Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

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      Every Trump Indictment Tells a Story

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      Let’s assume, because it seems like a reasonable assumption, that we have not reached the end of the indictments that will be handed down against Donald Trump. Let’s assume that either the case in Georgia, where he is being investigated for election tampering, or the special counsel’s continuing investigation in Washington, will yield a prosecution related to his conduct between the November 2020 election and the riot on Jan. 6.In that case, Trump’s various indictments would double as a road map to his presidency and his era — each fitting with a different interpretation of the Trump phenomenon, and only together giving the fullest picture of his times.The first indictment, New York’s case against Trump for campaign finance violations related to his alleged affair with the adult thespian Stormy Daniels, fits neatly into the narrative of the Trump era that’s often called “anti-anti-Trump.” This interpretation concedes, to some degree at least, Trump’s sleaziness and folly, but then it invariably insists that his enemies in the American establishment are actually more dangerous — because they’re “protecting democracy” by trampling its norms, embracing conspiracy theories and conducting pointless witch hunts.It’s hard to imagine a better illustration of the anti-anti-Trumpist case than an ideological prosecutor in a Democratic city indicting a former president on a charge considered dubious even by many liberal legal experts. “Norms,” indeed: The Stormy Daniels case looks like Resistance theater, partisan lawfare, exactly the kind of overreach that Trump’s defenders insist defines the entirety of anti-Trumpism.The new federal indictment, for which Trump was arraigned in Miami on Tuesday, moves us into different terrain. This time the case seems legitimate, and even if charges brought under the Espionage Act have a fairly checkered history, on its face the indictment makes a strong case that Trump asked for this, that he invited the prosecution, that he had plenty of opportunities to stay within the law and chose to obstruct, evade and dissemble instead.But at the same time one would need a heart of stone not to find the whole class‌ified-documents affair a little bit comedic: blackly comic, to be sure, in the vein of the Coen Brothers, but for all its serious aspects still essentially absurd. The boxes piled high in the gaudy Mar-a-Lago bathroom is an indelible image for anyone who interprets the Trump era as a vainglorious clown show, with its pileup of scandals driven by narcissism and incompetence, and its serious-minded interpreters worrying about the Authoritarian Menace or the Crisis of Democracy when the evidence before their eyes was usually much shallower and stupider, not the 1930s come again but a reality television mind-set run amok.In the end, though, the reality-television reading was insufficient, because Trump groped his way into genuinely sinister territory — seeking what would have been a constitutional crisis if his postelection wishes had been granted and inspiring mob violence when he didn’t get his way.That aspect of his presidency still awaits its juridical illumination. But we may well get it, and if there is a prosecution related to his postelection conduct, it will complete a presidential triptych — with the persecuted Trump, the farcical Trump and the sinister Trump each making an appearance in our courts.As a matter of electoral politics, Trump’s resilience as a primary candidate depends upon Republican voters interpreting the entire triptych in the light of its first installment — such that his enemies’ overreach is the only thing that his admirers and supporters see, and both his more absurd behaviors and his most destructive acts are assumed to be exaggerated or invented, just so much liberal hype and NeverTrump hysteria.This perspective is false, but it is well entrenched among Republicans and has the advantage of simplicity. Meanwhile, Trump’s rivals for the nomination are stuck playing “on the one hand, on the other hand” games — constantly insisting that Trump has been unfairly treated, because Republican voters believe as much and clearly want to hear it stated, while trying to gently nurture the idea that he brings some of this mistreatment on himself and a different Republican might be just as effective without the constant grist for enemies and prosecutors.In a general election environment, though, we have strong evidence from the recent midterms that many swing voters reverse the Republican interpretation of the triptych, and read the whole of Trumpism in light of its darkest manifestation. Both the liberal overreach they might have opposed and the Trumpian shenanigans they might have tolerated are subsumed by a desire to avoid a repeat of Jan. 6, a revulsion against G.O.P. candidates who seem intent on replaying Trump’s destabilizing behavior.It’s possible to imagine that the multiplication of indictments, the constant action in the courts, eventually helps Republican voters who don’t share this interpretation to recognize how many of their fellow Americans do hold it, making Trump seem too unelectable at last.But Trump has always thrived by persuading a critical mass of Republicans to live inside his reality, not anybody else’s. And inside that gaudy mansion, the walls have room for just one outsize, garish portrait: “The Martyrdom of Donald Trump.”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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      Republicans Have Made Their Choice

