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      Fox News Sanctioned by Judge for Withholding Evidence in Dominion Case

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      Judge Eric Davis also said an investigation was likely into Fox’s handling of documents and whether it had withheld details about Rupert Murdoch’s corporate role.WILMINGTON, Del. — The judge overseeing Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News said on Wednesday that he was imposing a sanction on the network and would very likely start an investigation into whether Fox’s legal team had deliberately withheld evidence, scolding the lawyers for not being “straightforward” with him.The rebuke came after lawyers for Dominion, which is suing for defamation, revealed a number of instances in which Fox’s lawyers had not turned over evidence in a timely manner. That evidence included recordings of the Fox News host Maria Bartiromo talking with former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers, Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, which Dominion said had been turned over only a week ago.In imposing the sanction on Fox, Judge Eric M. Davis of the Delaware Superior Court ruled that if Dominion had to do additional depositions, or redo any, then Fox would have to “do everything they can to make the person available, and it will be at a cost to Fox.”He also said he would very likely appoint a special master — an outside lawyer — to investigate Fox’s handling of discovery of documents and the question of whether Fox had inappropriately withheld details about the scope of Rupert Murdoch’s role. Since Dominion filed its suit in early 2021, Fox had argued that Mr. Murdoch and Fox Corporation, the parent company, should not be part of the case because Mr. Murdoch, the chair, and other senior executives had nothing to do with running Fox News. But in the past few days, Fox disclosed to Dominion that Mr. Murdoch was a corporate officer at Fox News.Dominion, a voting technology company, accused Fox and some of the network’s executives and hosts of smearing its reputation by linking it to a nonexistent conspiracy to rig voting machines in the 2020 presidential election. Fox had said that it was just reporting on newsworthy allegations from Mr. Trump, who was then the president, as well as his lawyers and supporters, who told Fox’s hosts and producers that they would prove their allegations in court.Fox’s lawyers had only recently disclosed that Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of Fox Corp., was also the executive chair of Fox News, a role that pointed to more responsibility for its broadcasts.Mike Segar/ReutersJury selection starts on Thursday, and the trial is scheduled to begin on Monday. It wasn’t immediately clear whether Dominion would avail itself of the judge’s ruling allowing its lawyers to conduct additional depositions. But it was clear from Judge Davis’s stern reprimand of Fox’s lawyers on Wednesday — and similarly piqued remarks from him during another hearing on Tuesday — that he was losing patience. The judge told Fox’s lawyers to retain all internal communications, starting from March 20 of this year, that related to Mr. Murdoch’s role at Fox News. That was the date the lawyers submitted a letter to Judge Davis asking that Mr. Murdoch and other Fox Corporation executives not be forced to testify at the trial in person, saying they had “limited knowledge of pertinent facts.” The letter did not mention that Mr. Murdoch was also a Fox News executive.Judge Davis said he would weigh whether any additional sanctions should be placed on Fox.He also said he was very concerned that there had been “misrepresentations to the court.”“This is very serious,” Judge Davis said.Davida Brook, a lawyer for Dominion, told the court that they were still receiving relevant documents from Fox, with the trial just days away.“We keep on learning about more relevant information from individuals other than Fox,” she said. “And to be honest we don’t really know what to do about that, but that is the situation we find ourselves in.”She pointed to one email that had recently been handed over, between Ms. Bartiromo and Ms. Powell on Nov. 7, 2020. In the email, Ms. Powell was forwarding evidence to Ms. Bartiromo that Dominion said was proof Fox had acted recklessly: an email from a woman Ms. Powell relied on as a source who exhibited signs of delusion, claiming, for instance, that she was aware of voter fraud because she had special powers, including the ability to time travel.“I just spoke to Eric and told him you gave very imp info,” Ms. Bartiromo wrote back to Ms. Powell, most likely referring to Eric Trump, Mr. Trump’s son.Ms. Brook also played two recordings for the court of pre-interviews, which are preliminary conversations before an on-air interview, conducted by Ms. Bartiromo that Ms. Brook said were received only after they were revealed in legal complaints filed by Abby Grossberg, a former Fox News producer who is suing the network.The evidence included recordings of the Fox News host Maria Bartiromo talking with former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers, Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani.Roy Rochlin/Getty ImagesIn one of the recordings, on Nov. 8, 2020, Ms. Bartiromo asks Mr. Giuliani about Dominion’s software. In it, he admits that he doesn’t have hard evidence to back up the claim that the software could be manipulated, saying it was “being analyzed right now.” When Ms. Bartiromo asks about a conspiracy theory circulating at the time that claimed Dominion was connected to Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, Mr. Giuliani says: “Yeah, I’ve read that. I can’t prove that yet.”A Fox News spokeswoman said in a statement on Wednesday: “As counsel explained to the court, Fox produced the supplemental information from Ms. Grossberg when we first learned it.”Justin Nelson, another lawyer for Dominion, told Judge Davis that had Fox Corporation, the parent company, been quicker to share the information about Mr. Murdoch’s role as an officer of Fox News, the universe of documents Dominion could have obtained during discovery from him and other Fox Corporation executives would have been much larger. He also said that Fox might have failed to produce relevant documents.“We have been litigating based upon this false premise that Rupert Murdoch wasn’t an officer of Fox News,” he said.The question of whether Mr. Murdoch made decisions as a corporate officer of Fox News cuts to the heart of Dominion’s case. It has tried to prove — and Fox has repeatedly denied — that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executive of Fox Corporation, were closely involved in overseeing Fox News coverage of the 2020 election. Their decisions, Dominion has argued, directly affected what Fox broadcast about the voting technology company and, more broadly, fed a climate inside the network where hosts and producers amplified misinformation as part of a plan to win back viewers who had stopped watching after Mr. Trump’s loss.Proving so would mean that the larger Fox Corporation — not just Fox News — could also be found liable for defaming Dominion.Mr. Nelson argued that the case should be split in two so that Dominion lawyers could separately pursue action against Fox Corporation now that Dominion could obtain more information from executives. Judge Davis declined, but he expressed concern that Fox’s legal team had not been forthcoming with the information, despite being asked multiple times whether Mr. Murdoch was a corporate officer for Fox News.