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      Could Nikki Haley Really Beat Trump? Big Donors Are Daring to Dream.

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      Powerful players in the business world have gravitated toward Nikki Haley, aware that she remains an underdog but beginning to believe she has a chance.Late last month, Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, got an unexpected call from Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase. Mr. Dimon said he was impressed by Ms. Haley’s knowledge of policy details and her open-minded approach to complex issues raised in the Republican presidential race, according to a person familiar with what they discussed. Keep it up, he told her.He wasn’t the only business heavyweight to say so.In recent weeks, a group of chief executives, hedge fund investors and corporate deal makers from both parties have begun gravitating toward Ms. Haley and, in some cases, digging deeper into their pockets to help her.Her ascent in the polls and strong debate performances have raised hopes among Republicans hungering to end the dominance of former President Donald J. Trump that maybe, just maybe, they have found a candidate who can do so.“I’m a long way from making my mind up — something could change — but I’m very impressed with her,” said Kenneth G. Langone, the billionaire Home Depot co-founder, who has donated to Ms. Haley’s campaign and is considering giving more. “I think she’s a viable candidate. I would certainly like her over Trump.”Kenneth G. Langone, a co-founder of Home Depot, is part of a bipartisan group of chief executives, hedge-fund investors and corporate deal makers who have shown new interest in Ms. Haley. Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesMs. Haley’s fresh appeal to the moneyed crowd is coming at a critical juncture in the race, when positive buzz and steady cash flow are vital to a candidate’s survival. With less than eight weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Ms. Haley’s campaign and allied political committees need money to pay for travel, advertising, staff and a ground game to draw out potential voters.Some business leaders say they appreciate her focus on cutting taxes and government spending. Others praise her foreign-policy chops and her search for a winning Republican message on abortion rights, on which she has sought a moderate path but recently tacked to the right by saying she would have signed a six-week ban as governor of South Carolina.Most say they see her as a welcome alternative to Mr. Trump, whom they blame for inciting the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, for costing Republicans a Senate majority in last year’s midterm elections and for being too volatile as a commander in chief. They also prefer her to President Biden, whose economic policies and age many cited as a concern.“It’s invigorating to be truly excited by a candidate again,” said Jonathan Bush, the chief executive of a health-data startup and a cousin of former President George W. Bush. He hosted a virtual fund-raiser for Ms. Haley in early November.Mr. Bush, a Republican who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 and for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, in 2016, said he had been struck by her knowledge and poise.“The topic that everyone is on is, ‘How do you beat Donald Trump?’” Mr. Bush said, “and she was careful to say, ‘Look, people will decide about him, but this is where I am on certain issues.’ And she rattled off some issues, related to our debt, related to our role in the world. But what you picked up was an electric energy,” he added, “that I think got this crowd really excited.”But even with Ms. Haley’s momentum, halting Mr. Trump’s seemingly inexorable march to the Republican nomination promises to be a slog. With a wide edge in national and early-state polls, the former president is running effectively as an incumbent, with legions of supporters prepared to vote solely for him.Several donors and advisers described two groups taking shape among the major, top-dollar donors:First, those who have yielded to the likelihood that Mr. Trump, however they may feel about him, will probably be the nominee, and have decided to stop funding potential alternatives. Second, those who believe that with enough financial resources and a savvy field operation, Ms. Haley could unseat him.Despite the long odds, her financial supporters say they see a path to victory.