gail Collins: Bret, I guess we should start with things we’re thankful for this year. Don’t suppose the imminent end of the political career of the dreadful Representative George Santos rises to the level of holiday cheer.So you go first. No fair counting family and friends.Bret Stephens: It’s a depressing world, Gail, so we need to find cheer wherever we can, and the House Ethics Committee report on Santos does make for delightful reading. My favorite bit: “During the 2020 campaign, a $1,500 purchase on the campaign debit card was made at Mirza Aesthetics; this expense was not reported to the F.E.C. and was noted as ‘Botox’ in expense spreadsheets.” Santos would have been around 32 years old at the time.Gail: You’re right. Makes me cheery just hearing it.Bret: On a loftier plane, I was delighted to see Joe Biden describe Xi Jinping as, well, “a dictator” of a “Communist country” while Antony Blinken, his secretary of state, visibly winced. That was another wonderful moment.Gail: I can see how Biden felt a little cornered when a reporter asked him if he still believed Xi was a dictator. I mean, what was he supposed to say? “No, I think he’s changed a lot?”But it also does seem as if it’s the kind of question he should have been a tad better prepared to handle.Feel free to perk me up again.Bret: I loved Biden’s answer. It reminded me of Ronald Reagan calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” to the consternation of diplomats and pundits but to the relief of anyone who liked hearing an American president state the obvious and essential truth. I also think it’s worth celebrating the fact that inflation seems to have been tamed without cratering the rest of the economy in the process. That might not help Biden’s campaign, since a lot of price increases are now baked into the system, but at least things aren’t getting worse.OK, now your turn.Gail: Hey, this is a president who has really kept the economy under control, who has a great program for building new roads, bridges and mass transit and who always keeps climate change in mind when he’s working out an agenda.And who does not seek out cheap headlines by saying things that are both wrong and wrongheaded just to get attention.Bret: Like Elon Musk?Gail: OK, never been grateful for Elon Musk. He has, however, made me more appreciative of stupendously rich people who don’t get involved in public debates. Happy Thanksgiving, hermit billionaires!Bret: He’s also made me more appreciative of normal billionaires who, unlike him, don’t promote crackpot antisemitic conspiracy theories on their social media platforms. I’m also appreciative of companies — like IBM, Paramount, Apple and Disney — that have pulled their advertising dollars from X, formerly known as Twitter, out of disgust for his views. Now I’m rooting for Tesla owners to trade in their Model 3s for a Rivian or any other electric car that doesn’t run on a high-voltage blend of bottomless narcissism, knee-jerk bigotry and probably too much weed.Gail: Well said. Moving on to politics: I’m grateful that some Republican presidential candidates other than He Who Shall Not Be Named are getting some attention. Particularly your fave, Nikki Haley.On that topic, tell me what you think about the primaries. Trump is way ahead nationally, but do you think Haley could do something impressive in the early primaries? If, say, Chris Christie dropped out and endorsed her?Bret: My gut tells me that primary voters prefer a contest to a coronation, but then my brain remembers that the G.O.P. has turned into a cult. As the field narrows, Haley will pick up Christie voters and maybe some DeSantis voters, too. But Trump will pick up other DeSantis voters, plus Ramaswamy’s.I’m about as thankful for Trump’s dominance as I would be for a terminal cancer diagnosis. But hey, aren’t we trying to keep things optimistic?Gail: Maybe it’s my desperation that creates these imagined scenarios in which Haley impresses New Hampshire voters, who are always up for a script in which they get to pick the new star. And then the campaign gets a real jolt when Christie drops out and gives her his endorsement.Bret: I like this fantasy. Say more.Gail: Then Haley starts a serious campaign that draws terrific interest among rich Americans who don’t want a president who has to spend half his time in court trying to prove that he didn’t actually try to fix the last election, that his real estate empire isn’t just a fairyland of debt, that — I could go on. If Haley could get the serious-alternative attention and funding, it’d be quite a ride.And oh, did I mention that I’d be thankful if she rethinks her position on a six-week abortion ban bill?Bret: Gail, I bet this is the first time you wish the 1 percent were more like the majority, at least in terms of attitudes about Republican candidates. If Park Avenue got to decide the G.O.P. primary contest, Haley would be the nominee in a heartbeat.And speaking of heartbeats: Biden turns 81 this week. Happy birthday, Mr. President. May you live to 100, but please, please, please retire. We’ll all pitch in to buy you a new Corvette, at least before we have to take away the keys.Gail: Sigh. Once again, I’m gonna have to follow up my praise of Biden in office with a plea for him to leave it. If you’re in good health like he is, your 80s can be a great time of achievement. Or your 90s — look at Jimmy Carter and all his charitable work and Rosalynn Carter, who just died at 96. