Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

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      McCarthy Claimed Trump Was ‘Not Eating’ After Leaving Office, Cheney Says

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      In a new memoir, Liz Cheney wrote that Kevin McCarthy justified his trip to Mar-a-Lago by saying the former president was depressed after losing re-election.Former President Donald J. Trump was “really depressed” in the days after losing re-election and leaving office in January 2021, so much so that he was “not eating.”At least that is what Kevin McCarthy told Liz Cheney in trying to explain why he had traveled to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, an act of solidarity that many have identified as a pivotal moment in reviving the former president’s political viability.Mr. McCarthy, the California congressman who was then the House Republican leader, had condemned Mr. Trump for fueling the Jan. 6 mob attack on the Capitol and even suggested that he resign, only to turn around and effectively absolve the former president by embracing him again. In her new book, Ms. Cheney, perhaps the country’s most vocal anti-Trump Republican, reports that Mr. McCarthy justified the Jan. 28 visit as an act of compassion for a beaten ally.Ms. Cheney wrote that she was so shocked when she first saw the photograph of Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Trump standing side by side with grins on their faces that she thought it was a fake. “Not even Kevin McCarthy could be this craven, I thought,” she wrote. “I was wrong.” She went to see Mr. McCarthy to confront him about rehabilitating the twice-impeached former president who had just tried to overturn an election he lost.“Mar-a-Lago?” she asked Mr. McCarthy, according to the book. “What the hell?”He tried to downplay the meeting, saying he had already been in Florida when Mr. Trump’s staff called. “They’re really worried,” Mr. McCarthy said by her account. “Trump’s not eating, so they asked me to come see him.”“What?” she recalled replying. “You went to Mar-a-Lago because Trump’s not eating?”“Yeah, he’s really depressed,” Mr. McCarthy said.Ms. Cheney’s book, “Oath and Honor,” a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times ahead of its publication on Tuesday, offers a scathing assessment of not only Mr. McCarthy but an array of Republicans who in her view subordinated their integrity to curry favor with Mr. Trump. Her account of his subjugation of the party presents a tapestry of hypocrisy, with inside-the-room scenes of Republicans privately scorning “the Orange Jesus,” as one wryly called him, while publicly doing his bidding.Ms. Cheney with Kevin McCarthy a few weeks after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesThe much-anticipated memoir arrives on bookshelves even as Mr. Trump is in a commanding position to win next year’s Republican presidential nomination. Ms. Cheney, who represented Wyoming in Congress and led the House Republican Conference, making her the third-ranking member of her party, has assailed him as a budding autocrat in more visceral terms than most of his challengers for the nomination.The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and a conservative star in her own right who was once on track to become House speaker, Ms. Cheney ultimately paid a price for her opposition to Mr. Trump and her service as vice chair of the House committee that investigated his role in instigating the Jan. 6 attack. She lost her leadership position and eventually her seat in a Republican primary last year. But she has vowed to do whatever she can to keep Mr. Trump from returning to the Oval Office.Indeed, she subtitled her book “A Memoir and a Warning” to make the point that Mr. Trump represents a clear and present danger to America if he is on the ballot next November. “We will be voting on whether to preserve our republic,” she wrote. “As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term. But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our Constitution.”A re-elected Mr. Trump, she said, would face few checks on his power. “Step by step, Donald Trump would tear down the other structures that restrain an American president,” she wrote. “The assumption that our institutions will protect themselves,” she added, “is purely wishful thinking by people who prefer to look the other way.”Asked for comment on Wednesday, Mr. Trump, who has openly called for “termination” of the Constitution to immediately remove President Biden from office and reinstall himself without waiting for another election, did not directly address any of Ms. Cheney’s specific assertions but simply dismissed her as a disgruntled critic.