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    Elon Musk Leaps to Trump’s Side in Rally Appearance

    Elon Musk, the billionaire head of Tesla and SpaceX, strode onto the stage to cheers at Donald J. Trump’s rally on Saturday night, lifted his arms above his head and jumped into the air — twice — exposing his navel as his shirt rode up.Wearing an “Occupy Mars” shirt underneath a sport coat, he nodded to his black “Make America Great Again” baseball cap.“As you can see, I’m not just MAGA, I’m dark MAGA,” he said.Mr. Musk publicly endorsed Mr. Trump in the minutes after a gunman tried to kill the former president on July 13 in Butler, Pa., in a post on X, the social media platform he owns. So when Mr. Trump returned Saturday to hold a rally at the same venue where he was attacked, he brought Mr. Musk along.In addition to bouncing up and down onstage, he urged the crowd to “Fight! Fight! Fight!” — an echo of the words Mr. Trump had uttered after the attack.The crowd seemed to know Mr. Musk, who drew cheers as he was introduced by the former president. Mr. Trump lavished praise on Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, for building an American car company and saving “free speech” with X.”President Trump must win to preserve the Constitution,” Mr. Musk said, after bounding to the mic with his hands in the air. “He must win to preserve democracy in America.”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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump prometió hacer público su historial médico pero sigue sin hacerlo

    Si vuelve a ser elegido, se convertirá en el presidente de mayor edad al final de su mandato. Sin embargo, se niega a revelar incluso la información médica básica.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]Como candidato presidencial en 2015, Donald Trump se negó a publicar su historial médico, ofreciendo en su lugar una carta de cuatro párrafos de su médico personal en la que proclamaba que sería “la persona más sana jamás elegida para la presidencia”.En 2020, cuando estuvo hospitalizado por COVID-19 y se presentaba a la reelección, los médicos de Trump dieron una información mínima sobre su estado, que, según se supo más tarde, fue mucho más grave de lo que dejó entrever las descripciones públicas.En 2024, días antes de convertirse en el candidato presidencial republicano oficial por tercera vez, fue rozado por una bala de un posible asesino, pero su campaña no celebró una sesión informativa sobre su estado, no publicó los registros hospitalarios ni puso a disposición a los médicos de urgencias que lo trataron para ser entrevistados.Ahora, a poco más de un mes de unas elecciones que podrían convertir a Trump, de 78 años, en la persona de mayor edad en ocupar la presidencia (82 años, 7 meses y 6 días cuando su mandato termine en enero de 2029), se niega a revelar incluso la información más básica sobre su salud.Si gana, Trump podría entrar en el Despacho Oval con una serie de problemas potencialmente preocupantes, según los expertos médicos: factores de riesgo cardíaco, posibles secuelas del intento de asesinato de julio y el deterioro cognitivo que se produce de forma natural con la edad, entre otros.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Stop the Steal’ Is About Not Trusting Voters

    One of the key points in the unsealed legal filing presented by the special counsel Jack Smith in the criminal case against Donald Trump for conspiracy to subvert the 2020 presidential election is that both Trump and his allies were well aware that he had lost the election. The evidence, Smith says, shows that Trump knew he didn’t have a case. But rather than accept the verdict of the voting public, Trump led the effort to pressure officials to overturn election results.“With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results,” Smith’s prosecutors wrote. “The throughline of these efforts was deceit: the defendant’s and co-conspirators’ knowingly false claims of election fraud.”Smith shows that Trump did nothing to stop the mob from forming on Jan. 6 and was indifferent to the safety of both Vice President Mike Pence, presiding over the Electoral College count at the Capitol, and members of Congress. Using evidence collected through interviews with people working in the White House at the time, prosecutors recreated a key moment during the chaos, when Trump was sitting alone in the White House dining room, watching Fox News.“It was at that point — alone, watching news in real time, and with knowledge that rioters had breached the Capitol building — that the defendant issued the 2:24 p.m. tweet attacking Pence for refusing the defendant’s entreaties to join the conspiracy and help overturn the results of the election,” prosecutors wrote. “One minute later, the Secret Service was forced to evacuate Pence to a secure location in the Capitol.”I don’t want to rehash the events of Jan. 6 here — although if JD Vance’s refusal to state the outcome of the 2020 presidential election is any indication, we have no choice but to rehash those events again and again between now and Nov. 5 — but I will say this: It is a misunderstanding of Donald Trump to say that he did this because he rejected his defeat at the hands of Joe Biden. It is probably better to say that Trump tried to overturn the election results because he simply does not accept the idea that voters should be allowed to defeat him.We saw some of this in 2016, when he refused to say whether he would accept the election results, and we’re seeing it now, when Trump has openly said that whether he accepts the results is contingent on whether he wins. Of course, Trump’s allies in states such as Georgia and Arizona are also working incessantly to sabotage the process as much as possible and give the former president some basis for rejecting the results should he lose.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    America Needs a President