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      In the wake of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Republican officeholders had three choices.They could stick with and defend Donald Trump and his riotous allies, and if they were members of the House or Senate, they could vote in support of the effort to overturn the results of the election, in a show of loyalty to the president and, in effect, the rioters.Or they could criticize and condemn the president as conservative dissenters, using their voices in an attempt to put the Republican Party back on a more traditional path.Or they could leave. They could quit the party and thus show the full extent of their anger and revulsion.But we know what actually happened. A few Republicans left and a few complained, but most remained loyal to the party and the president with nary a peep to make about the fact that Trump was willing to bring an end to constitutional government in the United States if it meant he could stay in office.We have been watching this dynamic play out a second time with Trump’s indictment on federal espionage charges for mishandling classified documents as a private citizen. The most prominent Republican officeholders wasted no time with their full-throated denunciations of the indictment, the Department of Justice and the Biden administration.“Let’s be clear about what’s happening: Joe Biden is weaponizing his Department of Justice against his own political rival,” said Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican leader in the House. “This sham indictment is the continuation of the endless political persecution of Donald Trump.”“This indictment certainly looks like an unequal application of justice,” said Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, who serves as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. “You can’t help but ask why this is happening. It feels political, and it’s rotten.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said that the indictment was a “weaponization of federal law enforcement” that “represents a mortal threat to a free society,” and former vice president Mike Pence said he was “deeply troubled to see this indictment move forward” and vowed to “clean house” at the highest levels of the Justice Department if elected president.The only notable congressional Republican to really condemn Trump was Senator Mitt Romney of Utah. “By all appearances, the Justice Department and special counsel have exercised due care, affording Mr. Trump the time and opportunity to avoid charges that would not generally have been afforded to others,” he said in a statement. “Mr. Trump brought these charges upon himself by not only taking classified documents, but by refusing to simply return them when given numerous opportunities to do so.”All of this is typical. With vanishingly few exceptions, Republicans are unwilling to discipline Trump or withdraw their support for his political leadership or even just criticize him for his actions. The most we’ve seen, Romney aside, is a nod to the fact that these are serious charges. This is a “serious case with serious allegations,” said Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who nonetheless added that this prosecution represented a “double standard” and that “You can’t protect Democrats while targeting and hunting Republicans.”There are several ways to think about most Republicans’ reluctance to break with Trump in the face of his egregious lawbreaking and contempt for constitutional government, but I want to focus on two in particular.The first concerns something that exists wherever there is a relationship between an individual and an institution: the loyalty of the individual to the institution. Political parties in particular are designed to inculcate a sense of loyalty and shared commitment among their members. This is especially true for officeholders, who exist in a web of relationships and obligations that rest on a set of common interests and beliefs.Loyalty makes it less likely that a dissenter just walks away, especially when there isn’t a plausible alternative. Few Trump-critical Republicans, for instance, are willing to become Democrats. What’s more, as the economist A.O. Hirschman observed in his classic text, “Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States,” strong loyalty to an institution like a political party might lead a dissenting or disapproving individual to hold on to his or her membership even more tightly, for fear that exit might open the door to even worse outcomes.