“I need people to tell me the truth,” he said. “And by the way, omission is a lie.”Dan K. Webb, a lawyer for Fox, pushed back on the assertion from Dominion, saying that both he and even Mr. Murdoch didn’t realize he also held the executive chair role at Fox News.“On a day-to-day basis, Mr. Rupert Murdoch had nothing to do with making decisions with what goes on the air on Fox News,” Mr. Webb said.In an emailed statement, a Fox News spokeswoman said: “Rupert Murdoch has been listed as executive chairman of Fox News in our S.E.C. filings since 2019 and this filing was referenced by Dominion’s own attorney during his deposition.”Judge Davis admonished Fox’s lawyers, saying he had previously asked for clarity on who had corporate responsibilities at Fox News but had not heard back.“What do I do with attorneys that aren’t straightforward with me?” he asked. More

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      Criss-Crossing the ’24 Campaign Trail, Before the Campaign Is Official

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      A handful of prominent Republicans, including Tim Scott and Ron DeSantis, have been testing the waters for months, mindful of the biggest fish out there: Donald Trump.Two months ago, Senator Tim Scott stood before cameras and reporters in South Carolina, leaning heavily on his biography and the Civil War history of his native Charleston for a soft launch of a presidential campaign.Fast-forward to Wednesday in Iowa, where Mr. Scott announced a presidential exploratory committee, and the soft launch remained just as soft.If his video announcement sounded familiar — with a remembrance of the battle of Fort Sumter at the start of the Civil War, recollections from his rise from poverty and a denunciation of the politics of racial division — it should have. After two months, his campaign argument had not changed, nor had an actual campaign — he still is not a candidate.Mr. Scott’s reluctance to officially join the 2024 Republican field is shared by others who are wary of the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump. While Mr. Scott explores, Ron DeSantis delays, Mike Pence procrastinates and Mike Pompeo ponders, all hoping that forces beyond the voters will derail Mr. Trump’s third run for the White House without their having to engage in combat with the pugnacious ex-president.“They see the writing’s on the wall — Trump is going to win the primary,” said Al Baldasaro, a Republican former state lawmaker in New Hampshire and an outspoken Trump fan. “Maybe they’re hoping he’ll go to jail or get fined or something, but it’s not going to stop him.”The situation for Republicans has helped give rise to several unofficial White House runs that increasingly look and sound like official White House runs.Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Trump’s biggest rival, will be in New Hampshire on Thursday to meet the voters who will cast the first ballots in the Republican primaries next year — although still technically as governor of Florida, and not as a declared candidate for president.Mr. Pence, Mr. Trump’s former vice president, will swing by the National Rifle Association’s annual conference in Indianapolis at the end of the week before visiting a Republican National Committee donor conference in Nashville — still not as a candidate.Mr. Pompeo, the former secretary of state, has been making the rounds in early-voting states — just not as a candidate. And former Representative Mike Rogers was a long way from his native Michigan when he found himself chatting about current events last week in New Hampshire — as a very concerned citizen.Former Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to appear at a National Rifle Association event in Indianapolis.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThe so-called shadow campaign ahead of the Republican primary contest is not all that unusual, but the odd minuet of 2023 has one unique characteristic — the noncandidates are not shadowboxing one another, but the first declared candidate, Mr. Trump..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“The new dynamic now compared to ’11 or even ’07 is that everyone recognizes that when you enter the ring you’re in the cross hairs of Donald Trump,” said Alice Stewart, an aide to Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign in 2012, who counseled potential candidates to line up their money, infrastructure and message before declaring their candidacies. “The safe space is to be in the early states but not necessarily in the race until you’re ready.”Mr. Trump’s decision to make his candidacy official and early — in November, just after the midterm elections — did not clear the field, as he might have hoped. His ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, formally announced her entry into the Republican race in February. Vivek Ramaswamy, a multimillionaire entrepreneur and author, jumped in a week later. Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas and a Trump critic, entered the fray this month.“I said all along it’s important for the Republican Party to have an alternative to Donald Trump,” Mr. Hutchinson said on Wednesday. “I don’t think it’s a time to hunker down for our party or our country. It’s a time to engage.”But Mr. Trump’s hold on the core Republican voter base and the Republican National Committee’s new winner-take-all primary rules have kept his most formidable rivals circling the runway, awaiting signals that the turbulence has cleared, said Donna Brazile, who was Al Gore’s presidential campaign manager in 2000.It was evident on Wednesday in Mr. Scott’s appearance on the Fox News morning show “Fox & Friends,” when Mr. Scott, the only Black Republican senator, was pressed to explain how he would beat Mr. Trump to the nomination.“If we focus on our uniqueness, we focus on our path to where we are, I believe we give the voters a choice so that they can decide how we move forward,” he answered. “As opposed to trying to have a conversation about how to beat a Republican, I think we’re better off having a conversation about beating Joe Biden.”In the shadow campaign, meanwhile, the maneuvering goes on. Mr. DeSantis has one clear advantage: a national infrastructure, said Ron Kaufman, a longtime Republican presidential strategist and a confidant of Mitt Romney’s in 2012. Jeff Roe, a former aide to Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, has signed on with Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down PAC, where he can bring to bear the infrastructure of his multistate firm Axiom Strategies.But he still needs to declare.By historical standards, it is still early. The last competitive Republican presidential race came in 2016, and by this time there were two major candidates, Mr. Cruz and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, and Mr. Trump, the eventual nominee, did not declare until June 2015.The wide-open primary of 2012 included May 2011 announcements by former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Herman Cain, a former pizza executive. But the eventual nominee, Mr. Romney, did not join the pack until June, and Rick Perry, who at the time was the governor of Texas, waited until that August.The difference this year is that the front-runner is setting the pace. More

