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      Eyeing Super Tuesday, Trump Is Eager to Dispatch Rivals Sooner Than Later

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      The former president is looking to lock up the nomination by Super Tuesday on March 5, but Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis insist they plan to compete deep into March.With five days left until the New Hampshire primary, Donald J. Trump and his allies are stepping up their efforts to muscle Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis out of the Republican presidential race by casting Mr. Trump’s nomination as inevitable.The strategy reflects an urgent desire to end the race quickly and avoid an extended and expensive battle for delegates heading into Super Tuesday on March 5.Mr. Trump is facing 91 criminal charges in four jurisdictions, as well as two costly civil trials, where he has used voluntary appearances at New York courthouses this month as public relations and fund-raising vehicles. But February offers him few such opportunities, meaning he would need to rely on his political strength alone to generate momentum for Super Tuesday, when voters in 16 states and territories will cast ballots for the nomination.In New Hampshire, Mr. Trump began attacking Ms. Haley with paid advertising weeks ago, and intensified the onslaught more recently with sharper personal criticisms and campaign statements portraying her as a China-loving globalist. On Tuesday, he went after Ms. Haley, the daughter of immigrants from India, on his social media website, using her birth name — Nimarata, which he misspelled as “Nimrada” — as a dog whistle, much like his exaggerated enunciation of former President Barack Obama’s middle name, “Hussein.”And he has grown more aggressive on the campaign trail. In Portsmouth, N.H., on Wednesday night, he said of Ms. Haley, “I don’t know that she’s a Democrat, but she’s very close. She’s far too close for you.”Mr. Trump is facing 91 criminal charges in four jurisdictions, as well as two costly civil trials, which he has turned into public relations and fund-raising vehicles.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut his team is looking ahead to the South Carolina primary on Feb. 24 as a “Waterloo” for his primary rivals, according to one Trump adviser, likening the state to the battlefield where Napoleon met his final defeat. Their aim is to humiliate her in her home state.“South Carolina is where Nikki Haley’s dreams go to die,” another senior Trump adviser, Chris LaCivita, said in a brief interview.Mr. Trump has been privately courting Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, hoping to win his endorsement before the primary. Trump allies who have relationships with Mr. Scott, including Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have been assisting the effort.Republicans across the country, including senators who were previously skeptical of Mr. Trump, are assisting his strategy by consolidating their support, rushing to declare the race over, rolling out endorsements and demanding that his rivals quit immediately to “unify” the party against President Biden.Their efforts are being aided by the conservative news media, which has turned sharply against Mr. DeSantis after giving his candidacy favorable coverage early on.The inevitability strategy also appears to be bearing fruit within the business community. On Wednesday morning, one of Wall Street’s most powerful chief executives, Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan Chase — who as recently as November urged donors to “help Nikki Haley” — praised aspects of Mr. Trump’s record and scolded Democrats for vilifying the former president’s Make America Great Again movement.Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis both insist their campaigns are alive and well, with plans to compete deep into March. But the reality is that a comeback victory would represent one of the greatest upsets in modern American political history. That would be especially true if Mr. Trump wins New Hampshire, since no Republican who has won two of the first three traditional early states — Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — has ever lost the party’s nomination.Ms. Haley finished a disappointing third in Monday’s Iowa caucuses but is facing what polls suggest is more favorable terrain in New Hampshire, where unaffiliated voters can cast ballots in the primary and where her allies argue even a close second could provide a rationale to stay in the race. Even there, however, she needs a large turnout of unaffiliated voters to overcome Mr. Trump’s overwhelming backing from Republicans.