“The ultimate in unhappiness and paradoxical loyalist behavior,” Hirschman wrote, “occurs when the public evil produced by the organization promises to accelerate or to reach some intolerable level as the organization deteriorates; then, in line with the reasoning just presented, the decision to exit will become ever more difficult the longer one fails to exit. The conviction that one has to stay on to prevent the worst grows stronger all the time.”Assuming this is all true, how then do we explain the reluctance to criticize or condemn? For that, we can look to the history of the modern Republican Party, stretching back to Richard Nixon. And what do we see? We see a pattern of presidential criminality and contempt for the Constitution, backed in each instance by most Republican officeholders and politicians.For Nixon, it was Watergate. For Ronald Reagan, it was Iran-contra. For George W. Bush, it was the sordid effort to fight a war in Iraq and the disgraceful use of torture against detainees. For Donald Trump, it was practically his entire presidency.Most things in life, and especially a basic respect for democracy and the rule of law, have to be cultivated. What is striking about the Republican Party is the extent to which it has, for decades now, cultivated the opposite — a highly instrumental view of our political system, in which rules and laws are legitimate only insofar as they allow for the acquisition and concentration of power in Republican hands.Most Republicans won’t condemn Trump. There are his millions of ultra-loyal voters, yes. And there are the challenges associated with breaking from the consensus of your political party, yes. But there is also the reality that Trump is the apotheosis of a propensity for lawlessness within the Republican Party. He is what the party and its most prominent figures have been building toward for nearly half a century. I think he knows it and I think they do too.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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      Trump’s Candidacy: Evaluated by 11 Opinion Writers

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      As Republican candidates enter the race for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination, Times columnists, Opinion writers and others will assess their strengths and weaknesses with a scorecard. We rate the candidates on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 means the candidate will probably drop out before any caucus or primary voting; 10 means the candidate has a very strong chance of receiving the party’s nomination next summer. This entry assesses Donald Trump, the former president. More

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      G.O.P. Faces Trump Indictment: Loyalty or Law and Order

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      The candidates challenging Donald Trump have to decide how to run against the indicted former president. And it could determine where the party goes from here.The federal indictment of former President Donald J. Trump has left the Republican Party — and his rivals for the party’s nomination — with a stark choice between deferring to a system of law and order that has been central to the party’s identity for half a century or a more radical path of resistance, to the Democratic Party in power and to the nation’s highest institutions that Mr. Trump now derides.How the men and women who seek to lead the party into the 2024 election respond to the indictments of the former president in the coming months will have enormous implications for the future of the G.O.P.So far, the declared candidates for the presidency who are not Mr. Trump have divided into three camps regarding his federal indictment last Thursday: those who have strongly backed him and his insistence that the indictment is a politically driven means to deny him a second White House term, such as Vivek Ramaswamy; those who have urged Americans to take the charges seriously, such as Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson; and those who have straddled both camps, condemning the indictment but nudging voters to move past Mr. Trump’s leadership, such as Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.The trick, for all of Mr. Trump’s competitors, will be finding the balance between harnessing the anger of the party’s core voters who remain devoted to him while winning their support as an alternative nominee.Mr. Trump is due to appear in court on Tuesday in Florida. The danger for Republicans, after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, is that encouraging too much anger could lead to chaos — and to what pollsters call the “ghettoization” of their party: confined to minority status by voters unwilling to let go of the fervent beliefs that have been rejected by the majority.That point was laid bare Sunday by a new CBS News/YouGov poll that found 80 percent of Americans outside the core Republican voter base saw a national security risk in Mr. Trump’s handling of classified nuclear and military documents, while only 38 percent of likely Republican primary voters discerned such a risk.In the same poll, only 7 percent of Republicans said the indictment had changed their view of the former president for the worse; 14 percent said their views had changed for the better; and the majority, 61 percent, said their views would not change. More than three-quarters of Republican primary voters said the indictments were politically motivated.A separate ABC News/Ipsos poll showed that 61 percent of Americans viewed the charges as serious, up from 52 percent in April when pollsters asked about the mishandling of classified documents. Among Republicans, 38 percent said the charges were serious, also up, from 21 percent in this spring. But only about half of Americans said Mr. Trump should be charged, unchanged from April.