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      Trump Says He’ll Still Run For President If Criminally Convicted

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      He made the remarks in an interview with Tucker Carlson, his first time on the program since the release of private text messages showed the Fox News anchor’s repugnance for the former president.Former President Donald J. Trump said Tuesday that he would continue campaigning for the White House even if convicted of a crime.In his first national media interview since pleading not guilty last week to 34 felony charges related to a hush-money scandal during his 2016 White House bid, Mr. Trump complimented the strongmen leaders of several other countries; attacked “sick, radical” Democrats; and indicated that not even a prison sentence would keep him from running for president.“I’d never drop out, it’s not my thing,” Mr. Trump said when asked on Fox News about a potential conviction.In addition to his criminal charges in New York, the former president is facing several other criminal investigations: One is related to his attempts to overturn election results in Georgia, another is into his efforts to hold on to power in Washington after losing re-election and a third is into his handling of classified documents at his home in South Florida.The hourlong interview was also his first with the Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson since private text messages, revealed as part of a $1.6 billion defamation against the cable channel by Dominion Voting Systems, showed Mr. Carlson’s repugnance for the former president.While Mr. Carlson referred to Mr. Trump as “a demonic force, a destroyer,” in one text message in early 2021 and added “I hate him” in another, on Tuesday he traveled to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida for what Mr. Carlson described on his show as “a rare venture outside the studio for us.” The interview consumed his program.“For a man caricatured as an extremist,” Mr. Carlson said about Mr. Trump at the start of the show, “we think you’ll find what he has to say moderate, sensible and wise.”During the interview, most of which was spent on foreign policy, Mr. Trump said that Democratic leaders were a bigger threat to the nation than foreign dictators.Mr. Trump referred to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as “very smart,” said that Saudi Arabia’s leaders were “great people” and called President Xi Jinping of China a “brilliant man.” He also said that “the biggest problem” for the United States wasn’t foreign actors but “these sick, radical people from within” the country.The former president said that he was able to handle Russia and China from the White House, and described an interaction with Mr. Putin in which he told the Russian leader that he couldn’t invade Ukraine. Mr. Trump didn’t mention that he had been impeached for opening a pressure campaign on Ukraine, including an internal push to withhold military aid, to investigate his political rivals.Speaking about his arraignment exactly one week earlier, Mr. Trump said he felt supported by members of the courthouse staff.“It’s a tough, tough place and they were crying,” he said. “They were actually crying. They said, ‘I’m sorry.’” More

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      Cómo hacer que Trump desaparezca

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      Después de llevar más de tres décadas dentro y alrededor de la política, ahora dedico la mayor parte de mi tiempo a lidiar con preguntas políticas en las aulas y en grupos de enfoque. Hay un enigma que me fascina más que los demás: ¿por qué Donald Trump sigue suscitando tanta lealtad y devoción? Y, a diferencia de 2016, ¿puede ganar la candidatura en 2024 un republicano distinto que comparta en gran medida la agenda de Trump, pero no su personalidad?Para responder a estas preguntas, he organizado más de 12 grupos de enfoque con votantes de Trump de todo Estados Unidos; el más reciente fue para Straight Arrow News, el miércoles de la semana pasada por la noche, para entender su mentalidad tras la histórica imputación del expresidente en Manhattan. Muchos se sentían ignorados y olvidados por la clase política profesional antes de Trump, y ahora victimizados y ridiculizados por simpatizar con él. Al igual que los votantes en las primarias republicanas en todo el país, los participantes en los grupos de enfoque siguen respetándolo, la mayoría sigue creyendo en él, casi todos piensan que les robaron las elecciones de 2020 y la mitad sigue queriendo que vuelva a presentarse en 2024.Sin embargo, hay una posible vía para otros aspirantes republicanos a la presidencia.Empieza con una reflexión más detenida sobre sobre las reglas que incumplió y los paradigmas que destruyó Trump en su campaña de 2016, y sobre todos sus errores voluntarios desde entonces. Es un fiel reflejo de los cambios de actitud y económicos que se han producido en Estados Unidos en los últimos 8 años. Y requiere aceptar que vapulearlo e intentar diezmar su base no va a funcionar. Los votantes de Trump están prestando la máxima atención a todos los candidatos. Si creen que la misión de un candidato es derrotar al que consideran su héroe, ese candidato fracasará. Sin embargo, si alguien que aspira a ser candidato o candidata en 2024 los convence de que quiere escucharlos y aprender de ellos, le darán una oportunidad. Marco Rubio y Ted Cruz no entendieron esta dinámica cuando atacaron a Trump en 2016, y por eso fracasaron.De modo que podemos considerar esto un manual de estrategia para los posibles candidatos republicanos, para los votantes de su partido y para los conservadores independientes que quieren a alguien distinto de Trump en 2024; una hoja de ruta estratégica basada en la experiencia con los partidarios de Trump durante los últimos 8 años. Esto es lo que he aprendido de estos grupos de enfoque e investigación.En primer lugar, para vencer a Trump hace falta humildad. Y empieza con reconocer que no puedes ganarte a todos los votantes. No puedes ganarte ni siquiera a la mitad: el apoyo a