“She basically has to turn the Republican primary into the unaffiliated primary,” Mr. LaCivita, the senior Trump adviser, said of the state.Nikki Haley campaigned on Wednesday night in Rochester, N.H. She is expected to fare better in New Hampshire than she did in Iowa.Sophie Park for The New York TimesMs. Haley’s path to a competitive race seems more visible than Mr. DeSantis’s, but only barely: She must win the New Hampshire primary next Tuesday or come in a very close second, and ride a wave of media momentum for a month before tackling Mr. Trump head-on in the state she used to govern, South Carolina, where he has a huge lead and endorsements from powerful politicians there, including the governor.In New Hampshire, the Trump campaign is trying to engage what one adviser called a “pincer” — squeezing Ms. Haley from both ends of the ideological spectrum. An advertising campaign began lacing into her on immigration (hitting her from the right) before criticizing her for wanting to raise the retirement age for Social Security (hitting her from the left).Ms. Haley is trying to portray Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden as two of the same: Disliked elderly politicians who are exacerbating chaos and division in America. It’s a message tailored for independent voters who have tired of Mr. Trump, but the message will most likely have far less purchase among Republican voters.While Ms. Haley is courting independent voters in New Hampshire, it’s harder to see how a Republican candidate can win a Republican nomination without much stronger support from Republicans.On Wednesday, Ms. Haley’s campaign manager, Betsy Ankney, rejected the notion that Ms. Haley’s strategy was to rely on independent and crossover Democratic voters to make up for softer support among Republicans.Ms. Ankney said the strategy has always been to do well in New Hampshire, roll out with momentum into South Carolina and then go head-to-head against Mr. Trump on Super Tuesday, when independents have historically made a difference in open or semi-open primaries, including in 2016 for Mr. Trump.Polls showing Mr. Trump far ahead in Texas and other Super Tuesday states should not be taken seriously, Ms. Ankney insisted, because “people have not started to pay attention” in those states and “there has been zero advertising.” The Haley campaign is optimistic that she can perform especially strongly in March states that have larger populations of college-educated voters, including Virginia.Mr. Trump’s team is far less worried about Mr. DeSantis, who finished in second place in Iowa just two points ahead of Ms. Haley, but who is far behind in New Hampshire. The Trump team suspects Mr. DeSantis will struggle to keep his candidacy financially afloat long enough to compete seriously on Super Tuesday.Ron DeSantis at a campaign event in Hampton, N.H., on Wednesday. He is largely leaving the state to focus on South Carolina.John Tully for The New York TimesThe DeSantis path beyond February is murky — a fact reflected by the pro-DeSantis super PAC’s decision on Wednesday to lay off staff in some of its March 5 states. But the DeSantis team insists the candidate has no plans to drop out before South Carolina.“There is no mathematical pathway for Nikki Haley to win the nomination,” said David Polyansky, the DeSantis deputy campaign manager. “And even if she makes it to South Carolina, no amount of Wall Street money will bail her out from losing her home state, and then it will be a two-person race between Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.”A majority of Mr. DeSantis’s staff is moving to South Carolina, and he will mostly stop campaigning in New Hampshire after his events on Wednesday, according to a person familiar with his plans, who insisted on anonymity.The fact that South Carolina was his first stop after Iowa was described as an intentional signal about his electoral calculations.On a staff call after Iowa, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign manager, James Uthmeier, described Mr. DeSantis’s view: The caucuses showed that Mr. Trump doesn’t have the standing he once did after getting just over 50 percent, and that Republicans want an alternative, according to people familiar with what was said.Mr. DeSantis’s advisers remain furious at the Haley camp’s decision to spend more than $20 million attacking Mr. DeSantis on television ads before Iowa, which a top aide publicly described as “greed” ahead of the caucuses and insisted was meant to help Mr. Trump. The DeSantis team has openly accused Ms. Haley of campaigning to become Mr. Trump’s running mate and not to win, a claim that she has denied.In a late November phone call, days before the political network founded by the billionaire Koch brothers endorsed Ms. Haley, Mr. DeSantis had warned a Koch network operative that any money they spent aiding Ms. Haley and attacking Mr. DeSantis would only help Mr. Trump, according to two people familiar with the conversation. That’s because many DeSantis voters still liked the former president and would sooner peel off and support him than back Ms. Haley, who is viewed as more moderate. Mr. DeSantis told the operative that the money should be spent going after Mr. Trump, the people familiar with the call said.The Koch network went ahead with its endorsement of Ms. Haley and put its expensive ground operation into her service, sweeping out across Iowa and New Hampshire in a last-minute sprint of door knocking.Another element of Mr. Trump’s inevitability messaging is his growing discussion of possible personnel for a second term. Mr. Trump, who out of superstition has long avoided discussing who might serve in his administration, has begun indulging discussions of who might serve alongside him.At his Iowa victory party on Monday night, Mr. Trump brought onstage Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, who had ended his own presidential campaign and endorsed the front-runner. Mr. Trump told the audience that he had Mr. Burgum pegged for an important role in his administration.A Trump supporter near his rally in Portsmouth, N.H., on Wednesday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAnother former rival, Vivek Ramaswamy, immediately dropped out after the caucuses, endorsed Mr. Trump and urged all other candidates to do the same. As he appeared onstage with Mr. Trump at a rally in Atkinson, N.H., on Tuesday night, Mr. Trump grinned broadly as the crowd chanted, “V.P., V.P., V.P.”