“Base voters see the double standard in politics. I continue to hear, ‘When are they going to indict the Bidens?’” said Katon Dawson, a former South Carolina Republican Party chairman and senior adviser to Ms. Haley, a former South Carolina governor and Mr. Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. But, he added, “65 percent of our primary voters are just tired of all the drama and I think are looking for a new generation of Republicans to take us out of the wilderness.”Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, campaigning in Iowa early this year. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMs. Haley has embodied that balancing act, saying in one statement, “This is not how justice should be pursued in our country,” and also, “It’s time to move beyond the endless drama.”Mr. Trump’s closest rival for the 2024 nomination, Mr. DeSantis, the governor of Florida, captured the same spirit when he mused on Friday that he “would have been court-martialed in a New York minute” if he had taken classified documents during his service in the Navy. He was referring to Hillary Clinton — who has returned as a Republican boogeyman this week — and her misuse of classified material as secretary of state, but the double meaning was clear, just as it was when he said, “There needs to be one standard of justice in this country. Let’s enforce it on everybody.”Those urging voters to read the charges facing Mr. Trump — the mishandling of highly classified documents on some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets and his subsequent steps to obstruct law enforcement — are a lonelier group in the broader Republican Party. Just two former governors running for president — both former prosecutors — Mr. Christie of New Jersey and Mr. Hutchinson of Arkansas, are aligned with a scattering of other leaders like Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who was the only Republican senator to vote to remove Mr. Trump from office twice.But their voices are likely to be amplified in the coming days by a media eager to give them a microphone. Mr. Christie will hold a town-hall meeting on CNN on Monday night, while Mr. Hutchinson, the longest of long shots for the nomination, has given a flurry of interviews.“The Republican Party should not dismiss this case out of hand,” Mr. Hutchinson said in an interview. “These are serious allegations that a grand jury has found probable cause on.”On Sunday morning, Mr. Trump’s former attorney general, William P. Barr, weighed in on Fox News Sunday, saying he was “shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were.” “If even half of it is true, he’s toast,” Mr. Barr said. “It is a very detailed indictment, and it’s very, very damning. This idea of presenting Trump as a victim here — a victim of a witch hunt — is ridiculous.”The critics of Mr. Trump also have an appeal that goes to the center of the party’s identity: law and order. Republicans are still attacking Democrats on the rise of street crime after the pandemic even as they attack the F.B.I., the Justice Department, the special prosecutor and the federal grand jury system.“If Congress has the ability to have oversight over the Department of Justice, I encouraged them to do it vigorously and fairly and ask all the questions they need,” Mr. Christie said on CNN. “But what we should also be doing is holding to account people who are in positions of responsibility and saying, if you act badly, there has to be penalties for that. There has to be a cost to be paid.”But voters eager to believe the dark tales spun by Mr. Trump of a nefarious “deep state,” of “Communists” bent on the destruction of America, are receiving encouragement from candidates who are ostensibly Mr. Trump’s rivals. For them, the calculation appears to be capturing the former president’s voters if his legal troubles finally end his political career.“I am personally deeply skeptical of everything in that indictment,” Mr. Ramaswamy, a wealthy entrepreneur and author, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, adding, “I personally have no faith whatsoever in those vague allegations.”Other candidates were less blunt but equally willing to challenge the integrity of the justice system, a system, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said, “where the scales are weighted” against conservatives.The language of Trump supporters after his indictment last Thursday has alarmed some experts.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesIn truth, the conservative world is divided. Some figures have, predictably, rallied around Mr. Trump with irresponsible rhetoric that appeared to call for violence.