Trump dentro del Partido Republicano no solo es amplio, sino también profundo. Pero he descubierto, basándome en mis grupos de enfoque desde 2015, que alrededor de un tercio de los votantes de Trump dan prioridad al carácter del país y a las personas que lo dirigen, y eso basta para cambiar el resultado en 2024. No se trata de vencer a Trump compitiendo ideológicamente con él. Se trata de ofrecer a los republicanos el contraste que buscan: un candidato que defienda su agenda, pero con decencia, civismo y un compromiso con la responsabilidad personal y la rendición de cuentas.En segundo lugar, Trump se ha convertido en su propia versión del tan odiado establishment político. Mar-a-Lago se ha convertido en la Grand Central Terminal de los políticos, militantes acérrimos, lobistas y élites desfasadas que han ignorado, olvidado y traicionado al pueblo que representan. Peor aún, con la incesante recaudación de fondos, dirigida a menudo a las personas que menos pueden permitirse donar, Trump se ha convertido en un político profesional que refleja el sistema político para cuya destrucción fue elegido. Durante más de siete años, ha utilizado las mismas consignas, las mismas arengas, las mismas bromas y los mismos lemas. A algunos votantes de Trump les parece bien así. Pero hay una clara forma de atraer a otros votantes republicanos firmemente centrados en el futuro, en vez de volver a litigar por el pasado. Comienza con un simple discurso de campaña en esta línea, más o menos: “Podemos hacerlo mejor. Debemos hacerlo mejor”.En tercer lugar, sé consciente de que el agricultor medio, el pequeño empresario o el veterano de guerra tendrán más peso para el votante de Trump que los famosos y los poderosos. Los avales o los anuncios de campaña de los miembros del Congreso generarán menos apoyos que los testimonios emocionales de personas que, como a muchos partidarios de Trump, les hicieron caer, se levantaron y ahora están ayudando a otras a hacer lo mismo. Solo tienen que ser auténticos —y poder decir que votaron a Trump en 2016 y en 2020— para que no se les pueda pegar la etiqueta del movimiento “Nunca Trump”. Su mejor mensaje: el Trump de hoy no es el Trump de 2015. Con otras palabras: “Donald Trump me respaldó en 2016. Ahora, todo gira en torno a él. Yo no abandoné a Donald Trump. Él me abandonó a mí”.En cuarto lugar, elogia la presidencia de Trump, pero al mismo tiempo critica a la persona. Los grupos de enfoque sobre Trump son increíblemente instructivos para ayudar a diferenciar entre el apasionado apoyo que sus iniciativas y sus logros inspiran a la mayoría de sus votantes y la vergüenza y la frustración que les provocan sus comentarios y su conducta. Por ejemplo, a la mayoría de los republicanos les gusta su discurso duro sobre China, pero les desagrada su actitud intimidatoria en el ámbito nacional. Así que aplaude a su gobierno antes de criticar al hombre: “Donald Trump fue un gran presidente, pero no siempre fue un gran modelo a seguir. Hoy, más que nunca, necesitamos carácter, no solo valor. No tenemos que insultar a la gente para plantear un argumento o marcar la diferencia”.En quinto lugar, enfócate más en los nietos. Millones de votantes de Trump son personas mayores, muy mayores. Adoran a sus nietos, así que habla concretamente de ellos, y sus abuelos también te escucharán: “Confundimos la altisonancia con el liderazgo, la condena con el compromiso. Los valores que enseñamos a nuestros hijos deberían ser los que veamos en nuestro presidente”.La inminente votación sobre el techo de deuda es el gancho perfecto. El aumento del déficit anual con Trump es el tercero mayor, en relación con el tamaño de la economía, de cualquier gestión presidencial estadounidense. Mucho antes de la COVID-19, la Casa Blanca de Trump les dijo a los congresistas republicanos que gastaran más, y ese gasto contribuyó a la actual crisis de deuda. Trump dirá que actuó con responsabilidad fiscal, pero los números no mienten. “No podemos permitirnos estos déficits. No podemos permitirnos esta deuda. No podemos permitirnos a Donald Trump”.En sexto lugar, hay un rasgo de la personalidad sobre el que coinciden casi todos: la aversión a la imagen pía que se da en público mientras en privado se hace gala de la falta de honradez. En una palabra: la hipocresía. Hasta ahora, eso no les ha funcionado a los adversarios de Trump, pero eso es porque los ejemplos no tenían ninguna relevancia personal para sus votantes. Durante su campaña de 2016, Trump criticó a Barack Obama varias veces por sus ocasionales rondas de golf, y prometió no viajar a costa de los contribuyentes. ¿Cuál fue el historial de Trump? Cerca de 300 rondas de golf en sus propios campos en solo cuatro años, que costaron a los esforzados contribuyentes unos 150 millones de dólares en seguridad adicional. Esto quizá parezca una nimiedad, pero si se lleva al escenario del debate, puede ser letal. “Mientras más de la mitad de Estados Unidos gana lo justo para vivir al día, él estaba practicando su juego corto. Y ustedes lo pagaron”.En séptimo lugar, no saldrás elegido solo con los votos de los republicanos. El candidato exitoso deberá atraer también a los independientes. En 2016, Trump prometió a sus votantes que se cansarían de ganar. Pero alejó a los independientes hasta el punto de que abandonaron a los republicanos y se unieron a los demócratas, dándole a Estados Unidos a Nancy Pelosi como presidenta de la Cámara de Representantes en 2018, a Biden como presidente en 2020 y a Charles Schumer como líder de la mayoría en el Senado también en 2020. Un solo escaño en el Senado en 2020 habría paralizado por completo la agenda demócrata. La mayoría de los candidatos avalados por Trump en las reñidas elecciones de mitad de mandato de 2022 perdieron, algo que pocas personas (incluido yo) se esperaban. Si Trump es el candidato en 2024, ¿están seguros los republicanos de que se ganará esta vez a los independientes? Seguramente el expresidente perderá si los republicanos creen que un voto por Trump en las primarias significa que Biden ganará en las generales.Y, en octavo lugar, tienes que penetrar en la caja de resonancia conservadora. Necesitas al menos a una de estas personas de tu parte: Mark Levin, Dennis Prager, Ben Shapiro, Newt Gingrich y, por supuesto, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity y Laura Ingraham. Gracias a la demanda de Dominion, todos sabemos qué dicen los presentadores de Fox News en privado. El reto es conseguir que sean igual de sinceros en público. Eso requiere un candidato tan duro como Trump, pero más comprometido públicamente con la ideología conservadora tradicional, como acabar con el despilfarro de Washington y la capacidad de sacar el trabajo adelante. “Algunas personas quieren hacer una declaración. Yo quiero hacer un cambio”.Entre los probables rivales republicanos de Trump que aspiran a la candidatura, nadie está cerca aún de hacer todas estas cosas, o alguna de ellas. Ron DeSantis solo ha criticado suavemente a Trump, y ha preferido lanzar un ataque