“He’ll be working with us for a long time,” said Mr. Trump. It was a whiplash reversal that’s typical of Mr. Trump. Two days earlier, he had attacked Mr. Ramaswamy as “not MAGA.”Such rapid consolidation of the party behind Mr. Trump has visibly frustrated Mr. DeSantis and his allies, given that less than a year ago there was a moment when it seemed as if Republicans might be ready to move on and coalesce around the Florida governor.No defection was more emblematic of the shift than that of Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Mr. Lee was an early booster of Mr. DeSantis’s presidential run and had met with the governor to discuss policy, according to a person with direct knowledge, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private meetings.Mr. Lee did not give Mr. DeSantis a heads up before he announced that he was endorsing Mr. Trump just three days before the Iowa caucuses, that person said. The DeSantis team saw the timing as a knife in the back.Dan Hauser, a campaign adviser to Mr. Lee, said in a statement that the senator didn’t call any candidate in the race before he endorsed Mr. Trump.In another personal twist, Mr. Lee’s wife, Sharon, had worked for the DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down. She left the group “a couple of months ago on her own terms,” according to Mr. Hauser.Michael Gold More

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      Iowa Caucus Recap: Trump’s Win, the Weather, and a Look Toward New Hampshire

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      Listen to and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | AmazonAnna Foley and Lanny Van Daele casting his presidential preference vote in Coralville, Iowa, on Monday.Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette, via Associated PressGoing into the Iowa caucuses, there were a handful of key things we were watching for: Would the frigid weather hamper turnout? Would his overwhelming dominance in the polls translate to a decisive victory for Donald Trump? And finally, could the other candidates muster enough of a showing to keep the race alive?Today: Through conversations with Iowa caucus goers — especially those who preferred another candidate to Trump — we get answers to our questions. And we check in with our colleague Nick Corasaniti in New Hampshire about how the state’s independents are approaching the primary next week — and how confident Trump is of a second early state victory.About ‘The Run-Up’“The Run-Up” is your guide to understanding the 2024 election. Through on-the-ground reporting and conversations with colleagues from The New York Times, newsmakers and voters across the country, our host, Astead W. Herndon, takes us beyond the horse race to explore how we came to this unprecedented moment in American politics. New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Nikki Haley Ramps Up Her Case Against Trump in New Hampshire

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      The former South Carolina governor has been careful about how and when she criticizes the former president. New Hampshire will test her approach.Nikki Haley might have come in third in the Iowa caucuses, but as she campaigns in New Hampshire for its first-in-the-nation primary next week, her attention is squarely focused on only one rival: Donald J. Trump.Ms. Haley, a former South Carolina governor who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump, has begun fine-tuning her argument against her former boss, trying out new jabs and unleashing a new attack ad right out of the gate. She has also stepped up her efforts to frame herself as Mr. Trump’s top rival, announcing that she would no longer participate in primary debates that don’t include him.In recent remarks and in a new television ad, Ms. Haley paints Mr. Trump and President Biden as two sides of the same coin: politicians past their prime who are unable to put forth a vision for the country’s future because they are “consumed by the past, by investigations, by grievances.”At a campaign rally on Wednesday in Rochester, N.H., she fended off Mr. Trump’s attacks on her immigration record, warned voters not to believe his ads against her and reminded them that it was Mr. Trump who had wanted to raise the age for Social Security eligibility and had once proposed increasing the gas tax.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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      Do Political Ads Even Matter Anymore?