“If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me, and 75 million Americans just like me. And most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.,” said Kari Lake, the failed candidate for governor of Arizona.More surprisingly were the voices on the Trumpist right who have voiced their concerns — over the charges and over their impact on the Republican Party’s future. When Charlie Kirk of the pro-Trump Turning Point USA called for every other Republican candidate for the presidency to drop out of the race in solidarity with Mr. Trump, Ann Coulter, the right-wing bomb thrower, responded, “That’s nothing! I’m calling on EVERY REPUBLICAN TO COMMIT SUICIDE in solidarity with Trump!” — acknowledging that rallying around the former president could send the party to oblivion.Mike Cernovich, a lawyer and provocateur on the right, criticized the indictment as a “selective prosecution,” but also said, “Trump walked into this trap.”How the party, and its 2024 candidates, respond will matter, to the country and to the party’s political fortunes. The core Republican voter might stand with Mr. Trump, but most Americans most likely will not. It is a dilemma, acknowledged Clifford Young, president of U.S. public affairs at the polling and marketing firm Ipsos.“For the average American in the middle, they’re appalled,” he said, “but for the base, not only is support being solidified, they don’t believe what is happening.” “Heck,” he added, “they believe he won the election.” More

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      5 Takeaways From Mike Pence’s CNN Town Hall

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      Donald Trump’s former vice president sought to draw a contrast with his old boss while also embracing the actions of their administration.Former Vice President Mike Pence capped his first full day as a formally declared presidential candidate with a CNN town hall on Wednesday night in Iowa, casting himself as an experienced, traditional conservative.But his challenges in a Republican primary field dominated by former President Donald J. Trump were evident throughout the roughly 90-minute event.Mr. Pence sought at once to align himself with Trump administration actions that were cheered by many Republicans, while drawing both explicit and oblique contrasts with Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the nomination. It is a difficult balancing act for any Republican candidate, but especially for Mr. Trump’s former vice president, who has so far gained little traction in the polls.He also sought to emerge as the leading social conservative in the race, quoting Scripture and emphasizing his opposition to abortion and transgender rights.“I’d put my arm around them and their parents, but before they had a chemical or surgical procedure I would say, ‘Wait, just wait,’” Mr. Pence said, when asked about his opposition to gender-transition care for young people even when their parents consent.Here are five takeaways:Trump’s legal troubles were a thorny topic.A number of the Republican 2024 hopefuls have struggled with how to distance themselves from Mr. Trump, who maintains a strong grip on a slice of the Republican base.Mr. Pence confronted that issue early in the town hall, when he was asked about the possibility of another indictment of Mr. Trump. Federal prosecutors have informed Mr. Trump’s legal team that he is a target of an investigation concerning his handling of classified documents after he left office.“It would be terribly divisive to the country,” Mr. Pence said, saying he “would hope” that an indictment would not go forward. “It would also send a terrible message to the wider world.”He added, “No one’s above the law,” when pressed on whether he thought prosecutors should not pursue an indictment even if they believed Mr. Trump had committed a crime. But he suggested that the situation involving Mr. Trump presented “unique circumstances here.”Asked whether, as president, he would pardon Mr. Trump if he was convicted of a crime, Mr. Pence instead shifted to speak lightheartedly about his chances in the race.“I’m not sure I’m going to be elected president of the United States,” he said. “But I believe we have a fighting chance. I really believe we do.”Mr. Pence has faced his own scrutiny over his retention of documents, but the Justice Department declined to pursue charges.He was firmer in criticizing Trump over Jan. 6.Hours before the town hall, Mr. Pence issued his sternest denunciations to date of Mr. Trump, lacing into him over his actions on Jan. 6, 2021.Mr. Pence, who had helped legitimize Mr. Trump in the eyes of some conservatives in 2016 and was long his loyal lieutenant, rebuffed Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign to seek to effectively reject now-President Biden’s victory in the Electoral College. He drew threats of “Hang Mike Pence” from some in the pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol that day.During the town hall, moderated by Dana Bash, Mr. Pence again made clear that he and Mr. Trump had “a difference” in their approach to the results of the 2020 election.“That hasn’t changed,” he said. “But also there are profound differences about the future of this country, the future of the Republican Party.”Asked if he would consider pardoning those who attacked the Capitol, as Mr. Trump has suggested doing, Mr. Pence said, “I have no interest or no intention of pardoning those that assaulted police officers or vandalized our Capitol. They need to be answerable to the law.”The declaration drew little audible reaction from the audience.He tied himself to key Trump administration decisions.Even as Mr. Pence highlighted areas of disagreement with Mr. Trump, he also spoke frequently about their shared time in the White House as he discussed issues as varied as immigration, abortion and the pandemic, illustrating the challenge of running on a record tied so closely to a political rival.