    Last week’s column was devoted to uncertainties about how the next president would handle the deteriorating situation in Ukraine, where America’s proxy and ally is slowly losing ground to Russia, while the United States seems trapped by its commitment to a maximal victory and unable to pivot to a strategy for peace.One could argue that the Middle East suddenly presents the opposite situation for the United States: After the last two weeks of warmaking and targeted assassinations, the position of our closest ally seems suddenly more secure, while our enemies look weaker and more vulnerable. Israel is dealing blow after blow to Hezbollah and Iran’s wider “axis of resistance,” the Iranian response suggests profound limits to their capacities, and the regional balance of power looks worse for America’s revisionist rivals than it did even a month ago.Look deeper, though, and both the strategic deterioration in Eastern Europe and the strategic improvement in the Middle East have something important in common. In both cases, the American government has found itself stuck in a supporting role, unable to decide upon a clear self-interested policy, while a regional power that’s officially dependent on us sets the agenda instead.In Ukraine this is working out badly because the government in Kyiv overestimated its own capacities to win back territory in last year’s counteroffensive. In the Middle East it’s now working out better for U.S. interests because Israeli intelligence and the Israeli military have been demonstrating a remarkable capacity to disrupt, degrade and destroy their foes.In neither case, though, does the world’s most powerful country seem to have a real handle on the situation, a plan that it’s executing or a clear means of setting and accomplishing its goals.Or as The Wall Street Journal reported this week, as Israel takes the fight to Hezbollah, “the Biden administration increasingly resembles a spectator, with limited insight into what its closest Middle East ally is planning — and lessened influence over its decisions.”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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    JD Smirks His Way Into the Future

    When I’ve covered the campaigns of women on presidential tickets, the question invariably arises: “Is she tough enough to be commander in chief?”With the bubbly Geraldine Ferraro, a lot of voters had their doubts.There was less worry with Hillary Clinton. She was a gold-plated hawk who voted to let President George W. Bush invade Iraq and persuaded President Barack Obama to join in bombing Muammar el-Qaddafi’s Libya.It is not surprising, with cascading conflicts, that Republicans are leveling the toughness question at Kamala Harris. This week the Trump/Vance campaign released an ad called “Weakness.” (Donald Trump also ran an ad called “Weakness” against Nikki Haley, a hawk.)The ad’s subtext is clearly gender, trying to exploit Kamala’s problems winning over Black and white working-class men.In a Times/Siena College poll last month, 55 percent of respondents said Trump was respected by foreign leaders while 47 percent said that of Harris.The ad claims Harris is not tough enough to deal with China, Russia, Iran or Hamas. It features actors playing Vladimir Putin, Hamas fighters and a tea-sipping ayatollah watching videos of the candidate who wants to be the first woman president. It ends with four clips of Kamala dancing — a lot better than Trump does — and a clip of Trump walking on a tarmac with a military officer and a Secret Service agent. The tag line is: “America doesn’t need another TikTok performer. We need the strength that will protect us.”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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump vs. Harris Would Be Nothing Without Myths

    Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are making their appeals to the American electorate on the basis of personality, character and policy. But they are also framing themselves as actors in the American story — the events of the recent past and the deeper narrative of U.S. history carried by the symbol-rich stories of our national mythology.There has been very little common ground expressed between the parties in this election, except the belief that a victory by the opposition would be apocalyptic. Even when they invoke the same historical references, they present them in radically different ways. To Democrats, Jan. 6 was a shameful assault on democracy. To many Republicans, it was a patriotic protest of a rigged election.It’s as if we are living in two different countries, each with a different understanding of who counts as American.Each candidate is trying to pitch the contest to voters as a heroic episode in the unfolding of American history and invites them to imagine themselves as players in the narrative.In the “story wars,” Mr. Trump has an advantage over Ms. Harris: Conservatives have devised over decades a store of established mythological American “scripts,” something liberals have failed to do.Among the big issues at stake in the 2024 election, for both the campaigns and the country, is no less than shaping what it means to be an American and who gets to have power.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    5 Takeaways From Melania Trump’s Book: Abortion Rights, 2020 Election and More

    Shining a little more light on her mysterious life, her memoir details her support for abortion rights, her doubts about the 2020 election and her explanation for that “I really don’t care” jacket.Melania Trump’s new memoir offers a few new glimpses into a life she has carefully walled off from the public, but readers hoping to understand one of the most mysterious first ladies in modern history will not make it past the gilded front gate.First ladies write memoirs because they want to be understood. (The hefty contract doesn’t hurt, either.) Hillary Clinton wrote about her husband’s affair with an intern and the poisonous political process that followed. Michelle Obama revealed that she was angrier with her husband’s critics — one in particular — than she had ever let on while he was in office. Laura Bush used her book to voice her support for gay marriage and abortion rights.It is almost as if they must survive the role before they can write about it.But in Mrs. Trump’s telling, her time as first lady was largely smooth sailing. Her book, an early copy of which was obtained by The New York Times before its release next week, does not reveal her to harbor differing views from her husband, beyond her support for abortion rights.In fact, her grievances — with the news media, with “the opposition” and with aides she believes failed her and her husband — sound a lot like her husband’s, only dressed up in couture.Here are five takeaways.The big revelation is that she supports abortion rights.Mrs. Trump made headlines this week when a reported excerpt from her book revealed that she supported abortion rights — a notable position given that her husband appointed three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn a constitutional right to the procedure.“A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes,” Mrs. Trump writes. “Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body.”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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    In North Carolina Town Hall, Trump Makes a Series of Promises to Appeal to Veterans

    At the end of his town hall in North Carolina on Friday, former President Donald J. Trump was asked by a former Air Force pilot whether he would create a panel to keep “woke generals” out of the Defense Department.Mr. Trump not only agreed, but also went a step further. “I’m going to put you on that task force,” he said, to cheers from the crowd.The remark was the last in a series of promises the former president made as he answered preselected questions from voters in Fayetteville, N.C., an area with a large military population. It’s a dynamic that happens often at Mr. Trump’s events, in which he makes direct commitments on small and large issues to appeal to and energize his specific audience.He promised that his proposed missile defense system, an American clone of Israel’s Iron Dome, would be made in North Carolina. He pledged to raise military pay. And before taking a question, he promised to restore the name of nearby Fort Liberty, the largest U.S. military base, back to Fort Bragg, which honored a Confederate general from a slave-owning family. The name was changed in June 2023 as part of the U.S. military’s examination of its history with race.Attendees cheered as Mr. Trump arrived for the town hall at Crown Arena in Fayetteville, N.C.Kent Nishimura for The New York TimesSitting onstage at the Crown Arena in front of several thousand people, many of whom said they were active-duty military service members or veterans, Mr. Trump took eight questions from audience members. Like the event’s moderator, Representative Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida and a veteran, the participants teed him up to offer lines from his stump speech. Many of the questions echoed his exaggerated and false claims about immigration, approved of his vow to conduct massive deportations of undocumented immigrants and acknowledged his fear-inspiring predictions of global war.All Mr. Trump had to do, largely, was agree. He repeated his false claims that Democrats cheated in the 2020 election and made familiar attacks against the media.Mr. Trump earlier in the day toured parts of Georgia hit by Hurricane Helene, and he claimed that reporters were doing little to cover the storm and the Biden administration’s response.Ms. Luna, a proud and combative ally of Mr. Trump, took the ball and ran with it, and claimed that the administration’s response was intentional. “I do believe that they’ve intentionally, this is my opinion, not helped out those residents, because it’s red communities that are impacted,” she said. More