total contra Disney. No pasa nada. Tiene tiempo de sobra para poner orden en sus mensajes. Pero cuando él y sus compañeros se suban al escenario del primer debate republicano, en agosto, tendrán una sola oportunidad para mostrar que merecen el puesto al demostrar que entienden al votante de Trump.Para ser claros, si Trump se presenta con una campaña exclusivamente basada en su hoja de servicios en el gobierno, probablemente gane la candidatura. Hasta ahora, ha demostrado ser incapaz de hacerlo. La mayoría de los republicanos aplauden sus éxitos en materia de economía y política exterior, y su impacto en la burocracia y el poder judicial, sobre todo en comparación con su predecesor y ahora su sucesor.Pero ese no es el Donald Trump de 2023. Muchos dejan de celebrarlo cuando se les pide que evalúen las declaraciones públicas de Trump y su conducta, que sigue manteniendo. En 2016, la campaña consistía en lo que Trump podía hacer por ti. Hoy, consiste en lo que se le está haciendo a él. Si se desquicia cada vez más, o si sus oponentes se centran en sus tuits, sus arrebatos y su personalidad destructiva, un considerable número de republicanos podría elegir a otra persona, siempre y cuando den prioridad a asuntos básicos y de eficacia probada, como unos impuestos más bajos, una menor regulación y menos Washington.Los republicanos quieren casi todo lo que hizo Trump, sin todo lo que Trump es y dice.Frank Luntz es moderador de grupos de enfoque, profesor y estratega de comunicación que trabajó para candidatos republicanos en elecciones anteriores. More

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      Trump Ignores Deadline for Personal Financial Disclosure to F.E.C.

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      The disclosure will eventually provide the first look at the former president’s businesses since leaving the White House.Former President Donald J. Trump has a minor addition to his mounting pile of legal challenges after he failed to meet the deadline to disclose his personal financial holdings.But the threatened initial penalty — a meager $200 — is the latest sign of how weak federal enforcement of campaign laws has become.The personal financial disclosure will eventually provide the first look at Mr. Trump’s post-presidential businesses, including his holdings in Truth Social, the social media company he helped create.“President Trump has significant financial holdings, and we have advised the Federal Election Commission that additional time is needed to file his financial disclosure report,” Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said in a statement.Mr. Trump was warned that the fee could be imposed if he does not file within 30 days of the March 16 deadline, which is later this week, in a letter from the Federal Election Commission’s acting general counsel that denied his request for a third extension last month.Meredith McGehee, a longtime campaign watchdog, said, “It’s very clear that former President Trump doesn’t feel the law applies to him and has spent much of his career hiring legal representation to delay and distract. This is in line with his general approach.”She added that the lack of teeth on the disclosure law highlighted the weak position of federal enforcement. “They kind of wag their finger,” she said. “‘No we really, really mean it’ — and then generally nothing happens.”But his other legal problems are far greater: His recent indictment in a hush-money case made him the first former American president to face criminal charges, and he is facing three other investigations.Mr. Trump’s financial disclosures were closely tracked during his first White House run and his presidency, as they provided notable insights about the effect that holding office had on his wealth, even as income and assets were reported only in wide ranges.The disclosures, for instance, showed how the pandemic affected his luxury hospitality businesses, and brought to light gifts that he received.The disclosure law is part of corruption-fighting efforts that date back to the Watergate era.Other politicians have sought to delay and game the disclosure requirements. Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, notably announced his presidential campaign in November 2019 and then dropped out — after making two extension requests that he was legally entitled to — before the disclosure requirement kicked in. More

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      Trump Appeals Decision Forcing Pence to Testify to Jan. 6 Grand Jury

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      The appeal seeks to narrow the scope of testimony that former Vice President Mike Pence can provide the grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump’s efforts to stay in power.Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked a federal appeals court on Monday to narrow the scope of the testimony that former Vice President Mike Pence has to give a grand jury investigating Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the matter.The request to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reverse a lower court’s decision ordering Mr. Pence to testify was the latest attempt by Mr. Trump’s legal team to keep witnesses close to him from divulging information to prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith.Mr. Pence has always been a potentially important witness in the election inquiry into Mr. Trump because of the conversations he took part in at the White House in the weeks preceding the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. During that time, Mr. Trump repeatedly pressed him to use his ceremonial role overseeing the congressional count of Electoral College votes to block or delay certification of his defeat.Prosecutors have been trying to get Mr. Pence to talk about Mr. Trump’s demands for months — first in requests by the Justice Department for an interview and then through a grand jury subpoena issued by Mr. Smith, who inherited the inquiry into Mr. Trump’s attempts to stay in power.Should Mr. Pence end up testifying, it would be a turning point in a monthslong behind-the-scenes battle waged by Mr. Trump and several witnesses close to him to block the disclosure of details about plans to overturn the election..