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      A confluence of political forces and changing media behavior are testing their efficacy in the Trump era.In a presidential election year, no glowing rectangle in Iowa or New Hampshire is safe from an endless deluge of political ads.Campaign ads are inescapable on the nightly news, “Wheel of Fortune” and YouTube. Even the high-dollar, high-visibility ad blocks of professional and college football games have become increasingly saturated.It’s a deeply entrenched multimillion-dollar industry, and one of the largest expenses of every presidential campaign. But a confluence of political forces and changing media behavior may be testing the efficacy of political advertising in the Trump era.Nikki Haley and her allied super PAC spent roughly $28 million on broadcast ads in Iowa, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm. Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies spent $25 million. Trump and his super PAC spent only $15 million — and won by more than 30 points.As my colleagues Michael Bender and Katie Glueck reported, that result showed a new depth to the Republican Party’s devotion to Trump. But it also suggests that a smaller universe of persuadable voters and a wholesale shift in viewing habits may have significantly undercut the impact of political advertising.According to Cross Screen Media, an ad analytics firm, only 63 percent of Iowa Republicans are reachable with traditional or “linear” TV ads, as viewers switch to streaming and social media. In 2016, that percentage was still in the 90s. At most, Republican campaigns this year reached 42 percent of likely caucus voters.“I don’t think that people have caught up with where the media consumption is,” said Michael Beach, chief executive of Cross Screen Media.The pivot to streaming is potentially deadly for political ad buyers. Beach estimates that almost 40 percent of the time viewers spend on television is on streaming, but streaming offers far fewer opportunities to show ads to viewers than traditional programming.Granite State mediaNew Hampshire’s presidential race is much closer than Iowa’s was, with polls showing Haley trailing Trump by single digits. And Trump faces a similar advertising deficit, with Haley and her allies spending more than twice as much as Trump’s campaign and its allied super PAC.But the tone of advertising in New Hampshire has taken a sharply negative turn on the former president. Ten times as many negative ads attacking Trump have run in New Hampshire over the past 30 days as ran in Iowa, according to data from AdImpact. The biggest such spender is the SFA Fund, the super PAC supporting Haley, which is portraying Trump as a liar prone to temper tantrums.Trump and his allies have responded, spending $1.4 million on a single ad attacking Haley over immigration, and $2.7 million on one targeting her support for raising the gas tax when she was governor of South Carolina in 2015 (she also called for a corresponding income tax cut).30-second issuesThe New Hampshire ads reveal the key issues that each campaign is hoping will boost their support in the final days. The Trump campaign and MAGA Inc., the super PAC supporting his campaign, have spent more in New Hampshire on ads regarding immigration than any other issue, according to AdImpact.Haley’s campaign has almost exclusively run ads portraying her as representing a “new generation” and castigating Trump and President Biden as too old for the presidency. The SFA Fund has made taxes core to its ad campaign, with nearly half its ad spending over the past month promoting Haley’s pledge to cut taxes for the middle class or defending her record on taxes.(DeSantis, who is far behind Trump and Haley in New Hampshire, had not broadcast any ads in the state in over a month when DeSantis and his super PAC announced Wednesday that they would be leaving the state to focus on South Carolina.)But there may be slightly more of an opportunity for Haley to close the gap. According to Cross Screen Media, 80 percent of New Hampshire Republican voters are reachable by traditional television advertising.Speaker Mike Johnson will most likely need to rely on Democrats to avoid a shutdown.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe House G.O.P.’s incredible shrinking majorityThanks to a combination of coincidence, scandal, health issues and political turmoil, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives keeps getting smaller.This week, with lawmakers absent for medical reasons and the recent not-so-voluntary departures of the ousted former speaker Kevin McCarthy and the expelled George Santos, the best G.O.P. attendance that Speaker Mike Johnson can muster as he tries to avoid a government shutdown is the bare-minimum 218 votes. That is before factoring in the impact of rough winter weather across the nation.Another Republican, Representative Bill Johnson of Ohio, is resigning as of Sunday to take a job as a university president, lowering the number to 217 if Representative Harold Rogers of Kentucky, the 86-year-old dean of the House, is unable to quickly return from recuperating from a car accident. Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican, is out until at least next month while undergoing cancer treatment.As a result, the G.O.P. could soon be able to afford just a single defection on any matter if Democrats remain united and have no absences of their own.Republicans are in a real numerical bind. At a time when House Republicans regularly face internal rebellion from hard-line conservatives, Johnson has absolutely no cushion if he chooses to rely strictly on the votes of his own party, which is part of the reason he cut a deal with Democrats on spending to avoid a shutdown later this week, further angering the hard right.Democrats say the recurring scenario of leaning on them for must-pass bills is proof that even though Republicans are the majority party on the tally sheet, they don’t have a working majority because of their diminished forces and constant internal squabbling.