“Liz Cheney is a loser who is now lying in order to sell a book that either belongs in the discount bargain bin in the fiction section of the bookstore or should be repurposed as toilet paper,” Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said by email. “These are nothing more than completely fabricated stories because President Trump is the clear front-runner to be the Republican nominee and the strongest candidate to beat Crooked Joe Biden.”Likewise, Mr. McCarthy did not deny anything in the book, copies of which have also been obtained by CNN and The Guardian. His office released a statement saying, “For Cheney, first it was Trump Derangement Syndrome, and now apparently it’s also McCarthy Derangement Syndrome.”In Ms. Cheney’s telling, Mr. Trump knew that he lost the 2020 election even as he told the public that he had not — and she cited no less than Mr. McCarthy as a witness. Just two days after the November election, she said, Mr. McCarthy told her he had spoken to Mr. Trump. “He knows it’s over,” she quoted him saying. “He needs to go through all the stages of grief.”That could in theory make Mr. McCarthy an important witness in the federal or state criminal cases against Mr. Trump, refuting any defense by the former president’s lawyers that he was acting on good-faith belief that fraud had stolen the election from him.Also depicted as a Trump acolyte is Representative Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who in recent weeks vaulted from the backbench to the speakership after Mr. McCarthy’s support for Mr. Trump failed to save him from a right-wing rebellion.Mr. Johnson took the lead in trying to corral support for Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. He sent an email to all House Republicans telling them that he had spoken with the president, who expected them to sign onto a friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court. “He said he will be anxiously awaiting the final list to review,” Mr. Johnson wrote.Also depicted as a Trump acolyte is Representative Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who in recent weeks vaulted from the backbench to the speakership.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesMs. Cheney took that as a veiled threat and said she was surprised about Mr. Johnson, whom she had thought of as a friend. “He appeared especially susceptible to flattery from Trump and aspired to being anywhere in Trump’s orbit,” she wrote. “When I confronted him with the flaws in his legal argument, Johnson would often concede, or say something to the effect of, ‘We just need to do this one last thing for Trump.’”At first, Mr. McCarthy agreed with her that the pro-Trump brief went too far and told her he would not sign it because it would interfere with the power of states to run their own elections. “It federalizes too much,” he told her. But a day later, his name was added to the brief after all.Mr. Johnson did not back down even after the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the case, sending Ms. Cheney a Fox News poll showing that 77 percent of Trump voters and 68 percent of Republicans believed the election had been stolen. “These numbers are big,” Mr. Johnson said, “and something we have to contend with as we thread the needle on messaging.”Ms. Cheney noted that Mr. Trump’s supporters believed the election was stolen because Republicans like Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Johnson were echoing his lies.Other Republicans were willing to toss aside traditions, norms and constitutional processes in the name of satisfying Mr. Trump’s desire to stay in power. When one Republican said during a meeting that they should not claim the election was rigged when there was no evidence, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies, said, “The only thing that matters is winning.”Likewise, she assailed Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, for seeking to set aside the counting of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6 while a commission investigated election results that had already been recounted and certified. “It was one of the worst cases of abandonment of duty for personal ambition I’ve ever seen in Washington,” Ms. Cheney wrote.In some cases, she found that Republicans stayed loyal to Mr. Trump out of outright fear. One colleague told her he was worried about the safety of his wife and baby if he spoke out.Behind the scenes, though, other Republicans cheered her on. After she was one of only 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Mr. Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attack, former President George W. Bush sent her a note. “Liz, Courage is in short supply these days,” he wrote. “Thank you for yours. You showed strong leadership and I’m not surprised. Lead on. 43.”Her vocal criticism of Mr. Trump grated on other Republicans, highlighting what she called their “cowardice” in the face of the former president. When she contradicted Mr. McCarthy on Mr. Trump’s future role in the party during a joint news conference, Mr. McCarthy complained to her privately afterward.“You’re killing me, Liz,” he said.“Kevin, this is about the Constitution,” she replied. “Think of what Trump did. Think how appalled any of our previous Republican leaders would be about this. How would Reagan have reacted to this? How would Bush have reacted? Think of my dad.”Mr. McCarthy dismissed that line of thinking. “This isn’t their party anymore,” he said.On that, she wrote, she had to agree. More

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      Fearful of Trump’s Autocratic Ambitions