“There were people that don’t like Trump at all but were very skeptical that he could be stopped,” said Eric Levine, a Republican fund-raiser who leads the bankruptcy and litigation practices at Eiseman Levine Lehrhaupt & Kakoyiannis. “They now believe he can be stopped,” he said, pointing to Ms. Haley’s steady climb in the polls.Mr. Levine, who initially backed Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, is co-hosting a Haley fund-raiser on Dec. 4. “His aura of invincibility is just peeled away completely,” he said.A spokeswoman for Ms. Haley’s campaign declined to comment.Polls show that Ms. Haley has gained traction against Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has held the No. 2 spot in national surveys all year. In Iowa, she has pulled nearly even with Mr. DeSantis, even as he has pursued an all-in strategy for that state. In New Hampshire, where she is in second place, she has been nearing 20 percent in polling averages.Her campaign said she pulled in $1 million in the first 24 hours after the last debate on Nov. 9, where she distinguished herself for her hawkish positions on Ukraine and Gaza and for her scathing dismissal of Vivek Ramaswamy, a rival she called “scum.”And while fund-raising numbers for the fourth quarter have not yet been released, interviews with about 20 financial and corporate executives suggest that more big checks will soon arrive.Ms. Haley’s $11.6 million war chest has already been bolstered by campaign contributions from wealthy Wall Street executives, including the fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller and the private-equity investor Barry Sternlicht.“I’m supporting Nikki because I think the nation needs to move on from the divisiveness and fear-mongering of the far left and right,” Mr. Sternlicht said. “I’m also opting in for a fresh face, a younger person who more accurately reflects the nation.”Timothy Draper, a venture capitalist in California, was an early backer, pouring $1.25 million into a super PAC supporting her. In recent weeks, he said, he has fielded interest from Democrats and Republicans and, notably, many women. “I think she can unify the country,” he said.Ms. Haley has mingled with Gary D. Cohn, the onetime Goldman Sachs president who served as Mr. Trump’s top economic adviser at the same time Ms. Haley was U.N. ambassador, and the investment banker Aryeh Bourkoff, who co-hosted a fund-raiser for her in Manhattan on Nov. 14.Her team is discussing policy with representatives for Kenneth C. Griffin, the billionaire hedge fund founder, on topics running the gamut from increasing students’ access to high-quality education to how to ensure a strong national defense, according to a person briefed on their discussions.Mr. Griffin recently told Bloomberg News that he was “actively contemplating” backing her, but he has not made up his mind, this person said.Students at Emmaus Bible College in Dubuque, Iowa, listening to Ms. Haley speak at a campaign event this month. She has risen in polls in Iowa, where Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has invested heavily. Ms. Haley’s backers, as well as some Republican observers, believe that if she can inch closer to Mr. DeSantis in Iowa or even outmaneuver him for second place, she could enter the New Hampshire primary election the next week with real momentum.If she could then reel in support from the state’s independent voters, some of them add, she could have a chance of beating Mr. Trump there.“There’s a possibility in the coming months to win New Hampshire,” said Mr. Bush, who is planning to form a political action committee to promote Ms. Haley to independent voters in the Granite State, not far from where he lives in Maine.Mr. Bush also plans to repeat his virtual fund-raiser to introduce her to new donors without asking her to spend unnecessary time working a cocktail party. (He said that he invited his Bush cousins to the November event, but that none of them attended.)An upset in New Hampshire could also move the needle during the Feb. 24 primary in Ms. Haley’s home state, South Carolina, where she was governor before serving in the Trump administration. She is polling second there, trailing the former president badly.The leanness of Ms. Haley’s campaign has become an asset. In the third quarter, her campaign spent $3.5 million, about 43 cents of every dollar it took in, a far lower rate than candidates like Mr. DeSantis as well as Mr. Scott, who dropped out this month.Some Wall Street executives, many of whom are focused on government spending and debt, note approvingly that Ms. Haley largely flies commercial.For some deep-pocketed donors, the openness to Ms. Haley stems from desperation.“I would take anyone not over 76 or crazy,” said Michael Novogratz, the chief executive of the cryptocurrency firm Galaxy Digital, a past Biden supporter who is now exploring both Ms. Haley and Representative Dean Phillips, the Minnesota Democrat who is mounting a last-ditch bid for his party’s nomination. Mr. Novogratz said that Mr. Trump was too divisive and that Mr. Biden was too old.Ms. Haley is someone he might support, he said, as is former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.“Unfortunately,” he added as a caveat, “I don’t see either beating Trump.” More

