Trump, Donald J

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      To Undercut Haley, Trump Will Surround Himself With SC Leaders

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      Pressing his advantage over Nikki Haley in the homestretch before the New Hampshire primary, Donald J. Trump will surround himself with South Carolina leaders, including Ms. Haley’s successor as governor, at a rally Saturday night to portray her as politically friendless at home, two Trump campaign officials said.The former president plans the show of strength to add to his own momentum before Tuesday’s voting and to highlight Ms. Haley’s lack of support in her home state, the officials said, insisting on anonymity to discuss campaign strategy.Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina, who endorsed Mr. Trump in November 2022, shortly after he announced his third presidential bid, will speak to voters in Manchester, N.H. He will be joined by the state’s lieutenant governor, Pamela Evette; Alan Wilson, the attorney general; Curtis Loftis, the treasurer; Murrell Smith, the speaker of the Statehouse; and three congressmen from the state, Joe Wilson, William Timmons and Russell Fry.One campaign adviser said the traveling slate of South Carolinians was meant to help Mr. Trump make the case that he has presented since his landslide victory in Iowa: that overtaking him is so unlikely that his rivals should suspend their campaigns so he and the Republican Party can focus on defeating President Biden in November.The guest appearances could humiliate Ms. Haley and further undermine her case for the nomination by illustrating how isolated she appears to be in her own state, where the Republican primary will be held on Feb. 24. And the South Carolina group backing Mr. Trump on Saturday will follow the state’s junior senator, Tim Scott, who endorsed Mr. Trump in Concord, N.H., on Friday.Ms. Haley is not without support in South Carolina, where she served as governor from 2011 to 2017, when Mr. Trump appointed her as ambassador to the United Nations. She has the backing of Representative Ralph Norman and Katon Dawson, a former state Republican chairman, along with a small number of South Carolina legislators.When asked at a campaign stop in Peterborough, N.H., about Mr. McMaster’s campaigning with Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley fired back: “I’m sorry, is that the person I ran against for governor and beat? Just check it.” Ms. Haley defeated Mr. McMaster in a 2010 primary, and he then promptly endorsed her.She also suggested that her inability to win high-profile supporters both in her home state and in Washington came from her willingness to pressure state lawmakers and veto their pet projects when she was governor, along with her criticism of Congress on the campaign trail.“If Donald Trump wants all his politicians, and they all want to go to him, they can have at it,” Ms. Haley said. “But that’s everything I’m fighting against.”Ms. Haley’s path to the nomination likely hangs on a victory or a close second-place finish in New Hampshire, where independent voters make up 40 percent of the electorate. Though Mr. Trump maintains a large lead in the polls, Ms. Haley has narrowed that lead recently, effectively making the primary a two-person race in the state.But Ms. Haley would need to follow a strong performance in New Hampshire with another one in South Carolina, where Mr. Trump enjoys a large and loyal following. He leads in South Carolina polls by a wide margin and can also count on support there from Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally.Campaigning on Saturday in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was asked about South Carolina elected officials’ endorsing Mr. Trump. “Iowa Republican leadership lined up behind me, and we came in second,” Mr. DeSantis told reporters. “So I think there’s a limit to what the leadership can do.”The Trump campaign is eager to force both Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis from the race before the South Carolina primary, hoping to avert what could otherwise be an expensive fight for delegates lasting through March.As the New Hampshire primary nears, Mr. Trump has increasingly escalated and sharpened his attacks on Ms. Haley. He now often argues that while she did an adequate job in his administration, she does not have what it takes to lead on her own.“She is not presidential timber,” Mr. Trump said bluntly in Concord on Friday.Mr. Trump has also repeatedly tried to backpedal on his past praise of Ms. Haley, claiming frequently that he appointed her ambassador to the United Nations only to clear the way for Mr. McMaster to become governor.Jazmine Ulloa More

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      Mocking Haley, Trump Adds to His Long History of Racist Attacks