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      More from our inbox:Pro-Palestinian Students on CampusMideast MythsWhen a Case Is Closed, Let the Target KnowCharles Peters and NeoliberalismFormer President Donald J. Trump has framed his campaign as the “final battle” against political adversaries, and he and his allies are devising plans for a second term that would upend some of the long-held norms of American democracy.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Autocratic Tone Intensifies Fears of Trump’s Plans” (front page, Nov. 21):I applaud former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and former Gov. John Kasich, both Republicans, for denouncing Donald Trump’s authoritarian language and ambitions.It is incumbent on other prominent Republicans to renounce Mr. Trump and state that he is not fit to serve as president.As stated in the article, a recent survey “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.”This view is shocking. Republican leaders have a responsibility to educate voters and help change this perspective.It is imperative that all Americans actively promote and support democracy against threats both foreign and domestic.James H. MillsCumberland Center, MaineTo the Editor:As frightening as it is to think of this man being elected again, we must also address this issue: Should Donald Trump not win, would he again try to overturn the results of the election and call on his supporters to storm the Capitol?Can the country afford to go through this again? I think not.Donald Trump is so unhinged and delusional that nothing would stop him from denying the election results once again and trying to stop Congress from certifying the results. This issue should be front and center as one of too-many-to-count reasons that this man should be stopped!Robin KroopnickBranford, Conn.To the Editor:Re “The Roots of Trump’s Rage,” by Thomas B. Edsall (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Nov. 22):What’s the point of analyzing Donald Trump’s psyche to find out why he seethes with hate? It’s far more important to understand just why that hate finds ready purchase among such a large swath of the electorate.According to a CNN poll taken in July, nearly 70 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believe the blatant lie that Mr. Trump won the 2020 election. We have no reason to suspect that this figure has diminished significantly since then.But why is that? We do not live in a totalitarian state — at least, not yet. No one is forcing these voters to accept that lie or watch it amplified on Fox News. They freely choose to do so.Like all cunning demagogues, Mr. Trump mirrors and mobilizes the latent hatred in his die-hard supporters, who view his many character defects as virtues. Without them, he would be nothing. There lie the real roots of his rage.Bryan L. TuckerBostonPro-Palestinian Students on CampusColumbia University suspended its chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.Bing Guan for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Inside the Group Protesting for Palestine Across College Campuses” (news article, Nov. 22):Brandeis, Columbia and George Washington University are missing a valuable teaching opportunity by banning or suspending Students for Justice in Palestine.They would be better served by inviting representatives from the organization to meet with representatives from pro-Israel and other student groups to work together brainstorming solutions. The forums would include professors and other professionals with valuable expertise. It would be guided by mediators.The goal would be to work on solutions instead of demands. Although the forums would have little immediate influence, they would teach and publicize alternatives to the extreme partisanship so prevalent today.Fox News and extremist Republicans are using pro-Palestinian student demonstrations to slant popular opinion against protesting students and liberal institutions while setting examples themselves in vitriol and extreme partisanship.As a counterweight, universities need to reaffirm their role of preparing students to be honest, open-minded and thoughtful leaders. It’s time to elevate the teaching of mediation both in our colleges and our high schools.Compromise and working together despite differences are key to successful democracies, and vesting students with responsibilities tends to make them more responsible.John PappenheimerHadley, Mass.To the Editor:Of course, the tactics of Students for Justice in Palestine “can provoke discomfort” on college campuses. So what? Although some S.J.P. tactics, such as impeding student access to classes, are unacceptable, discomfort is inevitable in institutions dedicated to the free exchange of ideas.Felicia Nimue AckermanProvidence, R.I.The writer is a professor of philosophy at Brown University.Mideast Myths William Keo/Magnum PhotosTo the Editor:Re “Three Myths of the Middle East,” by Nicholas Kristof (column, Nov. 16):It is ironic that in his attempt to dispel myths of the Middle East, Mr. Kristof addresses the lack of a Palestinian state without mentioning that the Palestinians have rebuffed generous offers of statehood and refused to enter negotiations with Israel on even more occasions.In his omission, he propels the myth that Palestinians are mere victims who never had any opportunities to have a state. They cannot continue to refuse to negotiate and accept these offers and still complain about being stateless.Mark MisenerNew YorkWhen a Case Is Closed, Let the Target Know Caitlin Ochs for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Legal Double Standard That’s Rarely Discussed,” by Preet Bharara (Opinion guest essay, Nov. 19):Mr. Bharara is correct that prosecutors should provide notice to the subjects or targets of a criminal investigation that the government has decided not to file charges. The American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Standards