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      The First Debate and the Race for Second Place

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      Being No. 2 could be especially important next year, and Ramaswamy has been gaining on DeSantis.Someone’s missing. Joseph Prezioso/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat’s the point of tonight’s Republican debate?It’s not an unreasonable question, with the runaway front-runner for the Republican nomination deciding to skip it.But there’s a case that we might just be getting a clearer view of the race in Donald J. Trump’s absence. We will certainly get a clearer look at an important dimension of the race that we might not have otherwise been able to observe.Let’s start with a question from a reader, James Tucker of Plano, Texas, who pointed to something we’ve never addressed head-on until now: the possibility that Mr. Trump might not be in the race.“Mr. Cohn, I enjoy your columns. Do you see any pollsters asking Republicans: “If Trump is not in the race, who would be your choice?” The possibility is real enough.”It will surely seem real enough tonight, without Mr. Trump on the debate stage.And it’s a possibility that might gradually take on greater significance in the weeks and months ahead.The office of the special counsel requested a Jan. 2 trial date in the election subversion case against Mr. Trump in Washington, and it said it would need four to six weeks to present evidence. At least theoretically, that could yield a verdict before the preponderance of Republican delegates are awarded in March.I’m not a lawyer, so I won’t speculate about whether it’s likely that the special counsel will get his trial date, let alone a conviction, by Super Tuesday on March 5.But as a political analyst, I can say Mr. Trump wouldn’t ordinarily seem likely to lose the nomination by conventional means in a conventional race: His lead over Ron DeSantis is at least twice as large as that of any front-runner who has ever gone on to lose a party nomination at this stage.Taken together, it’s entirely possible that the likeliest way for Mr. Trump to lose the nomination involves the mounting weight of his legal challenges, rather than a conventional electoral defeat on the campaign trail and debate stage. That weight could take a variety of forms, including some well short of a conviction, like the possibility that Republican voters gradually reassess the seriousness of the risks facing Mr. Trump as a trial nears — but realistically we’re talking trial, conviction and even imprisonment.If we stipulate that these risks are in fact the greatest ones facing Mr. Trump, a certain strategy for his opponents begins to take shape: a strategy premised on capitalizing on Mr. Trump’s collapse, should it come. It might involve avoiding conflict with Mr. Trump, rather than trying to bring him down, in hopes of winning the former president’s supporters once he falters. It might involve attacking the other minor candidates, so as to emerge as the likeliest to capitalize on a potential Trump collapse. In time, it’s a strategy that might yield victory. For now, it might not look any different than fighting to take second place — the fight we’ll see on the debate stage.The debate strategy posted by a firm affiliated with the DeSantis-aligned super PAC Never Back Down contained some of this approach. It argued for partly defending Mr. Trump when Chris Christie attacked him, presumably in hope of maintaining broad appeal to Mr. Trump’s supporters. Instead of attacking Mr. Trump, the memo argued, Mr. DeSantis should “take a sledgehammer” to Vivek Ramaswamy, who may have worked his way up to third place in national polls.Mr. Ramaswamy might seem to rank far, far behind Mr. Trump on the list of challenges facing Mr. DeSantis, but not if he’s running a second-place strategy. So far this year, Mr. DeSantis has had a very clear lead over his nearest rivals, including in polls without Mr. Trump. But Mr. Ramaswamy is gaining. If Mr. DeSantis fell behind him, the bottom could fall out, his donors could flee, and he would no longer be in position to capitalize on any opening, should there be one.It’s probably not fair to say that Mr. DeSantis is simply running a “second-place strategy.” For one, his campaign may still have a narrow path to a conventional victory, even if Mr. Trump doesn’t crumble under his own weight, in part because Mr. DeSantis appears relatively stronger in Iowa. For another, Mr. Trump has pledged to stay in the race, even if he goes to jail. A second-place strategy would, eventually, need to turn into a first-place strategy when the time was right.But either way, Mr. Trump’s decision not to compete in the debate might wind up being a useful one. Out of respect for the candidates, the voters and the democratic process, I’m always reluctant to contemplate the possibility that a candidate might end up “not in the race,” as our questioner put it. But without Mr. Trump on the debate stage, it’s entirely appropriate to consider the campaign without him. That’s the race we have tonight. It may just be the race we have next year. More

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      The Secrets of Debate Swag

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      Oh, the games campaigns play with political merch. They may surprise you.Whatever happens at the first Republican presidential primary debate on Aug. 23, whatever revelations emerge from the melee of eight (count ’em) contenders, whatever slings and arrows are thrown, and whoever is declared the winner, one thing is certain: There will be a viral moment or two; a riposte that becomes a meme. Campaign staff will be watching. And before you can say “in my prime” or “too honest,” it will end up on a T-shirt in a candidate’s store.These days, retail politics has a whole new meaning. At a point in the electoral cycle when candidates are desperate to distinguish themselves and have only minutes onstage to do so, being able to deliver a zinger that will play on via swag is a key advantage.Ever since the inauguration of George Washington, voters have been participating in the electoral process by means of merch. Back then, it was fancy commemorative buttons that were sewn onto clothes (and were, largely, accessible only to the well-off).Over the years, the “store” — effectively an alternate way for candidates to elicit small-dollar donations and add to their supporter base by appealing to consumer culture — has grown in importance as technology has transformed our ability to make stuff, sell stuff and mine data. Now, almost as soon as presidential contenders declare their candidacy and their websites go live, the shops go live with them.