Trump, Donald J

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      Trump Twists Harris’s Position on Fentanyl After She Called for a Border Crackdown

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      When Vice President Kamala Harris visited the southern border on Friday, she called fentanyl a “scourge on our country” and said that as president she would “make it a top priority to disrupt the flow of fentanyl coming into the United States.”Ms. Harris pledged to give more resources to law enforcement officials on the front lines, including additional personnel and machines that can detect fentanyl in vehicles. And she said she would take aim at the “global fentanyl supply chain,” vowing to “double the resources for the Department of Justice to extradite and prosecute transnational criminal organizations and the cartels.”But that was not how her opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, characterized her position on Sunday at a rally in Erie, Pa., where he made a false accusation against Ms. Harris that seemed intended to play on the fears and traumas of voters in communities that have been ravaged by fentanyl.“She even wants to legalize fentanyl,” Mr. Trump said during a speech that stretched for 109 minutes. It was the second straight day that Mr. Trump had amplified the same false claim about Ms. Harris; he did so on Saturday in Wisconsin.The former president did not offer context for his remarks, but his campaign pointed to an American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire that Ms. Harris had filled out in 2019 during her unsuccessful candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.A question asking if Ms. Harris supported the decriminalization at the federal level of all drug possession for personal use appeared to be checked “yes.” Ms. Harris wrote that it was “long past time that we changed our outdated and discriminatory criminalization of marijuana” and said that she favored treating drug addiction as a public health issue, focusing on rehabilitation instead of incarceration.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 Says He’s in Danger. So Why Did He Seek Out the Embrace of 100,000 Fans?

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      After two assassination attempts, the former president seems to be relishing the dangers of his job. Some at the Georgia-Alabama football game wondered if his appearance was wise.Chicken tenders and cynicism were flying through the air.It was Saturday night in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and former President Donald J. Trump was in the bowels of Bryant-Denny Stadium at the University of Alabama, surrounded by screaming football fans. He began hurling boxes of chicken at them. His aides filmed his every movement, uploading the footage to social media.One popular pro-Trump influencer reposted a video of Mr. Trump traipsing through the concourse, writing: “There have been two assassination attempts on this man in the past three months and he walks into a stadium full of 100,000 people like a boss. Next week he’s returning to the site where he was shot. Total badass.”It was a perfect encapsulation of the ways in which Mr. Trump and those around him have plied the plots against his life for political benefit.The shooting in Butler, Pa., which left two men dead, including the gunman, was a terrifying event that was rewatched endlessly in the era of social media streaming. And it was shocking how close a second would-be assassin got to the former president weeks later at his golf club in Florida. These near misses have rattled the country and stirred memories of dark chapters in American political history.Mr. Trump plans to return to Butler for a rally on Oct. 5, and he relives these attempts on his life at nearly every campaign stop. Lately he has taken to saying that he has one of the most dangerous professions in the world, more dangerous than racecar driving or bull riding. He has bragged about the mortal danger in which he finds himself (“they only go after consequential presidents”); used it as evidence of divine intervention (“God has now spared my life — it must have been God, thank you — not once, but twice”) and as inspiration for set design (he decorated the stage at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee with images of his bloodied face).There has been a new assassination threat against him from Iran, as retaliation for ordering the killing of the Iranian general Qassim Suleimani in early 2020, and some recent campaign events have been scaled back, modified or canceled altogether. “I am surrounded by more men, guns, and weapons than I have ever seen before,” he wrote on Truth Social last week.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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      Harris y Trump están empatados en Míchigan y Wisconsin, según las encuestas

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      La contienda se ha estrechado en dos de los estados disputados del norte, según las encuestas de The New York Times/Siena College.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]La vicepresidenta Kamala Harris y el expresidente Donald Trump están en una contienda aún más apretada en los estados en disputa de Míchigan y Wisconsin que hace solo siete semanas, según las nuevas encuestas de The New York Times y Siena College.La ventaja de Harris de principios de agosto se ha visto ligeramente reducida por la fortaleza de Trump en cuestiones económicas, según las encuestas, un hecho potencialmente preocupante para la vicepresidenta, dado que la economía sigue siendo el tema más importante para los votantes.A menos de 40 días de las elecciones, la contienda está esencialmente empatada en Míchigan, con Harris recibiendo el 48 por ciento de apoyo entre los votantes probables y Trump obteniendo el 47 por ciento, bien dentro del margen de error de la encuesta. En Wisconsin, un estado donde las encuestas suelen exagerar el apoyo a los demócratas, Harris tiene un 49 por ciento, frente al 47 por ciento de Trump.Los sondeos también revelan que Harris aventaja en nueve puntos porcentuales a Trump en el segundo distrito electoral de Nebraska, cuyo único voto electoral podría ser decisivo en el Colegio Electoral. En un escenario posible, el distrito podría dar a Harris exactamente los 270 votos electorales que necesitaría para ganar las elecciones si ganara Míchigan, Wisconsin y Pensilvania, y Trump capturara los estados en disputa del Cinturón del Sol, donde las encuestas de Times/Siena muestran que está por delante.El Times y el Siena College también analizaron la contienda presidencial en Ohio, que no se considera un estado en disputa para obtener la Casa Blanca, pero tiene una de las contiendas senatoriales más competitivas del país. Trump lidera por seis puntos en Ohio, mientras que el senador demócrata Sherrod Brown aventaja a su oponente republicano, Bernie Moreno, por cuatro puntos.How the polls compare More