for Prosecutorial Investigations state that “to the extent practicable, the prosecutor should, upon request, provide notice of termination of the investigation to subjects who became aware of the investigation.”As the former head of a criminal litigating section at the Justice Department, and in private practice, I have given and received such “declination letters.”The A.B.A. standards could become part of the Justice Manual that guides all federal prosecutors. As Mr. Bharara observes, all those involved in the justice system, “prosecutors, the public and those being investigated,” would benefit from this small bit of grace by the government.Steven P. SolowWashingtonCharles Peters and NeoliberalismCharles Peters in 2017 at his home in Washington. He was often called the “godfather of neoliberalism,” the core policy doctrine of his magazine.Al Drago/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Charles Peters, Founder of The Washington Monthly, Is Dead at 96” (obituary, Nov. 25):Though the obituary was generous and informative, it should have explained to readers that Mr. Peters’s use of the term “neoliberalism” to describe the magazine’s political philosophy in the early 1980s was nearly the opposite of what that word would later come to mean.Neoliberalism today connotes market fundamentalism — the belief that government intervention in the economy is largely counterproductive and antithetical to growth and prosperity. Mr. Peters, by contrast, vigorously defended tough regulation of corporate behavior and other actions by government aimed at giving average Americans a leg up economically.While he was certainly — indeed famously — critical of some aspects of traditional liberalism, he was no libertarian but, rather, a die-hard F.D.R. Democrat.Paul GlastrisWashingtonThe writer is editor in chief of The Washington Monthly. More

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      Is Trump Disqualified From Holding Office? The Question Matters, Beyond Him.

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      State courts in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota and elsewhere have so far declined to rule in favor of challenges asserting that Donald Trump should be disqualified from holding the presidency again under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. (Cases in Michigan and Colorado have been appealed.)Challengers assert that Mr. Trump is barred because, as stated in Section 3, he was an officer of the United States who, after taking an oath to support the Constitution, “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the country, or gave “aid or comfort to the enemies thereof,” before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Mr. Trump and his campaign have called this claim an “absurd conspiracy theory” and efforts to bar him “election interference.” Some election officials and legal scholars — many of them otherwise opposed to the former president — have also been critical of the efforts.The Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, writes that invoking Section 3 “is merely the newest way of attempting to short-circuit the ballot box.” Michael McConnell, a former judge and professor at Stanford Law School, claims that keeping Mr. Trump off the ballot on grounds that are “debatable at best is not something that will be regarded as legitimate.”We 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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      Why Judges in the Trump Jan. 6 Trial Need a Rocket Docket

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      If Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for president in 2024, it’s now clear he will likely still have criminal indictments hanging over his head on Election Day. It’s possible that his criminal liability for the events leading up to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol will remain unresolved.If that happens, voters will go to the polls without knowing whether one of the candidates in the current election is criminally responsible for trying to overturn the last one and subvert the will of the voters.Having an election under such circumstances is unthinkable. As Richard Nixon might have put it, voters have a right to know whether their candidate is a crook. It can be avoided, but it’s going to require the judiciary to take some extraordinary steps. And whether it happens will be decided by a relative handful of federal jurists — including a number appointed by Mr. Trump himself.Of the four criminal cases pending against Mr. Trump, the federal election interference prosecution in Washington currently has the best chance of going to trial before the 2024 presidential vote. The trial date is set for March 4. The Federal District Court judge overseeing the case, Tanya Chutkan, has been doing an admirable job of keeping it on track. But legal developments that are out of her hands now threaten to derail that schedule: Expected pretrial appeals could push the trial date past the November election.Mr. Trump has moved to dismiss the case on various grounds, including claims of presidential immunity and violation of the double jeopardy clause. For most pretrial motions, if the motion is denied, the defendant must wait to raise the issue again on appeal following conviction, if there is one.But these two motions fall into a narrow category of claims that usually entitle a defendant to an