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      Donald J. Trump first established his connection with the largely white Republican base more than a decade ago by stoking discomfort with the election of Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president — the beginning of the so-called birther movement.In the years since, he has continued to pile up accusations of racism on the campaign trail. This week, Mr. Trump lobbed his latest racially charged attack at former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, the daughter of Indian immigrants and his closest competitor in the New Hampshire primary, by repeatedly flubbing her given name, Nimarata Nikki Randhawa.On Friday, Mr. Trump referred to Ms. Haley as “Nimbra” in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform, three days after facing criticism for dubbing her “Nimrada.” Ms. Haley has long gone by her middle name, Nikki.Both are racist dog whistles, much like his continued focus on Mr. Obama’s middle name, Hussein, and add to a long history of racially incendiary statements from the campaign trail.Ms. Haley told reporters on Friday that Mr. Trump’s attacks revealed his own insecurities about the presidential contest.“If he goes and does these temper tantrums, if he’s going and spending millions of dollars on TV, he’s insecure — he knows that something’s wrong,” she said. “I don’t sit there and worry about whether it’s personal or what he means.”At a rally for Ms. Haley in Manchester on Friday, supporters said they were glad the former governor was countering Mr. Trump’s accusations.“This is a continuation of the bullying and the third-grade behavior that should have him grounded,” said Kathy Holland, 75, a retired business owner. “We deserve leaders who act grown up.”Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, said that those raising concerns about Mr. Trump’s handling of race were themselves guilty of “faux outrage racism.”“They should get a life and live in the real world,” Mr. Cheung said.Mr. Trump’s history with the subject dates back years before his formal entry into politics.In February 2011, Mr. Trump started pushing the racist lie that Mr. Obama was not a U.S. citizen when he was testing the waters of a potential presidential campaign. Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, discussed the so-called birther issue on almost a nightly basis that April, until Mr. Obama showed reporters his birth certificate later that month.By then, a CNN poll showed Mr. Trump tied for first in a hypothetical primary. While Mr. Trump opted to return for another season of “The Celebrity Apprentice” as the reality television show’s host instead of running for president, he ran in 2016 on similar themes.That year, he questioned the citizenship of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, the first Latino senator from the state, who was born in Canada. Mr. Cruz’s mother is American, which automatically conferred citizenship.During his failed 2020 re-election bid, he falsely claimed that Kamala Harris, who would become the first woman and first person of color to be elected vice president, did not meet the country’s citizenship requirements.This month, he returned to that familiar playbook by accusing Ms. Haley on social media of not being a real American eligible for the presidency — even as he was defending his own legal eligibility for the ballot under the Constitution.“I’ll let the president’s social media post speak for itself,” Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said last week at an event hosted by Bloomberg News.After the New Hampshire contest on Tuesday, attention in the Republican primary will turn mostly to South Carolina, Ms. Haley’s home state, which has its own history of racially charged politics.In February 2000, after Senator John McCain won a come-from-behind victory over George W. Bush in the New Hampshire primary, he was the target of a smear campaign in South Carolina. The attacks falsely claimed that Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, was a drug addict and that the couple’s daughter Bridget, whom they adopted from Bangladesh, was the product of an illicit union.“Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president,” some voters were asked in phone calls, “if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate Black child?”Michael Gold contributed reporting. More

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      Haley’s Policy Pitch Recalls a Bygone Era Before Trump’s Rise