“When anything hits the fan, they don’t have 218,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the former longtime Democratic majority leader, referring to the number that represents a basic majority in the 435-member House. “They are not the majority party in this House.”Johnson, the novice speaker, said it was a problem he could handle.“I’m undaunted by this,” he said recently on CBS. “We deal with the numbers that we have.” — Carl HulseRead the full story here.More politics news and analysisBacking down: The super PAC supporting Ron DeSantis began laying off staff.Disorder in the court: A judge threatened to throw Donald Trump out of his defamation trial.No-shows: CNN canceled its Republican debate in New Hampshire for lack of participation.History lesson: Haley and DeSantis were asked about race in America, and it got awkward.You would cry too: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to create his own party to get on the ballot.Read past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Maine Judge Suspends Decision to Exclude Trump From Primary Ballot

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      The judge sent the matter back to Maine’s secretary of state, ordering her to modify, withdraw or confirm her ruling after the Supreme Court rules on a similar case out of Colorado.A Maine judge ordered the state’s top election official on Wednesday to wait for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling before putting into effect her decision to exclude former President Donald J. Trump from Maine’s Republican primary ballot. Justice Michaela Murphy of Maine Superior Court said in the ruling that the official, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, had been forced under Maine law to issue her decision quickly, without the benefit of the high court’s input.The Supreme Court has agreed to review, at Mr. Trump’s request, an earlier decision by a Colorado court to exclude him from the ballot, and is expected to hear arguments in the case on Feb. 8. Ms. Bellows had cited the Colorado court’s reasoning in her decision.“The secretary confronted an uncertain legal landscape when she issued her ruling,” Justice Murphy wrote in a 17-page decision, and “should be afforded the opportunity to assess the effect and application” to her ruling of whatever the high court decides.Read the Maine Judge’s Ruling on Trump’s Ballot EligibilityThe judge ordered the state’s top election official to wait until the Supreme Court weighs in on the eligibility issue in a Colorado case, and then to confirm, modify or reverse her Dec. 28 decision to exclude former President Donald J. Trump from Maine’s primary ballot.Read DocumentWe 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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      Take That, America

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      Well, people, Iowa has spoken. Peeped, anyhow.Every time the nation gets to select its next president, all eyes turn to Iowa, which traditionally has the first word on what the public wants.This is a state with approximately 1 percent of the national population. How could we not pay attention?Next week, we’ll be obsessed with the voting in New Hampshire, which has less than half as many people as Iowa.So goes the current caucus-and-primary system — on the Republican side, at least. The Democrats changed theirs after 2020, when the Iowa count crashed and burned. It took days to get the final results, which gave Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders the lead, followed by Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden, who came in at a pathetic 15.8 percent.Pop quiz: The Iowa Democrats struggled to produce a vote count because of:A. A deep reluctance to let other states start getting all the attentionB. A bad appC. Threats to public safety from a 12-foot-tall snow bearDon’t go for the self-absorption option. Be nice. The answer, of course, is a bad app. Truly, in this day and age, virtually anything terrible that occurs is either because of a bad app or Donald Trump.You’ve got to admire the dedicated citizens who keep the Iowa caucuses going. But it’s hard not to get tired of hearing candidates deliver effusive tributes to the state’s special interests, like the glories of ethanol subsidies. (“I stood up for ethanol like nobody has ever stood up for it,” Trump claimed on caucus night. Really suspect that before he began running for president, he thought ethanol was a hair product.)This year, the Democrats are casting their ballots by mail, and Iowa leaders will let us know the results in early March. The party, under orders from President Biden, has rearranged its schedule so the primaries will officially start in South Carolina next month, then move on to Nevada. The idea is to get a population of voters that’s a tad more diverse than Iowa, which is about as ethnically homogeneous as Finland.Sneering at the idea that Iowa is always first is traditionally coupled with an acknowledgment that voters there have a history of high participation even in terrible winter weather.Turns out, however, that not so many showed up this year — 110,000 Republicans voted, which was less than 15 percent of those registered. And hey, probably about a tenth of the population that visited the Butter Cow at last year’s Iowa State Fair.Certainly can’t blame them for choosing to stay home during weather that would have discouraged Nanook of the North. But do you think it was possibly the ballot as well? Everybody knew Trump was going to win. Maybe some people found it too depressing to participate.Our former president managed to get more than half of the votes cast in Iowa. But he failed to win all 99 counties, thanks to a one-vote margin (yes, one) in the county where the University of