“It’s one of the biggest changes over the last 20 years,” said Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist and a founder of ROKK, a public affairs firm.By their stuff ye shall know them. Or at least know something about their strategy. It’s no longer just bumper stickers and baseball caps with a candidate’s name and the electoral year, but a constantly evolving stream of purpose-made product.And because of that, by their merch they are also finding new ways to know you.Casey DeSantis in her “Where Woke Goes to Die” leather jacket on a campaign stop in Iowa in June.Hannah Fingerhut/Associated PressA quarter-zip sweatshirt on offer in the DeSantis for President store inspired by Casey DeSantis’s jacket.Campaign store offerings have essentially become Rorschach tests for the electorate: What people buy, the slogans that get their shopping juices flowing, help determine how the candidates sell their ideas.“It’s a way to trial how candidates market themselves and how people respond to that,” said Claire Jerry, a curator of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, who had been scouting the landscape at the Iowa State Fair.Which is why campaign store offerings are getting so, well, tailored, the better to put their own spin on the popular conversation. Not the one taking place about policy among talking heads, but the one taking place on Instagram, X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) and TikTok. It’s a bona fide trend.Get Ready for the RevolutionJust in time for the debate, Vivek Ramaswamy’s team rebranded his main product stream (he offers about 65 total SKUs, as stock-keeping units of an item are called) to move away from his original focus on woke-ness, or anti-wokeness, to a new “Revolutions” theme., including what Tricia McLaughlin, a senior adviser on the campaign, called “Thomas Paine-style” campaign literature and slogans, with 18th-century script and sepia tones.At the Iowa State fair, Nikki Haley (about 70 SKUs), who has had great success with products featuring the slogan “In Her Prime” — a reference to Don Lemon’s much criticized comment that she was past her prime — modeled her “Underestimate me, that’ll be fun” T-shirt, which became its own talking point.Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota (about 40 SKUs), has “Doug Who?” shirts, playing up his underdog status. When Casey DeSantis wore a leather jacket with an alligator on the back superimposed over a map of Florida with the words “Where Woke Goes to Die” on it, the image went viral — and ended up on a quarter-zip sweatshirt in the store. The DeSantis campaign boasts it is the fastest selling of its more than 70 products.Clockwise from top left, candidate merchandise that exploits a moment from Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence and Doug Burgum.And when the federal indictment against Donald Trump was opened and included a quotation from Mr. Trump calling Mike Pence “too honest” for insisting there was no constitutional basis for rejecting Biden electoral votes in the 2020 election, the Pence campaign jumped on the phrase and made it the centerpiece of his store.This kind of quick reaction “allows you to meet people where they are, rather than trying to drag them over to where you are,” Ms. McLaughlin said. (The “Dark Brandon” phenomenon, which President Biden’s team has appropriated to great success, is a prime example.)Arguably, where people are — in the middle of cancel culture, locked in their own social media echo chambers — is not the most positive place, and making it into merch is a cynical move to exploit our factionalism and us-versus-them mentality. But then, fashion is often the locale where culture and politics meet. Swag just makes it obvious.Indeed, the shop has become so central to campaigning that not long after a group of Republican strategists created WinRed, the party’s donation-processing digital platform, in 2019, it has included support for opening storefronts available free of charge to every candidate. That helped erase any barrier to entry for a campaign that may not have the complex operations needed to design, source, produce and distribute merch. (Democrats have had a similar entity, ActBlue, since 2004.)Every Republican candidate who has qualified for the debate on Wednesday night uses WinRed for their shop, except Chris Christie, the rare candidate, Republican or Democratic, to not have a store, viewing it as a drain on personnel resources. Donald J. Trump, who qualified for the debate but has decided not to appear, also uses the platform.WinRed vets its recommended vendors, like Ace Specialties, “known for making the MAGA hat,” and Merch Raise, allowing candidates to state that products are “made in the U.S.A.” And all of them work on a drop-ship model, meaning they produce items only after they are ordered, so campaigns can test as many designs as they want without the expense of holding inventory.That has allowed campaigns to be ultra-responsive to buzzword moments and to weaponize them for their own purposes. After all, sites like Redbubble and Etsy have built their business on exploiting virality, including viral political moments. Why shouldn’t the protagonists themselves profit from the give-and-take between publicity and product? Not to mention exploit our desire for stuff.Reading the Merch Leaves“People like the tangible sense of participating in a campaign,” Ms. Jerry, of the Smithsonian, said. And we have become conditioned to appreciate acquisition.