interlocutory appeal — in this case, an appeal before trial. Because these are claims of a constitutional right not to be tried at all, a post-conviction appeal is not an adequate remedy. By that time, the right has already been lost. A defendant is allowed to appeal such claims before the government may put him on trial.If, as expected, Judge Chutkan denies these motions, Mr. Trump will have a right to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. (I expect the appeals will focus primarily on the immunity claim; the double jeopardy argument seems frivolous.) If he loses before a three-judge panel there, he can ask the full court to review that decision. If that fails, he can ask the Supreme Court to review the case. While all that goes on, the trial cannot proceed.In a typical case, an appeals process like this could easily take a year or more. In the first prosecution of Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, appeals over his claims of constitutional immunity under the speech or debate clause delayed the trial for about 18 months, even with the Supreme Court declining to take the case.In the Trump case, delays like that would push the trial well past November. If Mr. Trump wins the election, he would be able to shut down the two federal prosecutions and could probably have the state prosecutions at least postponed while he is in office.This appears to be the primary defense strategy in Mr. Trump’s criminal cases: delay as much as possible to put off any trials until after next November, when Mr. Trump hopes to be in a position to put an end to his legal problems.Having an election with Mr. Trump on the ballot and his criminal liability for Jan. 6 unresolved could spell disaster for the rule of law. It’s also completely avoidable if the courts — and in particularly, the judges who control the schedule — are willing to do what’s necessary: put the resolution of these motions on a fast track to ensure the case can go to trial as scheduled.Typically, the judicial and political calendars do not intersect. We expect judges to ignore political considerations and campaign schedules when making their decisions. But in times of political crisis, the federal judiciary cannot simply turn a blind eye. It must respond in a way that will enable the political system to address that crisis in a timely manner. This is one of those times.This is not a proposal for the courts to act in a partisan fashion. We don’t know whether Mr. Trump’s claim of immunity will be upheld. If it is rejected, we don’t know what the result of the trial will be. The outcome of the legal process is not the point. The point is that the country deserves to know that outcome before it chooses the next leader of the free world.There is precedent for this kind of judicial rapid response. During Watergate, the appeal of the order for President Nixon to turn over the subpoenaed White House tapes was resolved in only about two months — and that included arguments before and an opinion by the Supreme Court. During the 2000 presidential election, that court heard arguments in Bush v. Gore on Dec. 11 and the very next day issued its opinion shutting down the vote recount in Florida. The usually sedate appellate courts can move with dispatch when they want to.This case requires similar urgency. The initial appeals here could be easily heard and decided within a few weeks. Whether to grant a rehearing before the full Court of Appeals is discretionary, but if it does grant such a hearing, it needs to be equally speedy.After the District of Columbia Circuit rules, the losing party will seek Supreme Court review. If Mr. Trump loses the motions, my own hunch is that the Supreme Court may not take the case. In past disputes the justices have not shown much willingness to go out of their way to help Mr. Trump, and the last thing this embattled court needs right now is to wade into another controversy. But if the court does feel the need to weigh in on these novel constitutional issues, it also needs to move very swiftly.There’s no reason the entire process, including Supreme Court review, could not be completed by January. That would allow the trial date to stay on track if the motions are denied.There’s no concern about Mr. Trump being prejudiced by this relatively breakneck pace. He has vast financial and legal resources. The issues are already fully briefed before Judge Chutkan. The issues are novel — because nothing like Jan. 6 has happened before — but the questions are not extraordinarily complex; we need a rocket docket, but this is not rocket science.Some might argue that voters already have enough information about Mr. Trump’s actions and Jan. 6. But a criminal trial is different. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Mr. Trump and his allies made repeated claims of voter fraud and a “rigged” election. Those claims uniformly failed when tested in court by the adversary system, where actual evidence is required and witnesses testify under oath. In an age of disinformation and fake news, courts remain the arena where facts still matter.Some voters will not accept the verdict of a criminal trial, no matter what the outcome. But for many it could be a critical data point when casting their ballot.It’s already not possible to have the trial completed before most of the presidential primaries; Super Tuesday, with over a dozen primaries in states and territories across the country, is March 5. Mr. Trump could have the nomination sewn up by the time the trial is over. But the trial could easily be concluded before the Republican convention in July, so the delegates could decide whether they really want to nominate a felon (if that is the outcome) to lead the country.A functioning democracy requires an informed electorate. It’s hard to imagine a more important piece of information for voters to have next November than whether a candidate is criminally culpable for trying to overturn the last presidential election.Our legal system can resolve this case expeditiously while still protecting the defendant’s rights, but the judiciary will have to step up and do its part to protect democracy.Randall. D. Eliason is the former chief of the fraud and public corruption section at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and teaches white-collar criminal law at George Washington University Law School. He blogs at Sidebarsblog.com.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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      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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      House Speaker Mike Johnson Visits Trump at Mar-a-Lago

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      It was the speaker’s first trip to see the former president since he won his post, and it came as he faced anger from right-wing lawmakers for moving to fund the government.Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday night visited former President Donald J. Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, according to a person familiar with the meeting, making his first pilgrimage to see the Republican presidential front-runner since his surprise elevation to the top post in the House last month.The visit to Mr. Trump’s Florida home came at a tricky moment for the inexperienced speaker, who is already facing criticism from hard-right allies livid at him for teaming with Democrats last week to pass legislation to avert a government shutdown. The person confirmed the private meeting on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.Mr. Trump’s influence over spending fights in Washington may be limited, but Mr. Johnson’s decision to meet with him within weeks of his election is a sign he knows he cannot afford to have Mr. Trump weighing in publicly against him and hardening right-wing opposition to his leadership.Mr. Johnson has taken other steps to ingratiate himself to the far right and cement his hold on the gavel. Late last week, he announced he was publicly releasing surveillance video of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, a step far-right lawmakers and activists have been demanding as they seek to undercut the facts about how supporters of Mr. Trump violently stormed the complex seeking to overturn his electoral defeat.Since Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, Republican congressional leaders have had to cultivate some kind of working relationship with him. But Mr. Johnson, who defended the former president in two Senate impeachment trials and played a lead role in trying to help him invalidate the 2020 election results, is positioning himself as the first speaker to be in complete lock step with the former president.The meeting at Mar-a-Lago was reported earlier by Punchbowl News.Last week, Mr. Johnson officially endorsed Mr. Trump — a move former Speaker Kevin McCarthy resisted even while proclaiming that the former president would be the Republican nominee and would be re-elected.“I endorsed him wholeheartedly for re-election in 2020, and traveled with his team as a campaign surrogate to help ensure his victory,” Mr. Johnson said in a statement to The New York Times. “I have fully endorsed him once again.”The endorsement came in response to a report by The Times that in 2015, Mr. Johnson had posted on social media saying that Mr. Trump was unfit to serve and could be a danger as president.“The thing about Donald Trump is that he lacks the character and the moral center we desperately need again in the White House,” Mr. Johnson wrote in a lengthy post on Facebook on Aug. 7, 2015. “I am afraid he would break more things than he fixes. He is a hot head by nature, and that is a dangerous trait to have in a Commander in Chief.”Mr. Johnson, who until last month never held a top-tier position in leadership, was in Florida for a fund-raising trip. He made a stop at Mar-a-Lago for an event for Representative Gus Bilirakis, Republican of Florida, according to the person familiar with the meeting with Mr. Trump.A spokesman for Mr. Johnson did not provide additional information about the meeting. More

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      A Jan. 6 Defendant Pleads His Case to the Son Who Turned Him In