“I couldn’t be more proud to have been vice president in an administration that appointed three of the justices that sent Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history where it belongs,” he said.At another point, he said, “I’m proud of everything that we did during our administration to come alongside families and businesses in the midst of the worst pandemic in 100 years.”He made frequent overtures to evangelical voters.Mr. Pence, the former governor of Indiana, is a man of deep faith, and his allies see an opening to connect with evangelical voters in Iowa, the leadoff caucus state that is home to many socially conservative voters.Mr. Pence spoke about his personal faith journey and sprinkled his remarks with references to the Bible. He also emphasized his opposition to abortion rights, pledging that “we will not rest or relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in the country.”“If I have the great privilege to serve as president of the United States, I’ll support the cause of life at every level,” he said, even as he acknowledged that “we have a long way to go to win the hearts and minds of the American people.”Some Republican presidential candidates have been reluctant to give specifics on their positions regarding abortion policy, or have modulated how they approach it depending on the audience. Mr. Pence seemed eager to discuss the subject, but he faces stiff competition for the voters who are often most moved by the issue. White evangelical voters ultimately became one of Mr. Trump’s most crucial constituencies, and many other candidates, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, are competing hard to make inroads with those voters as well.He sounded at times like a pre-Trump Republican.Mr. Pence invoked former President Ronald Reagan, expressed qualms about spending and made the case for a muscular foreign policy that emphasized American leadership in the world.Throughout the night, he often sounded like a Republican candidate from the pre-Trump era.“It’s also disappointing to me that Donald Trump’s position on entitlement reform is identical to Joe Biden’s,” Mr. Pence said as he discussed the social safety net.He chided both Mr. Trump — and, more obliquely, Mr. DeSantis — for their postures toward Ukraine.“When Vladimir Putin rolled into Ukraine, the former president called him a genius,” Mr. Pence said. “I know the difference between a genius and a war criminal.”Swiping at Mr. DeSantis, he said at another point, “I know that some in this debate have called the war in Ukraine a territorial dispute. It’s not.” Mr. DeSantis, who did use that phrase, has since sought to clarify that description, also calling Mr. Putin a war criminal.And despite his own involvement in the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice overhaul during the Trump administration, Mr. Pence sounded tough-on-crime notes. “I frankly think we need to take a step back from the approach of the First Step Act,” he said.As the event wound down, Mr. Pence was pressed repeatedly on how he squared casting Mr. Trump as a threat to the Constitution with his promise to support the Republican nominee. Mr. Pence did not answer directly, insisting, “I don’t think Donald Trump’s going to be the nominee.” More

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      Mike Pence Hasn’t Grown Less Conservative, but Republicans Have Shifted

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      The polls say the former vice president, who announced his 2024 candidacy in a video on Wednesday, has little chance. But he is driven by his faith.Mike Pence is the most conservative candidate competing for the presidency. The former vice president wants abortion banned from the point of conception. He’s the only major candidate calling for cuts to Social Security and Medicare. And he has the most hawkish foreign policy, especially on confronting Russia.Being the most conservative used to matter in Republican presidential primaries.Not anymore.The president Mr. Pence served under, Donald J. Trump, transformed the G.O.P. electorate, making the path to a Pence presidency visible only to the truest of true believers. Mr. Pence has not really changed all that much since he was governor of Indiana less than a decade ago, but his party has. It’s the same Mike Pence but a different G.O.P., and it’s a different G.O.P. because of his former boss.The Republican Party’s intense focus on character and morality during the Bill Clinton years has been replaced by a different credo — articulated by a former Justice Department official, Jeffrey B. Clark, during a recent Twitter squabble over Mr. Trump’s fitness for office.