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      To Beat Donald Trump, Kamala Harris Needs to Answer One Question

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      Kamala Harris is at the halfway point between when she officially became the Democratic presidential nominee and Election Day. Her ascent has been remarkable. She is beating Donald Trump in most national polls and is in statistical dead heats in every battleground state.But she has more work to do. According to a recent New York Times poll, 31 percent of voters expressed the desire to know more about her. To win in 37 days, there is one question she needs to answer: Why? Why do you want to be the president, why are you the right leader for this moment and why does it matter to voters? She has proved her credentials, prosecuted the case against Mr. Trump and clarified some policy views, but not her why. That’s what the American people want to know about her.It’s a fundamental question — and one that stumps too many political candidates.How she answers will determine whether she can convince those undecided voters and drive record turnout among Democratic base voters. My suggestion for the vice president: Go big and take more calculated risks.First, cut back on the incessant focus on Mr. Trump. By now, almost everyone who could be persuaded by the case against him has heard it.Second, trade the massive rallies for smaller, town-hall-style events in battleground states. While rallies are meant to entertain, town halls create the conditions for Ms. Harris to dig into her why and directly address voters, without the pressure for applause lines.The town hall format plays to Ms. Harris’s strengths. I served as Ms. Harris’s communications director in her early days in the White House, and the leader I witnessed in those late-night meetings in the West Wing was compassionate, funny and warm. She sees people and has a heart for their circumstances, hopes and dreams. Those qualities are what make her the right leader for this moment and are her greatest contrast points with Mr. Trump. The intimate setting of a town hall will expose voters to those qualities and add more dimensions to what already excites them about her.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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      Why the World’s Biggest Powers Can’t Stop a Middle East War

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      The United States’ ability to influence events in the Mideast has waned, and other major nations have essentially been onlookers.Over almost a year of war in the Middle East, major powers have proved incapable of stopping or even significantly influencing the fighting, a failure that reflects a turbulent world of decentralized authority that seems likely to endure.Stop-and-start negotiations between Israel and Hamas to end the fighting in Gaza, pushed by the United States, have repeatedly been described by the Biden administration as on the verge of a breakthrough, only to fail. The current Western-led attempt to avert a full-scale Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon amounts to a scramble to avert disaster. Its chances of success seem deeply uncertain after the Israeli killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah on Friday.“There’s more capability in more hands in a world where centrifugal forces are far stronger than centralizing ones,” said Richard Haass, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The Middle East is the primary case study of this dangerous fragmentation.”The killing of Mr. Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah over more than three decades and the man who built the Shiite organization into one of the most powerful nonstate armed forces in the world, leaves a vacuum that Hezbollah will most likely take a long time to fill. It is a major blow to Iran, the chief backer of Hezbollah, that may even destabilize the Islamic Republic. Whether full-scale war will come to Lebanon remains unclear.“Nasrallah represented everything for Hezbollah, and Hezbollah was the advance arm of Iran,” said Gilles Kepel, a leading French expert on the Middle East and the author of a book on the world’s upheaval since Oct. 7. “Now the Islamic Republic is weakened, perhaps mortally, and one wonders who can even give an order for Hezbollah today.”For many years, the United States was the only country that could bring constructive pressure to bear on both Israel and Arab states. It engineered the 1978 Camp David Accords that brought peace between Israel and Egypt, and the Israel-Jordan peace of 1994. Just over three decades ago, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Yasir Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, shook hands on the White House lawn in the name of peace, only for the fragile hope of that embrace to erode steadily.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’s Answer to Harris’s Border Trip: Calling Her ‘Mentally Disabled’