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      Nikki Haley’s calls for muscular international engagement and cuts to future Social Security benefits have elicited withering attacks from Donald J. Trump. They used to be Republican orthodoxy.Nikki Haley is appealing to voters with policies that recall an era when the Republican Party stood for a fiscal conscience and foreign policy leadership, at a time when the most sacred of federal programs and the international alliances that built the post-World War II era are under enormous strain.But the voice of contemporary Republican politics, Donald J. Trump, has been there to attack those appeals virtually ever day. On Tuesday, the voters of New Hampshire may decide whether the party can find a path back from Mr. Trump’s big government domestic policy and his isolationism abroad.Ms. Haley’s proposals to raise the retirement age for young workers and trim benefits for the wealthy while protecting Social Security and Medicare benefits for those at or near retirement age may sound familiar to any but the youngest voters. They’re the essentially same plans put forward by Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul D. Ryan in the losing presidential campaign of 2012, and are of a piece with then-President George W. Bush’s failed efforts to transform Social Security from a federally guaranteed pension system to something more akin to a private 401(k) plan.Mr. Romney’s 2012 proposals were taken from the bipartisan commission assembled to address the budget deficit during Barack Obama’s presidency. The recommendations went nowhere.Ms. Haley’s calls to stand by NATO and support Ukraine echo the foreign policies of every president since the Second World War, but particularly the Republicans, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.But Mr. Trump has been relentless in his attacks on all those policies. His suggestions that he could withdraw the United States from NATO prompted President Biden last month to sign legislation barring the president from unilaterally dropping the North Atlantic alliance.At a rally in Concord, N.H., Friday night, he portrayed Ms. Haley as someone who “wants to wipe out your Social Security,” raise the retirement age to 75, “and then you’re dead.”A Trump radio ad placed in New Hampshire on Friday said Ms. Haley’s “devious plan” would “shockingly change the rules” on federal programs for older Americans by raising the retirement age. And a television ad, titled “Threat From Within” and placed the day before, featured retirees looking stricken as they hear that “Haley’s plan cuts Social Security benefits for 82 percent of Americans,” before being reassured, “Trump will never let that happen.”The ads’ claims are false. The 82 percent figure stems from the total number of Americans eligible for Social Security, and Ms. Haley has said repeatedly that she would change nothing for current recipients or those close to eligibility.Republicans are used to coming under fire for the types of ideas that Ms. Haley is pushing. But this time, the fire is coming from the party’s de facto leader.“Whenever you discuss Social Security in a rational way, you’ve immediately gotten skewered, usually by the left,” said Judd Gregg, a retired Republican senator from New Hampshire who made long-term deficit reduction his main cause in Congress. “But in this case it’s by Donald Trump.”Mr. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have been pushing their own form of fiscal discipline, portraying an end to aid for Ukraine and domestic spending cuts as deficit reduction.Former President Donald J. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have been pushing their own form of fiscal discipline, couching ending aid to Ukraine and other domestic spending cuts as deficit reduction.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn truth, their target for cuts mathematically could never put a dent in the federal deficit, which is expected to swell to nearly $1.7 trillion in the fiscal year that ends this Sept. 30, up from $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2023.About 85 percent of the federal budget goes to Social Security, Medicare, other entitlement programs like veterans benefits, the military and interest on the national debt — none of which are on Mr. Trump’s target list. That leaves just 15 percent of total spending, for education, law enforcement, transportation, medical and other scientific research, energy, national parks, and foreign assistance.And with interest rates at their current high levels, even liberal economists worry that if Washington doesn’t start addressing the red ink, the rising cost of paying the government’s debts will crowd out other programs, stifle private investment and hurt the nation’s long-term future. Already, interest payments reached $659 billion last year, the fourth largest item in the federal budget.“In 10 years, the government will be spending more on interest on the national debt than on defense,” warned Thomas Kahn, who was the Democrats’ staff director on the House Budget Committee for 20 years. “The reality is the national debt is out of control, and both parties will need to make politically painful decisions.”Ms. Haley has not broached the ultimate painful decision for Republicans, raising taxes, but she has hit Mr. Trump repeatedly for adding $8 trillion to the federal debt while in office, after promising in the 2016 campaign that he would not only balance the budget but would pay off the debt, which surpassed $34 trillion over the holiday season.Those attacks appear to have delivered only glancing blows to Mr. Trump’s dominance. The former president won the Iowa caucuses on Monday in a landslide, with Ms. Haley a distant third. Polls point to a narrower Trump victory in New Hampshire on Tuesday, then a steep uphill climb for Ms. Haley ahead of the South Carolina primary next month in her home state.But like a modern-day Cassandra, Ms. Haley has not flinched from her warnings that the nation must act now to curtail spending rationally in the largest government programs, Social Security and Medicare, or face more painful, chaotic cuts in the future.“I have seen the commercials you’ve seen,” she told voters on Wednesday in Rochester, N.H. “I will always tell you the truth.”The truth is not pretty. The trustees of Social Security say if nothing is done, the main Social Security program, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, will deplete its reserves in 2033, which could be the end of a Haley second term. At that point, Social Security would have to rely only on the money coming in from taxes each year. Promised benefits would have to be cut by 23 percent, not for future retirees that Ms. Haley wants to target but for those already drawing benefits.“The only person who wants to cut Social Security is Trump,” said Nachama Soloveichik, the Haley campaign communications director. “Trump’s refusal to save Social Security means 100 percent of Americans will face a 23 percent cut in Social Security benefits in less than 10 years.”Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, dismissed such criticism as still more evidence of Mr. Trump’s righteousness.“Nikki Haley is spiraling out of control and is now resorting to outright lies because she knows her position of increasing the age for Social Security and slashing retirements is an untenable position,” he said. “She should look deep down inside and really address why she wants to throw hard-working Americans off a financial cliff.” More