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good time to be president of the United States.If our president really wants to make me thankful this season, he knows what he can do.Bret: Let’s face it: There’s just not a lot to be thankful for, politically speaking. So, um, read any good books lately?Gail: Well, right now I’m on “Romney,” the Mitt biography by McKay Coppins, although Romney himself was so wildly cooperative it feels as if he should get some kind of co-author status. So far, it’s a very good read.And I just finished our colleague Adam Nagourney’s book “The Times,” which is about … well, us. Adam’s a friend and a terrific reporter. Bet anyone who’s a devoted Times reader will gobble it up.Finally, I sort of have a thing for presidential biographies, and if anybody’s looking for a really fine one, I’d recommend “Washington,” by Ron Chernow. Always good to start at the beginning.How about you?Bret: Generally, I hate books about the media by the media: Solipsism is one of the curses of our profession. But everyone who has read Adam’s book tells me it’s terrific, and I’ve promised myself to get to it before the year’s out.I’m making my way through two books right now, one to feed the mind and the other the soul. The first is the Johns Hopkins scholar Yascha Mounk’s “The Identity Trap,” an intellectual tour de force about the origins of identity politics and the threat it presents to genuine, honest, old-fashioned liberalism. The second is “My Effin’ Life,” by the greatest living Canadian: the singer and bassist Geddy Lee of the band Rush. It’s a story about how an improbable trio of geeks from Ontario rose to the pinnacle of rock ’n’ roll stardom while somehow holding on to their wits, souls and marriages.I’m sure you can’t wait to read it. I’m guessing you’d rather talk about budget negotiations.Gail: Well, one ongoing story line that’s driving me crazy is the House Republicans’ insistence that pretty much everything be tied to a cut in the I.R.S. budget.Now I know it’s natural for people to hate tax collectors. But the idea that you make the country more stable by making it easier for folks to conceal income and illicitly expand deductions is beyond me.Bret: Hope it won’t surprise you to learn that while I’m all for lowering taxes majorly, I’m also for collecting them fully. The Republican war on the I.R.S. isn’t pro-growth; it’s just anti-government.As for the big picture: We can’t go on like this, from one short-term spending bill to another, one budget crisis to another, one House speaker to another. This is banana republic governance — and by “banana,” I mean “bananas.” Pramila Jayapal, the progressive congresswoman from Seattle with whom I agree roughly once every 500 years, was right when she said, “It’s the same menu, different waiter.”Gail: In a normal — thinking non-Trump — era, the Republicans would have taken over the House by a more substantial margin. Usually happens when one party gets the presidency, as you know. Voters get nervous and want to put up some barricades against extremely partisan behavior.But this time the Republicans won by only a hair, in part because there were a number of awful Trump-promoted Republican candidates.So you’ve got a House run by a deeply inexperienced leader with a tiny majority. And everything bad that happens is going to be the Republicans’ fault.Except, I guess, if Biden’s dog Commander comes back to the White House and bites more people.Hey, before we go, happy Thanksgiving, Bret. Very grateful for the chance to converse with you every week.Bret: And to you!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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      Donald Trump Endorsed by Greg Abbott at Texas Border Event

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      Gov. Greg Abbott threw his support behind the former president in the Republican presidential primary at an event near the southern border.Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas endorsed former President Donald J. Trump on Sunday in an appearance near the southern border, echoing Mr. Trump’s talk about an existential crisis of illegal immigration.“I’m here to tell you that there is no way, no way that America can continue under the leadership of Joe Biden as our president,” Mr. Abbott said in Edinburg, Texas, after he and Mr. Trump greeted Border Patrol agents. “We need a president who’s going to secure the border. We need a president who’s going to restore law and order in the United States of America.”Mr. Abbott, a three-term governor with a strongly conservative record, castigated President Biden for reversing Trump-era policies that had expedited deportations and required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while awaiting hearings, and claimed that Mr. Biden was facilitating terrorism.Mr. Abbott has taken extraordinary measures on border crossings during the Biden administration — including putting razor wire along the border and buoys in the Rio Grande — that have injured many migrants. Under his administration, Texas has also bused tens of thousands of newly arrived migrants around the country, frequently to big cities run by Democrats.His aggressive policies align him closely with Mr. Trump, whose plans if elected to a second term include detaining undocumented immigrants in camps, relying on a form of expulsion that doesn’t involve due process hearings, and deputizing local police officers and National Guard troops from Republican-led states to carry out immigration raids.Mr. Trump took to the microphone after the endorsement and gave an unusually short speech: just 10 minutes long, compared with his 75-minute address in Iowa on Saturday and nearly two hours in New Hampshire last weekend. Mr. Trump’s appearance at the border did not bear resemblance to his typical campaign events this year, and it was not widely open to supporters.“We’re going to make the governor’s job very easy,” he said, suggesting that his immigration policies would remove the need for Mr. Abbott to handle the issue and claiming falsely that Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris had never visited the border.“Our country is going to hell,” he added, before returning to familiar territory of demonizing his political opponents: “We have some people that either they don’t care, they’re not very smart or they hate our country, and nobody really knows the answer.”Both this weekend and last, he had railed at length against President Biden and vowed vengeance upon his opponents, whom he described as “vermin” who posed a greater threat to the country than any outside force — rhetoric reminiscent of fascist dictators like Hitler and Mussolini.Mr. Trump has received endorsements from a number of Republican governors in addition to Mr. Abbott, including Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, Henry McMaster of South Carolina and Kristi Noem of South Dakota.However, he did not secure the endorsement of Gov. Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s popular governor, who is instead backing Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. More