Iowa is situated. Nikki Haley won there, giving her at least a little bounce for the next stop, in New Hampshire, which has a relatively high percentage of college graduates.Ron DeSantis is moving on, too. He actually came in a tad ahead of Haley statewide, but I’m not sure he should boast about that. Having visited every single one of those 99 counties (as he constantly reminded us), DeSantis apparently won most of the hearts in … none of them.About New Hampshire. If anybody is going to beat Trump anywhere, it’ll be Haley in New Hampshire, where Republicans tend to be moderate and happy to show their independence by doing something different. She’s already taken on the front-runner by announcing that she won’t go to any debates there unless Trump agrees to participate, too.Pause for a brief giggle.On the Democratic side, New Hampshire party leaders are very, very unhappy that Biden has ditched them for South Carolina. And how should we feel about that? On one hand, New Hampshirites have always been super devoted to their role — Chris Christie probably spent the happiest days of his campaign there, attacking Trump before always-available audiences. It’s such a deep-seated tradition, political junkies have to be a little sad to see the state being snubbed.On the other hand, New Hampshire is whiter than Iowa. It’s one of the least diverse states in the Union.It’s very easy to write in a candidate’s name in New Hampshire, and top Democrats say they’re going to do just that for Biden, even though, in the words of the former state party chair Kathy Sullivan, they’re “still pissed.”Gird your loins, citizens. Our political lives are going to be primarily primaries for the next couple of months. (Super Tuesday is March 5.) Candidates will find ways to pick fights, even if they’re silly.Sometimes it’s hard to keep all this in focus. We’ve got lives to live. Joe Biden has to run the country. Donald Trump has to go to nine million trials.But hey, it’s democracy. It’s important. And it’s going to be a very long year.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, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Why New Hampshire Thinks It’s Smarter Than Iowa

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      Now that the Republican presidential primary race has moved to New Hampshire from Iowa, a few things will change.The evangelical Christian social conservatism that dominates Iowa’s Republican politics is out, replaced by fiscal hawkishness and a libertarian streak rooted in the Granite State’s “Live Free or Die” ethos.With Iowa fully in the rearview mirror, expect to hear a variation on the phrase “Iowa picks corn, New Hampshire picks presidents,” a favorite local slogan that aggrandizes the state’s role in the nominating process. Still, ask Pat Buchanan and John McCain about how winning New Hampshire in 1996 and 2000 catapulted them to the White House.One thing is clear: New Hampshire Republicans think their attention to federal spending and the national debt makes them a lot smarter than their Iowa brethren, for whom abortion and transgender issues have been atop the agenda.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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      The Deification of Donald Trump Poses Some Interesting Questions

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      On Oct. 15, 2020, in a rare display of humility, Donald Trump told a campaign rally in Greenville, N.C., that he was not as famous as Jesus Christ.“Somebody said to me the other day ‘You’re the most famous person in the world by far.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not.’ They said, ‘Yes, you are. I said no.’ They said, ‘Who’s more famous?’ I said, ‘Jesus Christ.’ ”This exhibition of modesty was out of character.Trump, his family and his supporters have been more than willing to claim that Trump is ordained by God for a special mission, to restore America as a Christian nation.In recent weeks, for example, the former president posted a video called “God Made Trump” on Truth Social that was produced by a conservative media group technically independent of the Trump campaign. He has also screened it at campaign rallies.The video begins as a narrator with a voice reminiscent of Paul Harvey’s declares: “On June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said: ‘I need a caretaker.’ So God gave us Trump.”Why was Trump chosen? The video continues:God had to have someone willing to go into the den of vipers. Call out the fake news for their tongues as sharp as a serpent’s. The poison of vipers is on their lips. So God made Trump.The video claims to quote God directly:God said, “I will need someone who will be strong and courageous. Who will not be afraid or terrified of wolves when they attack. A man who cares for the flock. A shepherd to mankind who won’t ever leave or forsake them. I need the most diligent worker to follow the path and remain strong in faith. And know the belief in God and country.”The “God Made Trump” video was created by the Dilley Meme Team, described by Ken Bensinger of The Times asan organized collective of video producers who call themselves “Trump’s Online War Machine.” The group’s leader, Brenden Dilley, characterizes himself as Christian and a man of faith, but says he has never read the Bible and does not attend church. He says that Mr. Trump has “God-tier genetics” and, in response to the outcry over the “God Made Trump” video, Dilley posted a meme depicting Mr. Trump as Moses parting the Red Sea.The video, along with Eric Trump’s claim that his father “literally saved Christianity” and the image Trump himself reposted on Truth Social of Jesus sitting next to him in court, raise a question: Does Trump believe that he is God’s messenger or are his direct and indirect claims to have a special relationship with God a cynical ploy to win evangelical votes?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