“We’re not a congregation voting for a new pastor,” argued Mr. Clark, the one senior Justice Department official who tried to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election. “We’re voting for a leader of the nation.”By this way of thinking, it doesn’t matter that Mr. Pence has been married only once and is so determined to honor his vows that he doesn’t allow himself to dine alone with a woman who is not his wife. Nor does it matter how many affairs Mr. Trump has had or whether he paid hush money to a porn star. Mr. Trump silences all of that, in a way, with one blunt social media post: “I was able to kill Roe v. Wade.”Mr. Pence, who announced his candidacy in a video early Wednesday, hours before a planned rally in a Des Moines suburb, is given little chance by anybody outside of his core team. Republican pollsters and strategists have written him off. Faced with Mr. Pence’s situation — being both dominated and burdened by Mr. Trump — most politicians would have concluded, after reviewing polls and focus groups, that there was no “theory of the case” for him to win the nomination.But Mr. Pence appears to have no use for statistical analysis.Mr. Pence in Des Moines on Saturday. Even in heavily evangelical Iowa, he polls around just 5 percent.Jordan Gale for The New York Times“Our country’s in a lot of trouble,” Mr. Pence says in his nearly three-minute-long announcement video, accusing “President Joe Biden and the radical left” of weakening America “at home and abroad.”Citing “runaway inflation,” a looming recession, a southern border “under siege,” unchecked “enemies of freedom” in Russia and China “on the march,” and what he calls an unprecedented assault on “timeless American values,” he promises to deliver what he says the nation sorely needs.“We’re better than this,” Mr. Pence says. “We can turn this country around. But different times call for different leadership. Today our party and our country need a leader that’ll appeal, as Lincoln said, to the better angels of our nature.”Whereas some Republican politicians use God as a talking point and have little acquaintance with the Bible, Mr. Pence makes every decision through the filter of Scripture. When he says he has prayed on a decision, he means it, and that includes running for president. Throughout his political career, according to people who have worked for him, Mr. Pence has gathered around his staff and his family in frequent prayer. If his theory of the case in this race seems to rely more on faith than data — that’s because it does.Mr. Pence served as Mr. Trump’s yes-man for three years and 11 months. In that final month, Mr. Pence refused to follow a presidential order that was plainly unconstitutional: to single-handedly overturn the 2020 election. His loyalty to the Constitution was rewarded with people in a pro-Trump mob chanting “Hang Mike Pence” as they stormed the Capitol, while Mr. Pence and his family rushed to a barely secure room.Instead of punishing Mr. Trump for how he treated Mr. Pence, Republican voters have made him their front-runner. More than 50 percent of Republicans support the former president in national polls. Mr. Pence draws around 4 percent. Even in heavily evangelical Iowa, where Mr. Pence is staking his candidacy, he polls around 5 percent.Mr. Pence and Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, began certifying the results of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, before a pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol, chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMr. Pence has no trouble explaining his policy positions. He will run for president as a national security hawk, a staunch social conservative, a free-trader and a fiscal conservative. Nobody who knows him well doubts his sincerity on any of these issues. He may be running the least poll-tested campaign in the Republican field.The problem is that the Mike Pence known to most Republicans is a man whose job for four years was to cheer Mr. Trump through policies and actions that often contradicted his professed principles. If Mr. Pence, in a moment of introspection, wonders why the party he has long aspired to lead no longer seems interested in being led by someone like him, he may shoulder some portion of the blame himself.The Trump-Pence administration added around $8 trillion to the national debt. So much for fiscal conservatism. The Trump-Pence administration had a trade policy that, for the most part, delighted protectionist Democrats. So much for free trade. And while Mr. Trump spent his first three years in office largely listening to his more conventional national security advisers, in his final year he laid the groundwork for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan that Mr. Pence did not support.Mr. Trump’s current articulation of his “America First” foreign policy — which involves dropping U.S. support for Ukraine and musing about giving away chunks of Ukrainian land to the Russians — could not be further removed from Mr. Pence’s Reaganite vision of America defending freedom across the globe.But it’s not just Mr. Pence’s anti-populist policies that hobble him. It’s that Republican voters have sharply different expectations of their leaders than they did during Mr. Pence’s political rise as a member of Congress and then governor of Indiana.For the past seven years, Mr. Trump has trained Republican voters to value a different set of virtues in their candidates. He has trained them