“If someone just asks if you want to donate, you might say no,” Ms. Jerry continued. “But if you can get a T-shirt?” Tim Scott has even sent out direct mailings asking supporters what “new piece of Tim Scott merchandise” they would like to see. (The socks are kind of fun.)Merch turns individuals into billboards in a cycle of shopping satiation and public support. “When you see people in a crowd identified as being on your side, it creates a sense of excitement,” Ms. Jerry said. Case in point, the ocean of red baseball caps at Trump rallies, which sends a visual message that is, to many in our current environment, more convincing than any poll.Even more significantly, merch allows candidates to see what is resonating with voters and adjust their message accordingly, much like a focus group. When you buy some merch, you are giving a candidate not just your money, email and address, but (whether you realize it or not) psychographic information that can be used to geo-target mailings and commercials. The more varied the offerings, the more information they elicit.If you buy, say, a camo hat in the Burgum store, you may suddenly find yourself on the receiving end of lots of Second Amendment information. If you buy a “Joe Biden Makes Me Cry” baby onesie at the DeSantis store, or a “Mamas for DeSantis” T-shirt, you may be inundated with information about the battle over school curriculums and abortion. If you buy a “Faith” tee from Tim Scott, it’s understood as a signal that you care about religious freedoms.Clockwise from top left, candidate merchandise from Vivek Ramaswamy, Mike Pence, Doug Burgum and Ron DeSantis, on what appear to be the same computer-generated bodies.There’s only one problem: The WinRed-effected ease of shop creation, in which every candidate’s store is powered by the same platform, means that they all look pretty much the same.Down to the structure (four horizontal squares of products), the color scheme (red, white and blue, duh, with some gray, black, white and pink thrown in for good measure) and the chubby baby torso depicted in each onesie, or the generic female and male torsos, all of which resemble A.I.-generated fake humans from a very bland heartland. It can make going from one shop to the other a bit like entering the Twilight Zone.And, given the need to stand out from the crowd, having a storefront that looks just like the other guy’s — and is populated with the same bots as the other guy’s — can also seem less than ideal.“I don’t think anyone notices,” said Mr. Bonjean, the strategist (he is not working for any of the candidates). Which may be true for those already decided, but given the early stage of the campaign cycle, anyone … um, shopping around for a candidate and visiting the sites may have a different opinion.Still, the current reality has led to a situation in which, Mr. Bonjean said, not only are campaigns primed to jump on any one-liner that can easily translate into merch, but also they are likely teeing them up, seeding quips in debate responses, the better to jump-start a new political product placement cycle.“We don’t think it’s ever going away,” Ms. Jerry said.Watch for it Wednesday, and then see what sentiment ends up on the sleeves, socks or sunglasses strap coming soon to a voter near you. More

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      How Mark Meadows Pursued a High-Wire Legal Strategy in Trump Inquiries

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      The former White House chief of staff, a key witness to Donald J. Trump’s efforts to remain in power after his 2020 election loss, maneuvered to provide federal prosecutors only what he had to.This winter, after receiving a subpoena from a grand jury investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, Mark Meadows commenced a delicate dance with federal prosecutors.He had no choice but to show up and, eventually, to testify. Yet Mr. Meadows — Mr. Trump’s final White House chief of staff — initially declined to answer certain questions, sticking to his former boss’s position that they were shielded by executive privilege.But when prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, challenged Mr. Trump’s executive privilege claims before a judge, Mr. Meadows pivoted. Even though he risked enraging Mr. Trump, he decided to trust Mr. Smith’s team, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Meadows quietly arranged to talk with them not only about the steps the former president took to stay in office, but also about his handling of classified documents after he left.The episode illustrated the wary steps Mr. Meadows took to navigate legal and political peril as prosecutors in Washington and Georgia closed in on Mr. Trump, seeking to avoid being charged himself while also sidestepping the career risks of being seen as cooperating with what his Republican allies had cast as partisan persecution of the former president.His high-wire legal act hit a new challenge this month. While Mr. Meadows’s strategy of targeted assistance to federal prosecutors and sphinxlike public silence largely kept him out of the 45-page election interference indictment that Mr. Smith filed against Mr. Trump in Washington, it did not help him avoid similar charges in Fulton County, Ga. Mr. Meadows was named last week as one of Mr. Trump’s co-conspirators in a sprawling racketeering indictment filed by the local district attorney in Georgia.Interviews and a review of the cases show how Mr. Meadows’s tactics reflected to some degree his tendency to avoid conflict and leave different people believing that he agreed with them. They were also dictated by his unique position in Mr. Trump’s world and the legal jeopardy this presented.Mr. Meadows was Mr. Trump’s top aide in his chaotic last months in the White House and a firsthand witness not only to the president’s sprawling efforts to overturn the 2020 election, but also to some early strands of what evolved into an inquiry into Mr. Trump’s mishandling of classified documents.Mr. Meadows was there, at times, when Mr. Trump listened to entreaties from outside allies that he use the apparatus of the government to seize voting machines and re-run the election. And he was on the phone when Mr. Trump tried to pressure Georgia’s secretary of state to find him sufficient votes to win that state.He was also there on Jan. 6, 2021, as Mr. Trump sat in a small room off the Oval Office, watching television as a mob of his supporters tried to thwart the peaceful transfer of power.The House committee investigating the Capitol riot showed clips of Mr. Trump and Mr. Meadows during a hearing last year.