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      Let’s Talk Turkey and Politics

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      Ah, Thanksgiving. That magical time when friends and family gather round the table to share the love, reminisce — and bicker endlessly about politics and the state of the nation. If your clan is anything like mine, the conversation bends toward the grim and angsty: President Biden’s advanced age, Donald Trump’s legal dramas, Ron DeSantis’s creepy robot smile, the price of Tom Turkey, the chaos in Congress, the government’s alien cover-up …. It can be a lot.But there is, in fact, so much to be grateful for, especially in the political realm. Don’t laugh! And please stick with me while I share several of my favorites. Because while you may need to squint to see the silver lining in the political clouds, it is important to do so. Nothing is quite as dangerous as good people despairing and disengaging from politics, ceding the field to the crooks and cranks. Our democracy is too important.Let me start with an entry that may surprise many of you. I am thankful that Kevin McCarthy, in his brief and inglorious tenure atop the House, cut a bipartisan deal to avoid a debt default. I have said many, many harsh things about the ex-speaker over the years — every one of which he earned with his hollow, slippery spinelessness. But the guy wrecked his dream job to prevent his right-wingers from wrecking the global economy. Gotta give him props.I’m thankful that elections this year earned Republicans another spanking for their efforts to curtail women’s reproductive rights. Pro tip for abortion opponents: If you want women to buy your devotion to “a culture of life,” try pushing policies aimed at supporting mothers and children after delivery rather than focusing so stringently on restrictive measures that make you seem punitive and controlling.I am thankful that Congress is getting some time off this week so that thin-skinned, overly emotional men like Mr. McCarthy and Senator Markwayne Mullin can pull it together and stop picking physical fights — or, if you believe Mr. McCarthy, accidentally thwacking a colleague in the back — in the halls of government. (Sorry, Kev. You just keep asking for it.)On a related note, I am thankful that, after challenging a Senate witness to a smackdown, Mr. Mullin helpfully elaborated: “I’ll bite 100 percent. In a fight, I’m going to bite. I’ll do anything. I’m not above it. And I don’t care where I bite, by the way.” Stay classy, my man!I’m thankful that the U.S. judicial system is not treating Donald Trump as though he is above the law.I’m thankful that it has been more than 1,050 days since Trumpists last stormed the Capitol.More earnestly, I am thankful that we have now gone three election cycles without major upheaval or violence. Kudos to all the people, from lawmakers and lawyers to election clerks and poll workers, who labor to safeguard the integrity of America’s electoral system.I am thankful we have a president who believes in democracy. It feels weird to have to say that, but here we are.I’m thankful that the fine people of New Jersey finally seem ready to kick Senator Bob Menendez to the curb. Two criminal indictments in eight years feels like enough.I’m thankful that even Jim Jordan’s Republican colleagues understood that he is too big of a jerk to be the speaker.I am thankful not to be George Santos’s lawyer.Or Hunter Biden’s.Or Rudy Giuliani’s.Or Eric Adams’s.I am thankful that Jenna Ellis is not my lawyer. Seriously. Who gave this woman a J.D.?I am thankful that inflation is easing, though I wish it would ease even faster. People are struggling. High prices — and the perception of them — influence how voters feel about the state of the nation, and an angry electorate yearning for better economic days plays into the hands of Mr. Trump’s aggrieved brand of politics and his woo-’em-with-nostalgia message.I am thankful for governors of all political persuasions. Most, though certainly not all, tend to be more solutions-oriented and open to cross-aisle compromise than members of Congress, who operate with more of a team-based mind-set.I am thankful that Mike Pence got the message that no one wants him to be president.I am thankful that Nikki Haley knows how to throw a political punch — especially at Vivek Ramaswamy.I am thankful that even many Republicans clearly get that Mr. Ramaswamy is the most obnoxious creature ever to run for president.I am thankful that Tucker Carlson no longer has a sweet prime-time platform from which to poison the minds of America’s grandparents.I would like to be thankful for the Supreme Court’s new ethics code. The court needed some boundaries after all the revelations about Justice Clarence Thomas for years accepting luxury vacations and other eye-popping gifts from rich friends (without disclosing some of them) and participating in conservative donor events (on the q.t.) and failing to recuse himself from cases related to the political shenanigans of his wife, Ginni, including her work to overthrow the 2020 presidential election. Sadly, this code is a wilted, flimsy fig leaf. Still, it suggests the justices can recognize when one of their own has crossed a line. So maybe they’ll do better after Justice Thomas gets back from his next friend-funded holiday or a buddy spots him an even bigger, shinier R.V.I’m thankful that the House Republicans’ shabby impeachment inquiry into President Biden has been almost as embarrassing for them so far as a night out with Lauren Boebert.Speaking of, I’m super thankful Ms. Boebert had the decency not to take her date to a matinee of “Beetlejuice,” where there would probably have been even more easily scarred children.I am thankful the new House speaker, Mike Johnson, brushed back his ultraconservative colleagues to spare the nation a holiday-season government shutdown. Some of these wingers already have started working to make him pay for this betrayal, but, seriously, what are they going to do — oust him?Lastly, I cannot adequately express how thankful I am to live in a country where I can poke fun at political leaders who so richly deserve it without fear of government reprisal. God bless America.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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      Do Democrats Have a Problem With Falling Support From Black Voters?