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Last month, in a pair of sealed rulings, Judge James E. Boasberg, the chief judge of Federal District Court in Washington, ordered Mr. Pence to appear before the grand jury, striking down two separate challenges that would have kept Mr. Pence from answering certain questions.In one of those challenges, Mr. Pence sought to limit his testimony by arguing that his role as the president of the Senate on Jan. 6, when Mr. Trump’s defeat was certified by Congress, meant he was protected from legal scrutiny by the executive branch — including the Justice Department. That argument was based on the “speech or debate” clause of the Constitution, which is intended to protect the separation of powers.Judge Boasberg ruled that while Mr. Pence could claim some protections against testimony under the “speech or debate” clause, he would have to answer questions about any potentially illegal acts committed by Mr. Trump. Last week, Mr. Pence announced that he did not intend to appeal the decision.Mr. Trump’s lawyers have now taken the opposite path, asking the appeals court to reverse Judge Boasberg’s ruling on their own attempts to narrow the scope of the questions that Mr. Pence would have to answer. Mr. Trump’s team based its arguments on the concept of executive privilege, which protects certain communications between the president and some members of his administration.Like all matters involving the grand jury, Mr. Trump’s lawyers filed their appeal under seal. A coalition of news media organizations has asked Judge Boasberg to unseal some of the proceedings, though he has not yet made a decision in the case.Since last summer, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have repeatedly — and unsuccessfully — asked judges to keep information from the grand jury by asserting both executive privilege and attorney-client privilege for an array of witnesses. The witnesses have included some of Mr. Pence’s chief aides, two of the top lawyers in the White House and advisers to Mr. Trump like Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff. More

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      Clarence Thomas Decided Against the Staycation

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      Bret Stephens: Just for a change, Gail, let’s start with something other than Donald Trump. How about … Clarence Thomas’s junkets?Gail Collins: Absolutely! When Justice Thomas isn’t busy announcing that the Supreme Court could do to contraception what it did to abortion rights, he’s apparently been happily taking luxury yacht and jet trips with his great old friend the billionaire Republican megadonor and Nazi memorabilia collector Harlan Crow. Along with Thomas’s wife Ginni — I guess she was taking time off from trying to overturn the 2020 election.Bret: You know, every time I try and fail to overturn an election, a nice $500,000 vacation in Indonesia helps salve the disappointment.Gail: Bret, I presume the happy couple was having a great holiday weekend despite all the fresh publicity about their trips. They got to listen to all the reports of a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas blocking the sale of a drug that terminates pregnancy in the first 10 weeks.Next, I guess, Thomas will be suggesting that the only acceptable form of birth control is the rhythm method. Much about him, from his judicial goals to his behavior, is a scandal. Let’s not forget that he’s the one who was confirmed despite the compelling testimony of Anita Hill about his wretched comments.Any chance of getting him tossed off the court, huh? Huh?Bret: Sorry, but the only scandal I see here is that the luxury trips don’t square with Justice Thomas’s self-portrait as a guy who likes to drive his R.V. around the country, spending nights in Walmart parking lots. Until last month, there was no rule requiring justices to disclose this kind of information about vacations with wealthy friends, assuming those friends didn’t have business before the court. Which makes the idea of trying to toss him off the court a nonstarter, not to mention a bad precedent lest some liberal justices turn out to have rich and generous friends, too.Of course, I say all this as someone who’s generally a fan of Justice Thomas, even if I’m not as conservative as he is. If people want to criticize him, it should be for his votes, not his vacations.Gail: I admit my call for a Thomas-toss was probably rhetorical. But intensely felt. I’ve been bitter ever since Mitch McConnell sat on that Supreme Court opening to keep Barack Obama from having a chance to fill it.Bret: Totally agree. I’d sooner toss out McConnell than Thomas.Gail: And while we can’t punish Thomas for his spouse’s misbehavior, Ginni Thomas’s very, very public attempts to get the last presidential election overturned are themselves quite a scandal.Bret: Agree again. But dubious taste in spouses is not an impeachable offense.Gail: So let’s go to Thomas’s opinions, especially that one on abortion.When the court overturned Roe v. Wade, Thomas urged his colleagues to go further and take on issues like the right to contraception. Presuming you weren’t on board with that one?Tasos Katopodis and Michael M. Santiago for Getty ImagesBret: As the father of three kids as opposed to, say, a dozen: no. And definitely not on board with the ruling in Texas on the abortion pill.Gail: So what is it about Thomas you find so … terrif?Bret: Ideology aside, I read his memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” I’d recommend it to anyone who hates him, particularly the chapters about his dirt-poor childhood in the Jim Crow South. Few public officials in America today have pulled themselves up as far as he has or against greater odds. Also, I agree with a lot of his jurisprudence, particularly when it comes to issues like eminent domain and affirmative action.But of course I part company on abortion and contraception — no small questions, especially now.Gail: I’ll say.Bret: Speaking of which, you must have been pleased to see a liberal judge in Wisconsin win her election to the state Supreme Court in a landslide, largely on the strength of her pro-choice views. As I predicted last year — and I was not alone — the Dobbs decision is going to hang around Republican necks like a millstone.Gail: Didn’t Trump blame the anti-abortion crowd for all those Republican defeats last fall? He might have been right — although his lousy choice in candidates certainly didn’t help.Bret: Sometimes even Trump has a point. And his opposition to abortion always struck me as being about as sincere as most of his other moral convictions.Gail: Back during his first presidential foray, when he was still speaking to the Times Opinion folk, I remember him telling us how amazed he was to discover you could get a conservative audience wildly excited just by saying something bad about abortion. That is exactly how Trump became anti-choice.Speaking of Trump stuff, I had the strangest experience when he went to court last week. Former president facing 34 felony counts. Nothing like that in all American history.And I found myself feeling … bored. What’s wrong with me?Bret: Nothing is wrong with you. It’s a normal reaction because none of it is news: We’ve known about the hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels for years, and we’ve been discussing this indictment for weeks.On the other hand, it reminds me of what Orson Welles supposedly said about flying — something to the effect that the only two emotions one can possibly have on an airplane are boredom and terror. Watching Trump’s speech in Mar-a-Lago later that night was the terror part for me, because he is very likely to ride this misbegotten