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Meadows, who declined to comment for this article, has refused to discuss his involvement in any of the criminal cases. The full extent of what he shared with federal prosecutors remains closely held, as are the terms under which he spoke to them. But his approach to dealing with them could not have been more different from Mr. Trump’s.Where the former president repeatedly ranted about witch hunts and the weaponization of the justice system, Mr. Meadows went quiet, staying off TV and refusing to call his former boss. Mr. Trump lashed out at the investigators on his tail, attacking them at every turn, but Mr. Meadows sought to build relationships when and where he could.All of this has made Mr. Meadows a figure of intense speculation and anxiety in the former president’s inner circle. The feverish conjecturing among Mr. Trump’s allies was reignited this weekend, when ABC News revealed some of the first details of what Mr. Meadows told federal prosecutors.ABC reported that Mr. Meadows — like other senior Trump officials, including Mike Pence, the former vice president — had undercut Mr. Trump’s claim that he had a “standing order” to automatically declassify any documents that were taken out of the Oval Office. Those included ones that ended up at his private clubs in Florida and New Jersey.Mr. Meadows’s discussions with investigators did not surprise some on the Trump team. For months, Mr. Trump, his advisers and his allies had been deeply suspicious of Mr. Meadows. But having recently received discovery material from Mr. Smith’s team — evidence the prosecutors gathered during the inquiry — the Trump team now has visibility into what Mr. Meadows told investigators, according to people familiar with the matter.“This witch hunt is nothing more than a desperate attempt to interfere in the 2024 election as President Trump dominates the polls and is the only person who will take back the White House,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump.Mr. Meadows’s lawyer, George J. Terwilliger III, declined to comment on the facts laid out in the ABC story.The plan by Mr. Meadows to be quietly cooperative with prosecutors without agreeing to a formal deal was hardly a novel strategy. It is what many subjects of investigations do when they are facing exposure to serious criminal charges. But in this case, the stakes are especially high for both Mr. Meadows and Mr. Trump.Mr. Meadows’s goal was to give investigators the information they requested when he believed he was legally obliged to provide it. But he also used the law to push back when he considered the requests to be inappropriate or potentially dangerous to his own interests, the person familiar with his legal game plan said.The strategy began playing out almost two years ago, when Mr. Meadows agreed to provide some documents to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack but fought its attempt to take his deposition.Mr. Meadows’s goal was to give investigators the information they requested when he believed he was legally obliged to provide it. Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn one instance, when Mr. Meadows was subpoenaed by the House committee for documents and testimony, he provided them with an explosive trove of text messages from the period leading up to Jan. 6. The messages showed Mr. Meadows communicating with everyone from Fox News hosts to Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas. They were embarrassing to both him and Mr. Trump.But Mr. Terwilliger determined that since the messages were not related to Mr. Meadows’s communications with the president, they were not protected by executive privilege.The texts were an invaluable resource to the committee staff and provided investigators with a road map to the players and actions taken as they were beginning their work. The decision to provide them to the House panel infuriated Mr. Trump’s team. But they also bought breathing space for Mr. Meadows.Mr. Terwilliger took a different position on Mr. Meadows testifying to the committee. At first, he told the panel’s staff that they could not legally compel Mr. Meadows to do so and that even if they did manage to get him on the record, he would assert executive privilege over anything related to his dealings with Mr. Trump. The negotiations over the interview broke down when the committee subpoenaed Mr. Meadows’s phone records without first informing him.There was, however, another reason Mr. Terwilliger was concerned about having Mr. Meadows tell his story to the House committee, according to the person familiar with Mr. Meadows’s legal plan.Even in early 2022, the person said, Mr. Terwilliger suspected that Mr. Meadows would be called upon to tell the Justice Department what he knew about Jan. 6 and the weeks leading up to it. And he did not want Mr. Meadows to already be on the record in what he viewed as a politicized investigation. If Mr. Meadows was going to tell his story, the person said, Mr. Terwilliger wanted him to do so for the first time to investigators from the Justice Department.It was then that the panel recommended Mr. Meadows be charged with contempt of Congress, a position that the full House ultimately agreed with. The Justice Department, however, citing the “individual facts and circumstances” of his case, declined to press charges.While department officials never fully explained their reasons for not going after Mr. Meadows, the move was in contrast to the way they handled similar cases involving two other former Trump aides, Stephen K. Bannon and Peter Navarro. Both were charged by the department with contempt of Congress after they refused to deal with the committee altogether.Mr. Meadows took a similar course when he was subpoenaed this winter by the federal grand jury in Washington investigating Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the election. The former president had maintained that his aides should not testify to any matters covered by executive privilege.When Mr. Meadows first appeared before the grand jury, he gave only limited testimony, declining to answer any questions he believed were protected by executive privilege, which shields some communications between the president and members of his administration.But he was obliged to open up to prosecutors after they asked the chief judge in Washington at the time, Beryl A. Howell, to rule on the question of executive privilege in an effort to compel his full account.By that point, the person familiar with the legal strategy said, Mr. Meadows — unlike Mr. Trump — had come to the conclusion that the top prosecutors in the special counsel’s office were engaged in a good-faith effort to collect and analyze the facts of the case. Trusting in the process, the person said, Mr. Meadows would seek to position himself as a neutral witness — one who was neither pro- nor anti-Trump.