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | AmazonAnna Foley and The change was so remarkable that it almost seemed like a mistake: In a poll of residents in battleground states by The New York Times and Siena College this fall, 22 percent of Black voters said they would support former president Donald Trump over President Biden in a hypothetical 2024 matchup.“There’s a thought that, you know, like Black people are not Republicans. That’s just the bottom line. And Republicans are for the rich people.”Pashal Mabry“We vote because that’s what we’re supposed to do. But then when you see the numbers, it’s almost disheartening. It’s like we’re once again like the bedrock having to put the weight on, and I want everybody to do it.”Shanell BowdenMr. Trump carried 8 percent of the Black vote in 2020.Astead Herndon came to his childhood home, with colleagues and microphones in tow, to do the one thing you’re not traditionally supposed to do on Thanksgiving: Talk politics at the dinner table.It is just one poll, of course, but it follows the 2022 midterm elections, in which turnout among Black voters was one of the weakest points for the Democrats.“I feel like the Democratic Party needs to train young people, educate them on this whole process. I think you’ll get a better understanding because people – we want to know. We want to know. We’re not afraid to learn.”Christopher Hodges“Unfortunately, sometimes our government, whether it’s Democrat or Republican, we don’t take care of home base.”Reginald RobinsonSo what is really going on? How worried should Democrats be about the erosion of support among Black voters?Angelica Herndon’s early Thanksgiving dessert spread.“The Run-Up” is in a particularly good position to try and answer those questions. We convened a focus group — a very special, one-time only focus group in the childhood home of Astead W. Herndon, who hosts “The Run-Up.”For the wide-ranging discussion, he gathered family members, parishioners from his father’s church, community members and people he grew up with, all of whom largely leaned Democratic, but were clear about the ways in which the party had let them down.The conversations were anchored in questions about Black voters and the Democratic Party, but also covered the apparent appeal of Mr. Trump to Black men specifically.“Oftentimes, we’re that extra whatever percentage that will take that particular candidate over the top to win,” Endla Thornton said, discussing the ways in which the Democratic Party relies on Black women voters.Pastor Michael Richardson and Anastasia Richardson were among those who gathered for the evening conversations.Younger Black voters spoke frankly about some distance they felt from the Democratic Party.The focus group gathering organized by Astead Herndon. Over the course of the evening, he divided the group into smaller conversations that corresponded with divisions that were present within polling: older voters, younger voters, men and women.It was a special focus group in another way, too. It took place over a Thanksgiving meal — complete with 13 different homemade desserts.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Why Trump Represents a ‘Trifecta of Danger’

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

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      Has Latin America Found Its Trump in Javier Milei?