indictment all the way to the Republican nomination, not to mention an eventual acquittal on appeal — if it even gets to an appeal.Gail: Listening to the post-indictment speech, I was sorta surprised it was pretty much just … his speech. No sense that this crisis was going to turn anything around. That goes to your point that all this is just another piece of equipment for his re-election tour.Bret: I hate to say this, but in Trump’s lizardly way his speech was masterful. His pitch has always been that he’s fighting a corrupt system — even if what he’s really doing is corrupting the system. And in the progressive district attorney, Alvin Bragg, he’s got a perfect foil. It’s why I hate the fact that this particular case is the one they’re throwing against him. The case in Georgia is so much stronger.Gail: Hey, New York gets the proverbial ball rolling. But trying to overturn the results of a presidential election — really overturn them — is a tad more serious. Once we move on to Georgia, we really move on.Bret: Assuming Trump isn’t president again by the time we get there.I also hate the fact that this case allows him to suck up all of the available political oxygen. All of us in the news media are like moths to the flame, or lambs to the slaughter, or lemmings to the cliff, or, well, pick your cliché.Gail: Hamsters to the wheel? I’d like something more … nonviolent.Speaking of elections, what did you think about the mayoral contest in Chicago? Deep liberal versus conservative Democrat, right? And guess who won.Bret: Seemed to me like a choice between a sane moderate, Paul Vallas, versus a not-so-sane progressive, Brandon Johnson. I wish Johnson well, because I love Chicago and always root for the White Sox except when they play the Yankees. But I’m fearful for its future as a city where people will want to work, invest and build. The No. 1 issue in the city is public safety, and I don’t think that Johnson’s the guy to restore it, even if he no longer supports defunding the police the way he once did.Gail: Pretty hard to combat crime in a city like Chicago unless the law-abiding folks in high-crime neighborhoods have confidence in you.Bret: Sure. Also hard to get cops to do their jobs when they feel their mayor doesn’t have their backs.Gail: Of course, the best thing anybody could do to curb crime in Chicago would be to get guns off the street. The city has very tough gun control laws, but they don’t mean a heck of a lot as long as there’s a massive flow of illegal weapons coming in from outside.Bret: Sorta demonstrating the futility of Chicago gun control …Gail: Bret, we’ve been talking about abortion rights becoming such a powerhouse election issue. Any chance we’ll ever see the same thing happen with guns?Bret: Well, you saw what happened with the state legislators in Tennessee, two of whom got expelled after they held a protest in the legislative chamber. A lot of political theater. Not a lot of legislative accomplishment.Gail: Sigh.Bret: Gail, this week’s conversation has been too depressing. So, if you haven’t already, be sure to read our colleague Esau McCaulley’s beautiful, profound meditation on the meaning of Easter. It’s not my holiday, religiously speaking, but I couldn’t help but be moved by two paragraphs in particular.First, Esau asks: “Isn’t it easier to believe that everyone who loves us has some secret agenda? That racism will forever block the creation of what Martin Luther King Jr. called the beloved community? That the gun lobby will always overwhelm every attempt at reform? That poverty is a fact of human existence? Despair allows us to give up our resistance and rest awhile.”And then: “That indestructibility of hope might be the central and most radical claim of Easter — that three days after Jesus was killed, he returned to his disciples physically and that made all the difference. Easter, then, is not a metaphor for new beginnings; it is about encountering the person who, despite every disappointment we experience with ourselves and with the world, gives us a reason to carry on.”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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      The One Thing Trump Has That DeSantis Never Will

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is in a trap of his own devising. His path to the Republican presidential nomination depends on convincing Donald Trump’s base that he represents a more committed and disciplined version of the former president, that he shares their populist grievances and aims only to execute the Trump agenda with greater forcefulness and skill. But it also depends on convincing a G.O.P. elite grown weary of Mr. Trump’s erratic bombast (not to mention electoral losses and legal jeopardy) that he, Mr. DeSantis, represents a more responsible alternative: shrewd where Mr. Trump is reckless; bookish where Mr. Trump is philistine; scrupulous, cunning and detail-oriented where Mr. Trump is impetuous and easily bored. In short, to the base, Mr. DeSantis must be more Trump than Trump, and to the donors, less.Thus far, Mr. DeSantis has had greater success with party elites. By pairing aggressive stances on the culture wars with free-market economics and an appeal to his own competence and expertise, Mr. DeSantis has managed to corral key Republican megadonors, Murdoch media empire executives and conservative thought leaders from National Review to the Claremont Institute. He polls considerably higher than Mr. Trump with wealthy, college-educated, city- and suburb-dwelling Republicans. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, retains his grip on blue-collar, less educated and rural conservatives. For the G.O.P., the primary fight has begun to tell an all-too-familiar story: It’s the elites vs. the rabble.Mr. Trump, for his part, appears to have taken notice of this incipient class divide (and perhaps of the dearth of billionaires rushing to his aid). In the past few weeks, he has skewered Mr. DeSantis as a tool for “globalist” plutocrats and the Republican old guard. Since his indictment by a Manhattan grand jury, Mr. Trump has sought to further solidify his status as the indispensable people’s champion, attacked on all sides by a conspiracy of liberal elites. While donors and operatives may prefer a more housebroken populism, it is Mr. Trump’s surmise that large parts of the base still want the real thing, warts and all.If his wager pays off, it will be a sign not just of his continued dominance over the Republican Party but also of something deeper: an ongoing revolt against “the best and brightest,” the notion that only certain people, with certain talents, credentials and subject matter expertise, are capable of governing.During his second inaugural speech in Tallahassee in January, Mr. DeSantis embraced the culture wars pugilism that has made him a Fox News favorite; he railed against “open borders,” “identity essentialism,” the “coddling” of criminals and “attacking” of law enforcement. “Florida,” he reminded