“George believes witnesses are not owned by anybody,” said a second person who has worked closely with Mr. Terwilliger. “They’re not there for a person; they’re not there against any person; they’re not on one person’s side. They’re there to tell the truth.”Typically, when people have such conversations with prosecutors, they receive limited immunity that prevents their own words from being used against them in a future prosecution. But investigators can use the information they provide to pursue charges against others.Ultimately, Judge Howell issued an order forcing Mr. Meadows to go back to the grand jury. He answered questions for a second time, giving an unvarnished, privilege-free account.The federal indictment against Mr. Trump contains a mix of accounts about Mr. Meadows’s behavior, some favorable to him. He is mentioned as enabling the false elector scheme to move forward by emailing campaign staff members to say, “We just need to have someone coordinating the electors for states.”But federal prosecutors also noted in the indictment that Mr. Meadows, after observing Georgia’s signature verification process, told the former president that election officials were “conducting themselves in an exemplary fashion.” He also pushed for Mr. Trump to tell rioters to leave the Capitol on Jan. 6.By contrast, Mr. Meadows fought efforts to compel him to testify in the separate case in Georgia examining Mr. Trump’s attempts to remain in office after his election loss. He also invoked his right to avoid self-incrimination when he eventually appeared before the grand jury.The indictment that resulted from the Georgia investigation lays much blame at Mr. Meadows’s feet. It portrays him as acting as a willing accomplice in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, meeting with state-level officials, soliciting phone numbers for Mr. Trump and ordering up memos for strategies to keep him in power.Mr. Meadows quietly arranged to talk with Jack Smith’s team about the former president.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesProsecutors in Georgia also accused Mr. Meadows of a felony over his role in an infamous phone call on Jan. 2, 2021, in which Mr. Trump pushed the Georgia secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes.”In a sign that he views the federal venue as more favorable terrain, Mr. Meadows has asked for the Georgia charges against him to move to federal court. In court papers filed last week, Mr. Terwilliger said he intended to challenge the case by arguing that Mr. Meadows was immune to prosecution on state charges for any actions he undertook as part of his federal job as White House chief of staff.Mr. Meadows, who now lives in South Carolina, remains an influential back-room figure in conservative circles in Washington. He is a senior partner at the Conservative Partnership Institute, where he is paid about $560,000 annually, according to the organization’s most recent financial report.In July 2021, a few weeks after the House voted to create the Jan. 6 committee, the political action committee aligned with Mr. Trump, Save America, donated $1 million to the institute. More

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      Trump Condemns Hunter Biden’s Foreign Business. He’s Quiet on His Own.

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      Donald J. Trump has berated Joseph R. Biden Jr. for his son’s overseas deal making, despite plenty of overseas deal making by the Trump family.After his fourth indictment, bringing his total count of felony charges to 91, former President Donald J. Trump last week posted a video online accusing President Biden and his family of being criminals.“The Biden crime family,” he claimed, had received millions of dollars from foreign countries. “I believe we have a compromised president,” Mr. Trump said, adding: “He’s a Manchurian candidate. That’s why Crooked Joe is letting other countries walk all over the United States.”For Mr. Trump, outrage is a selective commodity when it comes to presidential families taking millions of dollars from foreign countries. During his four years in the White House and in the more than two and a half years since, Mr. Trump and his relatives have been on the receiving end of money from around the globe in sums far greater than anything Hunter Biden, the president’s son, reportedly collected.Unlike other modern presidents, Mr. Trump never gave up control of his sprawling business with its interests in multiple countries, nor did he forswear foreign business even as president. He shattered norms in his money making and unabashed boosting of his family’s company. The luxury hotel he opened down the street from the White House, for example, became the favored destination for lobbyists, dealmakers and foreign governments, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain, which paid handsomely for accommodations, galas and more.Mr. Trump also permitted his family to take positions in government that blurred the lines when it came to their private interests. Unlike Hunter Biden, Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner both served on the White House staff, where they could shape policies of concern to overseas businesses.Mr. Kushner was heavily involved in setting the administration’s approach to the Middle East and made multiple contacts in the region. After turning in his White House badge, Mr. Kushner started a private equity firm with $2 billion in funds from Saudi Arabia and hundreds of millions more from other Arab countries that stood to benefit from U.S. policies and have an interest in a possible second Trump administration.