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      The trial was over and the verdict was in, but Brian Mock, 44, kept going back through the evidence, trying to make his case to the one person whose opinion he valued most. He sat at his kitchen table in rural Wisconsin next to his son, 21-year-old A.J. Mock, and opened a video on his laptop. He leaned into the screen and traced his finger over the image of the U.S. Capitol building, looked through clouds of tear gas and smoke and then pointed toward the center of a riotous crowd.Listen to This ArticleOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.“There. That’s me,” he said, pausing the video, zooming in on a man wearing a black jacket and a camouflaged hood who was shouting at a row of police officers. He pressed play and turned up the volume until the sound of chants and explosions filled the kitchen. “They stole it!” someone else yelled in the video. “We want our country back. Let’s take it. Come on!”A.J. shifted in his chair and looked down at his phone. He smoked from his vape and fiddled with a rainbow strap on his keychain that read “Love is love.”We 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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      The Axe Is Sharp

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      David Axelrod is not a prick.Truly.I’ve known him since 2007 and if I had to pick a noun to describe him, it would be mensch.So when President Biden privately employs that epithet for Axelrod, according to Politico’s Jonathan Martin, it’s bad for a few reasons.The ordinarily gracious president is punching down at the strategist who helped elevate him onto the ticket with Barack Obama in 2008 and who thinks he was “a great vice president” and has done a lot of wonderful things as president.When some in the Obama camp chattered in 2011 about switching Biden out for Hillary Clinton, Axelrod said, he protested: “That would be an incredible act of disloyalty to a guy who has done a great job for us.”Surely, Mr. Biden does not want to lower himself to the vulgarity of the growling, brawling, thieving Republicans in the Hieronymus Bosch hellscape of our Congress.(As Seth Meyers noted, George Santos — who spent campaign money on Hermès, Ferragamo, Botox, Sephora and OnlyFans — had “the shopping list of a 98-year-old oil tycoon’s 20-year-old wife.”)Axelrod drew Biden’s ire because he urged the president to consider stopping at one term, throwing open the race to younger Democrats while there’s still time, and leaving as a hero. He said that, despite Biden’s insult, he got a slew of messages agreeing with him.“I don’t care about them thinking I’m a prick — that’s fine,” the strategist told me. “I hope they don’t think the polls are wrong because they’re not.”According to a New York Times/Siena College poll, Donald Trump is ahead in five battleground states and, as some other surveys have found, is even making inroads among Black voters and young voters. There’s a generational fracture in the Democratic Party over the Israeli-Hamas horror and Biden’s age. Third-party spoilers are circling.The president turns 81 on Monday; the Oval hollows out its occupants quickly, and Biden is dealing with two world-shattering wars, chaos at the border, a riven party and a roiling country.“I think he has a 50-50 shot here, but no better than that, maybe a little worse,” Axelrod said. “He thinks he can cheat nature here and it’s really risky. They’ve got a real problem if they’re counting on Trump to win it for them. I remember Hillary doing that, too.”The president’s flash of anger indicates that he may be in denial, surrounded by enablers who are sugarcoating a grim political forecast.Like other pols, Biden has a healthy ego and like all presidents, he’s truculent about not getting the credit he thinks he deserves for his accomplishments. And it must be infuriating that most of the age qualms are about him, when Trump is only a few years younger.No doubt the president is having a hard time wrapping his mind around the idea that the 77-year-old Mar-a-Lago Dracula has risen from his gilded coffin even though he’s albatrossed with legal woes and seems more deranged than ever, referring to Democrats with the fascist-favored term “vermin” and plotting a second-term revengefest. Trump’s campaign slogan should be, “There will be blood.”For Biden, this is about his identity. It’s what he has fought all his life for, even battling his way through “friendly fire,” as Hunter Biden told me, in the Obama White House, when some Obama aides undermined him. It must have been awful when Obama took his vice president to lunch and nudged him aside for Hillary to run in 2016. Biden craves the affirmation of being re-elected. He doesn’t want to look like a guy who’s been driven from office.But he should not indulge the Irish chip on his shoulder. He needs to gather the sharpest minds in his party and hear what they have to say, not engage in petty feuds.If Trump manages to escape conviction in Jack Smith’s Washington case, which may be the only criminal trial that ends before the election, that’s going to turbocharge his campaign. Of course, if he’s convicted, that could turbocharge his campaign even more.It’s a perfect playing field for the maleficent Trump: He learned in the 2016 race that physical and rhetorical violence could rev up his base. He told me at the time it helped get him to No. 1 and he said he found violence at his rallies exciting.He has no idea why making fun of Paul Pelosi’s injuries at the hands of one of his acolytes is subhuman, any more than he understood how repellent it was in 2015 when he mocked a disabled Times reporter. He gets barbaric laughs somehow, and that’s all he cares about. In an interview with Jonathan Karl, Trump gloated about how his audience on Jan. 6 was “the biggest crowd I’ve ever spoken in front of by far.”Never mind that it was one of the most dangerous, shameful days in our history. To Trump, it was glorious.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