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      For Anti-Trump Republicans, It All Comes Down to New Hampshire

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      The old guard of the Republican Party has rallied around Nikki Haley ahead of New Hampshire’s primary, in a long-shot bid to stop the former president’s march to the nomination.The first-in-the-nation primary could be the last stand for the anti-Trump Republican.Since 2016, a shrinking band of Republican strategists, retired lawmakers and donors has tried to oust Donald J. Trump from his commanding position in the party. And again and again, through one Capitol riot, two impeachments, three presidential elections and four criminal indictments, they have failed to gain traction with its voters.Now, after years of legal, cultural and political crises that upended American norms and expectations, what could be the final battle of the anti-Trump Republicans won’t be waged in Congress or the courts, but in the packed ski lodges and snowy town halls of a state of 1.4 million residents.Ahead of New Hampshire’s primary on Tuesday, the old guard of the G.O.P. has rallied around Nikki Haley, viewing her bid as its last, best chance to finally pry the former president from atop its party. Anything but a very close finish for her in the state, where moderate, independent voters make up 40 percent of the electorate, would send Mr. Trump on an all-but-unstoppable march to the nomination. The Trump opposition is outnumbered and underemployed. The former president’s polarizing style and hard-nosed tactics have pushed many Republicans who oppose him into early retirement and humiliating defeats, or out of the party completely. Yet, their long-running war against him has helped to frame the nominating contest around a central, and deeply tribal, litmus test: loyalty to Mr. Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Biden Campaign Sharpens Its Post-Roe Message: Abortion Is About Freedom

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      In events next week, the president and vice president will argue that abortion access is crucial to personal freedoms, and warn of what is at stake if Donald J. Trump is re-elected.President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will headline events next week centered around protecting abortion rights, throwing more heft behind an issue that has galvanized voters in the 18 months since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.On Monday, Ms. Harris will visit Wisconsin to begin a national tour focused on preserving access to reproductive health care as Republicans call for more restrictions. Then on Tuesday, she will join Mr. Biden at a rally for abortion rights in Virginia, where Democrats recently took control of the state legislature and have proposed to enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution.Ms. Harris offered a preview of the administration’s election-year messaging to Americans when she visited “The View,” the most popular daytime talk show in the country.“We are not asking anyone to abandon their personal beliefs,” she said during an appearance on Wednesday, adding that “the government should not be telling women what to do with their bodies.”The idea that preserving access to abortion is tantamount to preserving personal freedoms has been embraced by Biden administration officials, lawmakers and activists who hope it will energize a flagging base and draw independent voters into the fold. They also want to contrast the administration’s policies with the political peril that the Republican Party faces by embracing hard-line measures.“I start from the place that most Americans believe that women should have the freedom to make their own decisions about health care, including abortion, without government interference,” Senator Tina Smith, Democrat of Minnesota, who traveled to the Iowa caucuses as a surrogate for Mr. Biden, said in an interview. (About 69 percent of voters think abortion should be legal in the first three months of pregnancy, according to a Gallup poll last year.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Can the MAGA Shrew Be Tamed?