“The Trump family foreign commercial entanglements were far more numerous, involving dozens of foreign business conflicts,” said Norman Eisen, a lawyer who led unsuccessful court challenges to the former president’s practice of taking foreign money while in office.The entanglements “implicated those like Jared and Ivanka who were actually working in government, whereas Hunter never did,” Mr. Eisen added. “Indeed, Trump himself openly benefited, whereas there’s not a shred of evidence that Biden the elder ever did.”Hunter Biden’s business dealings have raised concerns because testimony and reports have indicated that he traded on his family name to generate lucrative deals. A former business partner has told congressional investigators that the younger Biden parlayed “the illusion of access to his father” to win over potential partners.Jared Kushner, the former president’s son-in-law, started a private equity firm with $2 billion in funds from Saudi Arabia.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesNo hard evidence has emerged that Mr. Biden, while vice president, personally participated in or profited from the business deals or used his office to benefit his son’s partners.But Mr. Biden’s statements distancing himself from his son’s activities have been undercut by testimony indicating that Hunter put his father on speakerphone with international business associates; the future president talked about casual things like the weather, not business, according to testimony, but it seemed intended to impress Hunter’s associates.All of which would typically generate scrutiny in Washington, where relatives of presidents have long taken advantage of their positions to make money. Access and celebrity are coins of the realm in the nation’s capital, and a relative who frequents Camp David, enjoys a good seat at a state dinner or rides Air Force One can get phone calls returned. This tradition has turned off many Americans, and even Democrats privately voice discomfort at Hunter Biden’s activities.“If he traded on his father’s influence, he should be held accountable for that,” Representative Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, said on MSNBC recently. “And I’m emphasizing this because you never, ever heard a Republican say the same thing about Donald Trump or his family.”Republicans investigating the Bidens say they made more than $20 million from foreign sources in China, Ukraine and elsewhere, but a Washington Post analysis of congressional memos indicated that most of the money went to business associates, with $7 million going to the Bidens themselves, mainly Hunter.“What both Hunter and Jared have in common is that they are the well-educated sons of prominent people, and that their familial ties certainly helped them in business,” said Don Fox, a former general counsel of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. “That is where the similarities end.”“Hunter never held public office, and a fair amount of his work involving Ukraine occurred when his father was out of office,” Mr. Fox continued. The amount of money that Mr. Kushner could earn from the funds invested by the Saudis, he added, “dwarfs what anyone ever paid Hunter.”The analogy to Hunter Biden rankles Mr. Kushner, who had a long track record in business before joining government and takes pride in negotiating the Abraham Accords, the diplomatic agreements normalizing relations between Israel and several Arab neighbors.People close to him argue that the investments from the Saudis and other Arabs were based on trust that he could make money for them, not out of gratitude for policies he promoted. And they noted that the Biden administration has not reversed those policies but instead sought to build on the Abraham Accords.“There is no factual comparison between Hunter and Jared,” a representative for Mr. Kushner said in a statement. “Jared was a successful businessman before entering politics, achieved historic peace and trade agreements, and like many before him, he re-entered business after serving for free in the White House, where he fully complied with the Office of Government Ethics rules.”Chad Mizelle, the chief legal officer for Affinity Partners, Mr. Kushner’s firm, said in a statement: “Partisan politics aside, no one has ever pointed to a specific legal or ethical guideline that Jared or Affinity has violated.”One of the few Republicans to criticize the Trump family’s blending of government service and foreign business has been Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor running against the former president for next year’s Republican nomination. “The Trump family have been involved in grifting for quite some time,” he said on CNN in June.Mr. Christie, who as a U.S. attorney prosecuted Mr. Kushner’s father, singled out the business dealings of the former president’s son-in-law.“Jared Kushner, six months after he leaves the White House, gets $2 billion from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund,” he said. “What was Jared Kushner doing in the Middle East? We had Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo as secretaries of state. We didn’t need Jared Kushner. He was put there to make those relationships, and then he cashed in on those relationships when he left the office.”While in the White House, Mr. Kushner bolstered ties between the United States and Saudi Arabia, convincing his father-in-law to make the kingdom his first foreign destination as president, helping broker billions of dollars in arms sales and forging a close relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.Mr. Kushner defended Prince Mohammed after Saudi operatives murdered Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Post and United States resident. The C.I.A. concluded that Prince Mohammed ordered the 2018 killing. In 2021, Prince Mohammed’s sovereign wealth fund approved the $2 billion investment in Mr. Kushner’s new firm despite objections from the fund’s own advisers.Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and chairman of the House Oversight Committee that is investigating the Bidens, acknowledged concerns with Mr. Kushner’s Saudi deal.“I think that what Kushner did crossed the line of ethics,” Mr. Comer said when asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper earlier this month. “What Christie said, it happened after he left office. Still no excuse, Jake. But it happened after he left office. And Jared Kushner actually has a legitimate business. This money from the Bidens happened while Joe Biden was vice president, while he was flying to those countries.”Mr. Trump has attacked President Biden for his son Hunter Biden’s overseas deal making.