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      The day after Vice President Kamala Harris visited the southern border and pledged to crack down on asylum and beef up security, former President Donald J. Trump unleashed a string of sharply personal attacks on her at a rally on Saturday, expressing contempt for her intelligence and calling her “mentally disabled.”In a dark, often rambling speech lasting longer than an hour, Mr. Trump — whose advisers have urged him to focus on policy issues rather than on personal jabs — notably escalated his attacks against Ms. Harris. Mr. Trump, who has often questioned President Biden’s mental abilities, told supporters at a rally in Prairie du Chien, Wis., that “Joe Biden became mentally impaired; Kamala was born that way.”Mr. Trump then tied Ms. Harris to the Biden administration’s border policies, adding, “And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.” Later, he criticized her remarks at the border on Friday as “bullshit.”It was a startling series of broadsides in the midst of a presidential campaign, even for a candidate who seems to delight in offensive remarks. Mr. Trump’s speech in Prairie du Chien, a town of about 5,000 people along the Mississippi River, was meant to serve as a response to Ms. Harris’s border visit, in Douglas, Ariz., where she promised to crack down on asylum and called for tougher punishments against those who cross the border illegally. Those positions, an attempt to address a political vulnerability, made up the core of one of the toughest speeches on immigration and border policy that a Democrat has made in a generation.But Mr. Trump, who stood surrounded by posters of undocumented immigrants accused of violent crimes, attacked Ms. Harris for being a political opportunist. And he claimed that she bore responsibility for migrants who have come into the country illegally and committed crimes.“She is a disaster,” Mr. Trump said. “And she is not ever going to do anything for the border, and she didn’t even want to get tough now, except her poll numbers were tanking.”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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      Vance Criticizes Ukraine’s President a Day After His Meeting With Trump

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      A day after former President Donald J. Trump met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, criticized the Ukrainian president Saturday during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania.Speaking in Newtown, Pa., near Philadelphia, Mr. Vance opened his speech by criticizing Mr. Zelensky for having toured an ammunition factory in Scranton with the state’s governor, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat.“He came to campaign with the Democratic leadership of this country,” Mr. Vance said in Newtown. “We spent $200 billion on Ukraine. You know what I wish Zelensky would do when he comes to the United States of America? Say thank you to the people of Pennsylvania and everybody else.”In fact, Mr. Zelensky did use his visit to the plant to thank the United States for its support, as well as to thank the workers in Scranton for manufacturing artillery shells to support Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky told the 400 workers churning out shells to support the war effort that they “have saved millions of Ukrainians.” He added in a message on social media that “it is in places like this where you can truly feel that the democratic world can prevail.”The visit to the munitions factory had scandalized Republican lawmakers, who accused the trip’s organizers of engaging in partisan campaigning ahead of the election. Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House, called for Ukraine to fire its ambassador to Washington over the episode.Mr. Vance has been a vocal opponent of American aid to Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky called Mr. Vance “too radical,” in a recent interview in The New Yorker for making remarks he saw as suggesting that Ukraine give up territory in exchange for a peace deal with Russia. That prompted Mr. Vance to hit back from the campaign trail in Michigan on Wednesday, saying, “I don’t appreciate Zelensky coming to this country and telling the American taxpayer what they ought to do.” More

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      The Fans Want to Watch Football. Trump and Walz Will Be There, Too.

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      Donald Trump and Tim Walz are attending college games on Saturday that will draw plenty of viewers in the swing states of Michigan and Georgia.For college football fans, they are temples of the sport: the University of Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium and the Big House at the University of Michigan.But to the presidential campaigns, they are this Saturday’s soundstages: ready-made stops for former President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the Democratic nominee for vice president, to try to prove their Everyman mettle to any battleground-state voters who might be in the stands or watching from afar.“College football in the fall is the only place where you can find 100,000 potential voters in one location and you don’t have to pay for it,” said Angi Horn, a Republican strategist and Alabama football loyalist.“To pay for the amount of coverage and publicity and a crowd like that would cost millions,” she added. “They’re getting it for free — and you get to see a really good football game.”Mr. Trump is headed to Tuscaloosa, Ala., where the second-ranked Georgia Bulldogs, the gridiron pride of the neighboring swing state, will meet the No. 4 Alabama Crimson Tide. Mr. Walz is scheduled to visit Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, trawling for votes in one of the country’s biggest battlegrounds as the 12th-ranked Michigan Wolverines, last season’s national champions, host Minnesota’s Golden Gophers.Mr. Trump and Mr. Walz cannot reliably assume they will be Saturday’s star attractions as the campaigns encroach on a sport that is a cultural mainstay and surpasses Washington for ancient feuds and partisan obsessives. But their visits have been designed to invite a crush of local news coverage and social media posts and, their allies hope, cameos during national broadcasts that will soak up viewers in Michigan and Georgia.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