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      Maureen Dowd has a cold.Hmmm.Not quite the same ring as “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” Gay Talese’s legendary 1966 Esquire profile of the crooner.Nonetheless, I did catch a cold in arctic Des Moines. So on caucus night, I stayed in my hotel room watching TV and munching on Cheez-Its, flipping between wins and losses in Hollywood and Iowa.There wasn’t any custom Louis Vuitton on display in the frozen tundra of Iowa, but there were some parallels — beyond the abysmal turnout for both shows.The Emmys did a tribute to “The Sopranos” and James Gandolfini. Donald Trump, who loves to style himself as a tough mob don, facing down a RICO charge, recently bragged about a character reference he’d gotten from Sammy (the Bull) Gravano, once a hit man for John Gotti.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Donald Trump Isn’t Funny Anymore

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      In 1986, when I was a college student, I bristled every time I saw yet another fawning profile of a certain arrogant young real estate developer. The person of whom I speak is, of course, Donald Trump. As polarizing as he is now, Mr. Trump was then enjoying a press honeymoon — even Mike Wallace, the resident bulldog at CBS’s “60 Minutes,” went easy on him, breathlessly declaring in a 1985 profile, “He talks of millions the way most of us talk of nickels and dimes.” This repellent man needed to be knocked down a peg and I thought I knew of one effective way to do it: with jokes.So when I came across a fledgling satirical magazine, Spy, that articulated precisely what I was thinking, I was smitten. In its inaugural issue, Spy named Mr. Trump one of the “10 Most Embarrassing New Yorkers,” noting his tackiness, his shady tactics as a landlord and his “hustler-on-his-best-behavior manner.” Yes! My people!I was so smitten, in fact, that I cold-called the magazine’s office, offering myself up for a summer internship. I joined the staff full-time in 1989 and we continued to chronicle Mr. Trump’s offenses against taste and decency. We came up with a slew of epithets for him, including the one that stuck, “short-fingered vulgarian.” Then, as now, Mr. Trump was thin-skinned, and obsessed with his press coverage. He sent angry, threatening letters to Spy, which only heightened our joy.So you might think I’d revel in our current golden age of Trump mockery. When “Saturday Night Live” returns this week, we’re likely to see him incarnated by the comedian James Austin Johnson, who uncannily recreates Mr. Trump’s fragmentary locutions and deteriorating speaking voice as it whipsaws from a bellow to a gargle to a whisper.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Trump Confuses Haley and Pelosi, Accusing Rival of Jan. 6 Lapse

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      Former President Donald J. Trump on Friday appeared to confuse Nikki Haley for Nancy Pelosi during a speech in New Hampshire, accusing Ms. Haley of failing to provide adequate security during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol and connecting her to the House committee that investigated it.Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and a former ambassador to the United Nations, has never served in Congress and was working in the private sector during the Capitol riot.On Friday night, Mr. Trump was in the middle of mocking Ms. Haley for the size of the crowds at her events, and criticizing the news media, when he pivoted to how he gave a speech in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, that preceded the Capitol attack.“You know, when she comes here she gets like nine people, and the press never reports the crowds,” Mr. Trump said of Ms. Haley, whose crowds have lately been, at the very least, in double digits.Then, he changed subjects. “You know, by the way, they never report the crowd on Jan. 6,” he said. “You know, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley.”Mr. Trump then repeated his frequent claim that the bipartisan House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack — including Mr. Trump’s actions that day — “destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence.”Then, he claimed that Ms. Haley was in charge of security that day, and that she and others had turned down his offer to send troops to the Capitol.“Nikki Haley was in charge of security,” he said. (She was not.) “We offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guards, whatever they want. They turned it down. They don’t want to talk about that.”Mr. Trump, 77, often attacks President Biden, 81, over his age and suggests that Mr. Biden is mentally unfit for office. “He can’t put two sentences together,” Mr. Trump said on Friday. “Can’t put two sentences together. He needs a teleprompter.”A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Mr. Trump has frequently tried to lay blame for the Jan. 6 riot with Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats. There is no evidence, however, that Mr. Trump ever offered to have troops deployed to the Capitol, or that Ms. Pelosi, then the speaker of the House, rejected him.At 3:52 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, Ms. Haley reposted photos of besieged officials inside the Capitol, writing on Twitter, “An embarrassment in the eyes of the world and total sadness for our country. Wake up America.” More