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesIn fact, as Mr. Comer’s committee reports indicate, some of Hunter Biden’s overseas money came while his father was vice president, but a significant share came afterward.Spokesmen for Mr. Comer and Mr. Trump did not respond to requests for comment.Mr. Trump has never been allergic to foreign money. Even as a candidate in 2016, he secretly pursued a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow until after he had effectively secured the Republican nomination. One of his lawyers reached out to the Kremlin for support for the project, the same Kremlin that Mr. Trump would interact with a few months later as president.To address concerns about foreign financial interests, Mr. Trump promised not to pursue new business overseas while in office, but he did not give up his many existing moneymaking ventures in other countries and his company, formally run by his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, continued to expand operations abroad.During Mr. Trump’s four years in the White House, the Trump Organization received 66 foreign trademarks, according to a report by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, with most of them coming from China but others from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Peru, the Philippines, Indonesia, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates and the European Union.Foreign entities were good customers for Mr. Trump. While in office, 145 foreign officials from 75 governments visited Trump properties and foreign governments or affiliated groups hosted 13 events at his hotels and resorts, according to the ethics group report.While Mr. Trump in last week’s video described Mr. Biden as a puppet of the Chinese, falsely claiming that “China has paid him a fortune,” his own family has had significant financial ties to Beijing. Beyond the trademarks, Forbes calculated that a Trump business during his presidency collected at least $5.4 million in rent from the state-controlled Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.Mr. Kushner’s family negotiated with Chinese and Qatari entities to rescue its debt-saddled Manhattan tower at 666 Fifth Avenue, eventually brokering a $1.1 billion lease deal with an American company whose investors included Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund. (By that time, Mr. Kushner had sold his share of the tower to a family trust of which he was not a beneficiary, and people involved in the deal said the Qataris did not know about the deal before it was made.)Ivanka Trump, for her part, initially kept her own clothing and accessories line while serving on the White House staff and received approval for 16 trademarks from China in 2018 before later deciding to shut down the business.Despite lawsuits by Mr. Eisen and others alleging violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, none of the Trump family’s overseas deal making was ever determined to be illegal by any authority. Nor has any of Hunter Biden’s.But in Mr. Trump’s telling, one is enough to compromise a president and the other is not something to talk about. More

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      Questions for Republican Debate: What Readers Want to Learn

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      More than 850 readers sent us their questions for the Republican candidates. Donald Trump was a hot topic, but not the only: “I don’t want to ask about the past,” one said.As the first Republican presidential debate nears on Wednesday night, we asked our readers a few simple things: What questions would you like to hear? What issues should be discussed? How will you judge the candidates?We heard from more than 850 readers, including devoted supporters of former President Donald J. Trump, Republicans who voted for him in the past but are now skeptical, die-hard Democrats and independents who said they were unsatisfied with all of their options in the 2024 race.Not surprisingly, Mr. Trump loomed large — even in his expected absence onstage. But many Republicans were also eager to hear how the candidates would handle policy issues including the war in Ukraine and migration at the nation’s southern border.Others were eager to hear what the candidates would do to bridge the country’s deep partisan divide. The responses have been lightly edited for clarity.Everyone wants to know about Trump.The former president has said he will not participate on Wednesday, but many readers wanted him — and his four criminal indictments — to be a major topic of conversation.For Democrats, the top concern was some version of the blunt question from Kerry Reardon in Fleming Island, Fla: “Yes or no, do you believe that the Democrats stole the 2020 election?”But Republican supporters had another question for Mr. Trump’s rivals: “What makes them able to defeat Trump, then Biden later on?” asked Austin Moon in Greenville, N.C.“What makes you think you are as tough as Trump?” asked Loretta Houdeshell, a Republican from Greenbrier, Tenn.Others wanted a simple yes-or-no answer to the following question: “Will you support the 2024 Republican nominee for president?”But skepticism about Mr. Trump also crept into Republicans’ questions. Kathryn Byrd, a Republican who voted for Mr. Trump in Missouri in 2020, wanted to know if the candidates thought that “those involved in the Jan. 6 riots should be held accountable, including but not limited to, former President Donald Trump?”Shannon Swindle, a Republican from Georgia, worried about the toll of nominating a candidate with legal baggage and wanted to hear candidates’ views.“How will they address the Trump indictments and what do they have to say if Trump is the Republican nominee, which I personally hope he is not. How do we move forward as a legitimate democracy when the Democratic Party is trying to imprison their main political opponent? What should we do to move forward?”Moving forward was a common theme for many voters, including Peter J. Cotch of Naples, Fla., who hoped the moderators would ask about the “impact of Trumpism on the public image of the Republican Party” and added that he was “a third-generation registered Republican” who had always supported the party’s nominee, but “couldn’t do it this time if it’s Trump.”Immigration and the war in UkraineRepublican readers had priorities beyond Mr. Trump. They often raised questions about the candidates’ positions on continuing to build a border wall and ending birthright citizenship (a change that would require a constitutional amendment).