his audience, with a favored if clunky applause line, “is where woke goes to die!”But the real focus — as with his speech at the National Conservatism conference in Miami in September — was on results (a word he repeated). Mr. DeSantis promised competent leadership; “sanity” and “liberty” were his motifs. For most of the speech, the governor sounded very much the Reaganite conservative from central casting. “We said we would ensure that Florida taxed lightly, regulated reasonably and spent conservatively,” he said, “and we delivered.”In general, Mr. DeSantis’s populism is heavy on cultural grievances and light on economic ones. The maneuvers that tend to endear him to the nationalist crowd — flying a few dozen Venezuelan migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, attempting to ban “critical race theory” at public colleges and retaliating against Disney for criticizing his “Don’t Say Gay” bill — are carefully calibrated to burnish his populist bona fides without unduly provoking G.O.P. elites who long for a return to relative conservative normalcy.Indeed, Republican megadonors like the Koch family and the hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin appear to admire Mr. DeSantis in spite of the populist firebrand he periodically plays on TV. Mr. Griffin recently told Politico’s Shia Kapos he aims, as Ms. Kapos described it, to “blunt” the populism that has turned some Republican politicians against the corporate world. Mr. Griffin gave $5 million to Mr. DeSantis’s re-election campaign.Mr. DeSantis’s principal claim to being Mr. Trump’s legitimate heir, perhaps, is his handling of the Covid pandemic in Florida. Mr. DeSantis depicts his decision to reopen the state and ban mask mandates as a bold move against technocrats and scientists, denizens of what he calls the “biomedical security state.”But his disdain for experts is selective. While deciding how to address the pandemic, Mr. DeSantis collaborated with the Stanford epidemiologist Jay Bhattacharya (“He’d read all the medical literature — all of it, not just the abstracts,” Dr. Bhattacharya told The New Yorker) and followed the recommendations of a group of epidemiologists from Stanford, Harvard and Oxford who pushed for a swifter reopening. Mr. DeSantis’s preference for their recommendations over those of Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t signify a rejection of expertise as such, only an embrace of alternative expertise. Mr. DeSantis wanted to save Florida’s tourism economy, and he found experts who would advise him to do so.In reality, Mr. DeSantis is not against elites, exactly; he aims merely to replace the current elite (in academia, corporations and government) with a more conservative one, with experts who have not been infected, as Mr. DeSantis likes to say, by “the woke mind virus.” The goal is not to do away with the technocratic oligarchy, but to repopulate it — with people like Ron DeSantis.Earlier generations of American thinkers had higher aspirations. “The reign of specialized expertise,” wrote the historian Christopher Lasch in 1994, “is the antithesis of democracy.” In the 19th century, European visitors were impressed (and unnerved) to find even farmers and laborers devouring periodicals and participating in the debating societies of early America. The defining feature of America’s democratic experiment, Mr. Lasch insisted, was “not the chance to rise in the social scale” but “the complete absence of a scale that clearly distinguished commoners from gentlemen.”Twentieth-century capitalism, Mr. Lasch thought, had resulted in a perilous maldistribution of intelligence and competence; experts had usurped governance, while the value of practical experience had plummeted.Mr. Lasch briefly came into vogue among conservatives during the Trump years, but they never grasped his central claim: that generating equality of competence would require economic redistribution.In his 2011 book, Mr. DeSantis railed against the “‘leveling’ spirit” that threatens to take hold in a republic, especially among the lower orders. His principal target in the book is “redistributive justice,” by which he apparently means any effort at all to share the benefits of economic growth more equitably — whether using government power to provide for the poor or to guarantee health care, higher wages or jobs.The essential ingredients of his worldview remain the same. Mr. DeSantis has adopted a populist idiom, but he has no more sympathy now than he did 12 years ago for the “‘leveling’ spirit” — the ethos of disdain for expertise that Mr. Trump embodied when he burst onto the national political stage in 2015. In fact, Mr. DeSantis’s posture represents a bulwark against it: an effort to convince G.O.P. voters that their enemies are cultural elites, rather than economic ones; that their liberty is imperiled, not by the existence of an oligarchy but by the oligarchs’ irksome cultural mores.Mr. DeSantis has honed an agenda that attacks progressive orthodoxies where they are most likely to affect and annoy conservative elites: gay and trans inclusion in suburban schools, diversity and equity in corporate bureaucracies, Black studies in A.P. classes and universities. None of these issues have any appreciable impact on the opportunities afforded to working-class people. And yet conservative elites treat it as an article of faith that these issues will motivate the average Republican voter.The conservative movement has staked its viability on the belief that Americans resent liberal elites because they’re “woke” and not because they wield so much power over other people’s lives. Their promise to replace the progressive elite with a conservative one — with men like Ron DeSantis — is premised on the idea that Americans are comfortablewith the notion that only certain men are fit to rule.Mr. Trump, despite what he sometimes represents, is no more likely than Mr. DeSantis to disrupt the American oligarchy. (As president, he largely let the plutocrats in his cabinet run the country.)Few politicians on either side appear eager to unleash — rather than contain — America’s leveling spirit, to give every American the means, and not merely the right, to rule themselves.To break through the elite standoff that is our culture war, politicians must resist the urge to designate a single leader, or group of leaders, distinguished by their brilliance, to shoulder the hard work of making America great. It would mean taking seriously a proverb frequently quoted by Barack Obama, but hardly embodied by his presidency: that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” It would also mean, to quote a line from the Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle favored by Christopher Lasch, that the goal of our republic — of any republic — should be to build “a whole world of heroes.”Sam Adler-Bell (@SamAdlerBell) is a writer and a co-host of “Know Your Enemy,” a podcast about the conservative movement.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