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      The election of Javier Milei, a wild-haired showboating weirdo with five cloned mastiffs and a habit of psychic communion with their departed pet of origin, as president of Argentina has inspired a lot of discussion about the true nature of right-wing populism in our age of general discontent.Milei has many of the signifiers of a Trumpian politics: the gonzo energy, the criticism of corrupt elites and the rants against the left, the support from social and religious conservatives. At the same time, on economic policy he is much more of a doctrinaire libertarian than a Trump-style mercantilist or populist, a more extreme version of Barry Goldwater and Paul Ryan rather than a defender of entitlement spending and tariffs. Whereas the party that he defeated, the Peronist formation that has governed Argentina for most of the 21st century, is actually more economically nationalist and populist, having ascended in the aftermath of the 2001 financial crisis that ended Argentina’s most notable experiment with neoliberal economics.You can interpret the Trump-Milei divergence in several ways. One reading is that the style of right-wing populism is the essence of the thing, that its policy substance is negotiable so long as it puts forward figures who promise national rebirth and embody some kind of clownish, usually masculine rebellion against the norms of cultural progressivism.Another reading is that, yes, the policy is somewhat negotiable but there are actually deep ideological affinities between right-wing economic nationalism and what might be called paleolibertarianism, despite their disagreement on specific issues. In American terms, this means that Trumpism was anticipated in different ways by Ross Perot and Ron Paul; in global terms, it means that we should expect the parties of the populist right to move back and forth between dirigiste and libertarian tendencies, depending on the economic context and political winds.Here is a third interpretation: While popular discontents have undermined the neoliberal consensus of the 1990s and 2000s all across the developed world, the age of populism is creating very different alignments in the Latin American periphery than in the Euro-American core.In Western Europe and the United States, you now consistently see a center-left party of the professional classes facing off against a populist and working-class coalition on the right. The center-left parties have become more progressive on economic policy relative to the era of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, but they have moved much more sharply left on cultural issues while retaining their mandarin and meritocratic leadership, their neoliberal flavor. And they have mostly been able to contain, defeat or co-opt more radical left-wing challengers — Joe Biden by overcoming Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic primaries, Keir Starmer by marginalizing Corbynism in Britain’s Labour Party, Emmanuel Macron by forcing French leftists to cast a lesser-of-two-evils ballot in his favor in his runoffs against Marine Le Pen.The populist right, meanwhile, has often found success by moderating its libertarian impulses in order to woo downscale voters away from the progressive coalition, yielding a right-of-center politics that usually favors certain kinds of protectionism and redistribution. That could mean a Trumpian defense of entitlement programs, the halfhearted attempts by Boris Johnson’s Tories to invest in the neglected north of England or the spending on family benefits that you see from Viktor Orban in Hungary and the recently unseated populist coalition in Poland.You can imagine the gulf between these two coalitions keeping the West in a state of simmering near crisis — especially with Trump’s crisis-courting personality in the mix. But you can also imagine a future in which this order stabilizes and normalizes somewhat and people stop talking about an earthquake every time a populist wins power or democracy being saved every time an establishment party wins an election.The situation is quite different in Latin America. There the neoliberal consensus was always weaker, the center more fragile, and so the age of populist rebellion has created a clearer polarization between further left and further right — with the left culturally progressive but usually more avowedly socialist than Biden, Starmer or Macron and the right culturally traditional but usually more libertarian than Trump, Orban or Le Pen.The new alignment in Argentina, with its libertarian revolutionary overcoming a populist-nationalist left, is one example of this pattern; the contest between Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil last year was another. But the recent swings in Chilean politics are especially instructive. In the early 2010s Chile seemed to have a relatively stable political environment, with a center-left party governing through a market-friendly Constitution and a center-right opposition at pains to distance itself from the Pinochet dictatorship. Then popular rebellions cast this order down, creating a wild yaw leftward and an attempt to impose a new left-wing Constitution that yielded backlash in its turn — leaving the country divided between an unpopular left-wing government headed by a former student activist and a temporarily ascendant right-wing opposition led by a Pinochet apologist.In each case, relative to the divides of France and the United States, you see a weaker center and a deeper polarization between competing populist extremes. And if the question for Latin America now is how stable democracy itself will be under such polarized conditions, the question for Europe and America is whether the Argentine or Chilean situation is a harbinger of their own futures. Perhaps not immediately but after a further round of populist rebellions, which could await beyond some crisis or disaster or simply on the far side of demographic change.In such a future, figures like Biden and Starmer and Macron would no longer be able to manage governing coalitions, and the initiative on the left would pass to more radical parties like Podemos in Spain or the Greens in Germany, to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezan progressives in the U.S. Congress, to whatever kind of politics emerges from the encounter between the European left and the continent’s growing Arab and Muslim populations. This would give the populist right an opportunity to promise stability and claim the center — but it would also create incentives for the right to radicalize further, yielding bigger ideological swings every time an incumbent coalition lost.Which is, in a way, the clearest lesson of Milei’s thumping victory: If you can’t reach stability after one round of populist convulsion, there’s no inherent limit on how wild the next cycle of rebellion might get.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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      For Election Workers, Fentanyl-Laced Letters Signal a Challenging Year