to value Republicans who fight hard and dirty, using whatever tactics are necessary to vanquish their opponents. He has also trained them to avert their gazes from behaviors that were once considered disqualifying.Mr. Pence averted his gaze for four years as Mr. Trump’s vice president, sticking with him through various controversies.Al Drago for The New York TimesFor four years, Mr. Pence, too, averted his gaze. He stuck with Mr. Trump through numerous controversies including the leak of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Mr. Trump boasted about grabbing women’s genitalia. He vouched for Mr. Trump’s character with skeptical evangelicals with whom Mr. Trump ultimately forged his own relationship.When Mr. Trump, as president, showered praise on the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, his vice president, bound by loyalty, stayed silent. Yet recently on the campaign trail, after Mr. Trump had congratulated Mr. Kim for his country’s readmission to the World Health Organization’s executive board, Mr. Pence scolded his former boss for “praising the dictator in North Korea.”Mr. Pence may finally feel liberated to tell voters what he really thinks about Mr. Trump. His problem is that most Republicans don’t want to hear it. More

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      Mark Meadows Testified to Grand Jury in Trump Special Counsel Investigation

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      Mr. Meadows, the final White House chief of staff under Donald Trump, is seen as a potentially key witness in the documents and Jan. 6 inquiries.Mark Meadows, the final White House chief of staff under President Donald J. Trump and a potentially key figure in inquiries related to Mr. Trump, has testified before a federal grand jury hearing evidence in the investigations being led by the special counsel’s office, according to two people briefed on the matter.Mr. Meadows is a figure in both of the two distinct lines of inquiry being pursued by the special counsel appointed to oversee the Justice Department’s scrutiny of Mr. Trump, Jack Smith.One inquiry is focused on Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, culminating in the attack by a pro-Trump mob on the Capitol during congressional certification of the Electoral College results on Jan. 6, 2021. The other is an investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of hundreds of classified documents after he left office and whether he obstructed efforts to retrieve them.It is not clear precisely when Mr. Meadows testified or if investigators questioned him about one or both of the cases.For months, people in Mr. Trump’s orbit have been puzzled by and wary about the low profile kept by Mr. Meadows in the investigations. As reports surfaced of one witness after another going into the grand jury or to be interviewed by federal investigators, Mr. Meadows has kept largely out of sight, and some of Mr. Trump’s advisers believe he could be a significant witness in the inquiries.Mr. Trump himself has at times asked aides questions about how Mr. Meadows is doing, according to a person familiar with the remarks.Asked about the grand jury testimony, a lawyer for Mr. Meadows, George Terwilliger, said, “Without commenting on whether or not Mr. Meadows has testified before the grand jury or in any other proceeding, Mr. Meadows has maintained a commitment to tell the truth where he has a legal obligation to do so.”Mr. Meadows was a polarizing figure at the White House among some of Mr. Trump’s aides, who saw him as a loose gatekeeper at best during a final year in which the former president moved aggressively to mold the government in his image.Mr. Meadows was around for pivotal moments leading up to and after the 2020 election, as Mr. Trump plotted to try to stay in office and thwart Joseph R. Biden Jr. from being sworn in to succeed him. Some of them were described in hundreds of text messages that Mr. Meadows turned over to the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol before he decided to stop cooperating. Those texts served as a road map for House investigators.But Mr. Meadows also has insight into efforts by the National Archives to retrieve roughly two dozen boxes of presidential material that officials had been told Mr. Trump took with him when he left the White House in January 2021. Mr. Meadows was one of Mr. Trump’s representatives to the archives, and he had some role in trying to discuss the matter with Mr. Trump, according to two people briefed on the matter.Mr. Meadows is also now connected tangentially to a potentially vital piece of evidence that investigators uncovered in recent months: an audio recording of an interview that Mr. Trump gave to two people assisting Mr. Meadows in writing a memoir of his White House years.Mr. Meadows did not attend the meeting, which took place in July 2021 at Mr. Trump’s club at Bedminster, N.J. During the meeting, Mr. Trump referred to a document he appeared to have in front of him and suggested that he should have declassified it but that he no longer could, since he was out of office.That recording could undercut Mr. Trump’s claim that he believed he had declassified all material still held at his properties for months after he left office. More