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      As overheated rhetoric and threats rise, people are leaving election jobs in record numbers.For the people who run elections at thousands of local offices nationwide, 2024 was never going to be an easy year. But the recent anonymous mailing of powder-filled envelopes to election offices in five states offers new hints of how hard it could be.The letters, sent to offices in Washington State, Oregon, Nevada, California and Georgia this month, are under investigation by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the F.B.I. Several of them appear to have been laced with fentanyl; at least two contained a vague message calling to “end elections now.” The letters are a public indicator of what some election officials say is a fresh rise in threats to their safety and the functioning of the election system. And they presage the pressure-cooker environment that election officials will face next year in a contest for the White House that could chart the future course of American democracy.“The system is going to be tested in every possible way, whether it’s voter registration, applications for ballots, poll workers, the mail, drop boxes, election results websites,” said Tammy Patrick, chief executive for programs at the National Association of Election Officials. “Every way in which our elections are administered is going to be tested somewhere, at some time, during 2024.”Ms. Patrick and other experts said they were confident that those staffing the next election would weather those stresses, just as poll workers soldiered through a 2020 vote at the height of a global pandemic that all but rewrote the playbook for national elections.But they did not minimize the challenges. Instead, they said, in some crucial ways — such as the escalation of violent political rhetoric, and the increasing number of seasoned election officials who are throwing in the towel — the coming election year will impose greater strains than in any of the past.Temporary employees at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix processed mail-in ballots last year.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesBy several measures, an unprecedented number of top election officials have retired or quit since 2020, many in response to rising threats and partisan interference in their jobs.Turnover in election jobs doubled over the past year, according to an annual survey released last week by the Elections & Voting Information Center at Reed College in Portland, Ore. Nearly one-third of election officials said that they knew someone who had left an election post, at least in part because of fears over safety.Another recent report by Issue One, a pro-democracy advocacy group, said that 40 percent of chief election administrators in 11 Western states — in all, more than 160 officials, typically in county positions — had retired or quit since 2020.“They feel unsafe,” said Aaron Ockerman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Elections Officials. “They have great amounts of stress. They don’t feel respected by the state or the public. So they find other employment.”A certain number of departures is normal, and in many cases, experienced subordinates can take over the tasks.But departures can create collateral damage: Promoting an insider to a top elections job leaves a vacancy to be filled at a time when it is increasingly difficult to recruit newcomers to a profession that is only becoming more stressful. Experts also worry that the aura of nastiness and even danger attached to election work will drive away volunteers, many of them older Americans, who are essential to elections in all states except the handful in which residents largely vote by mail.Each election requires many hundreds of thousands of volunteers to staff polls. At a recent meeting of election administrators, roughly half were “really worried” about recruiting enough help for next year’s elections, said David J. Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C.Experts worry that threats to election workers could drive away volunteers, many of whom are older Americans.Anna Watts for The New York TimesLike Ms. Patrick, of the election officials association, Mr. Becker said he expected that any election-season staffing problems next year would be localized, not widespread. He noted, for example, that groups that are new to recruiting poll workers, such as sports teams, universities and private businesses, are helping to find volunteers.One wild card is the extent to which threats to election workers and other attempts to disrupt the vote will ramp up as the presidential-year political atmosphere kicks in.Harassment and threats against election officials were widely reported in the months after former President Donald J. Trump began to claim falsely that fraud had cost him a victory in the 2020 election. But election officials say that the threats have not stopped since then.In June, the downtown office of Paul López, the Denver clerk and recorder, was attacked overnight with a fusillade of bullets, pockmarking the building’s facade and a ballot drop box and bursting through a window into an office cubicle. And from mid-July to mid-August, the Maricopa County elections office in Phoenix recorded 140 violent threats, including one warning that officials would be “tied and dragged by a car,” Reuters reported.The challenges go beyond threats to demands that can make the requirements of the job feel limitless.In the last year, for example, election offices nationwide have been bombarded with requests, usually from election skeptics and allies of Mr. Trump, for millions of pages of public records relating to voter rolls and internal election operations. Similarly, offices in some states were hit this year with challenges to the legitimacy of thousands of voter registrations.In both cases, the ostensible purpose was to serve as a check on the integrity of the ballot. The practical effect — and sometimes the intent, experts say — has been to disrupt election preparations and, in some cases, to make it harder for some people to vote.“It’s impacting thousands of election officers,” Ms. Patrick said. “It isn’t the case that those who are driving the narrative are numerous. But we know there are large numbers of people listening to them and reiterating what they hear.”Election offices nationwide have been bombarded with requests for millions of pages of public records relating to voter rolls and internal election operations.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesSome of the language is beyond the bounds of normal political discourse.Mr. Trump, in a speech in New Hampshire this month used language more in keeping with fascism than democracy when he threatened to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”Such toxic language has an effect, said Rachel Kleinfeld, an expert on political violence and the rule of law at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C.“There is a very clear link between the rhetoric of politicians and other leaders who both dehumanize and posit another group as a threat to incidents of political violence,” she said. “Trump himself seems to have a particular knack for this.”“What’s distressing,” Ms. Kleinfeld added, “is not just that election officials are quite worried by these threats, but that they’re not dissipating” in what should have been a quiet period between national elections.Ms. Patrick said she was distressed as well. “I feel like we’re in a very tenuous time, but there are bright lights to see,” she said. “In 2022, we had candidates who lost and conceded admirably and civilly. This month, we saw people continuing to serve as poll workers and people raising their hands to run for office on platforms of truth and legitimacy. As long as we have people who are willing to believe in facts, we’ll get through this.” More

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      El lenguaje de Trump alarma por su tendencia al autoritarismo

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

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

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