“How would you handle the border crisis moving forward and what would you do with the huge number of immigrants residing in the U.S. currently that arrived outside of our immigration laws?” asked Jane Roberts, a Republican in Florida.Asked what issues he would most like to hear about, Mark Greenstone of Winter Springs, Fla., wrote, “How will they specifically resolve preventing illegal immigrants from entering our country?”“Not just closing the border,” wrote Larry O’Neal of Tuscaloosa, Ala. “But actual changes to the immigration system.”Like many other voters, Mr. O’Neal was also eager to hear about the candidates’ views on the war in Ukraine, a conflict that has divided the G.O.P. between traditionalists and a new guard deeply skeptical of U.S. intervention overseas. Mr. O’Neal wanted to hear about “the risks and rewards by your position.”Josh Sacks, an independent voter in Falls Church, Va., said that he hoped to hear Republicans talk about the “limits of America’s commitment to Ukraine.”Can we all come together?A few Republican respondents asked what the candidates could do to bring their party together, but even more raised questions about national unity.“How are you going to help rebuild trust in our democratic system?” asked Nancy Parlette, a Republican in Maryland who said she wrote in the name of Larry Hogan, the state’s moderate G.O.P. governor at the time, for president in 2020 because she “couldn’t find anyone worth voting for.”“People are sick of all the hate, slander and backbiting,” Ms. Parlette added. “We want to be able to trust our president and our Congress to actually care about America more than about making themselves look great.”Susan Pichoff, a Republican from Alabama, said, “I don’t want to ask about the past.” Instead, she said: “I want to ask about, what are we doing to encourage people and unite this country? Because we are so divided and it’s sad.”George Adkins, an independent voter in Houston who voted for Mr. Trump, had a similar thought: “How do you plan to lessen the divide among Americans in both politics and race?”Ditch the talking pointsAnd, in what might be a perennial request, many voters said they wanted to be leveled with. Mr. Greenstone said he would judge candidates “by how direct and specific they answer questions as opposed to just providing answers that are scripted and vague.”“I will be turned off by a bombastic approach,” wrote Douglas Greenlee, of Huntersville, N.C. “I will respect a thoughtful approach even if the candidate says they do not have the plan developed as yet, but lay out parameters for what they would think about.”But few voters of any political stripe expressed high hopes for the night. Catherine O’Keefe of Hopewell Junction, N.Y., said she expected that “not a single candidate will say anything useful that is not a campaigned-approved talking point, nor will they provide an actual answer to any direct question.”Ms. O’Keefe, a Republican who voted for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020, added, “Candidates will just try to score one-liners against each other.” More

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      Let’s Plant Wildflowers in the National Mall

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      More from our inbox:Indicted LawyersSununu’s ‘Wishful Thinking’End the Ukraine WarDeSantis and the IviesPain Patients Deserve Answers Evan CohenTo the Editor:Re “Fill the National Mall With Wildflowers,” by Alexander Nazaryan (Opinion guest essay, Aug. 11):What a timely and terrific idea Mr. Nazaryan proposes. Let’s replace the clipped, monotonous lawns of our National Mall with gardens of wildflowers, he writes. Create meadows! Variety and color! These fields would provide habitat for the bees, butterflies and other essential insects that are losing their homes to development and chemically maintained landscaping.And, incidentally, these 18 acres of gardens and meadows will pull tons of carbon from the atmosphere and bury it in the soil.What an opportunity to show visitors our national heritage of wildflowers. And what a chance to show young tourists how plants create a livable atmosphere for us.We can model our future on the National Mall. If millions of suburban gardeners and thousands of farmers follow suit in restoring lawns and fields to meadows of wildflowers and multi-crop fields, free of chemicals, we could be on our way to regenerate the earth and save ourselves a place in the future!Deborah Lake FortsonBrookline, Mass.The writer is a member of Brookline Pollinator Pathways.To the Editor:Alexander Nazaryan’s piece on wildflower lawns is wonderful to consider. A few photoshopped pictures of the National Mall full of wildflowers would have made it perfect.I am delighted with my wildflower lawn in Longmont, Colo., on a small residential lot. In 2022, my water bill was reduced by 25,000 gallons after I stopped watering my lawn, even though I maintained extensive flower and vegetable gardens. Mother Nature also helped kill the lawn by withholding any significant rain and snow for the first six months of 2022.This all followed a severe drought in late 2021, which contributed to a massive grassland fire in Boulder County that burned over 1,000 homes in December. I’d had enough of my lawn.Now I enjoy more colors, heights of vegetation and varied shades of green in our yard than I have ever had. The ground always seems damp, even with bright sun and low humidity, which is typical for our local climate. Birds and bees are all over it.We owe it to the planet for working its magic. Our monotonous and high maintenance green carpet was a poor substitute.David BishtonLongmont, Colo.To the Editor:I’m an ecologist in Washington, D.C., and I love low-water landscaping and wilding lawns — but the National Mall is land used for large events like concerts, Fourth of July fireworks, rallies, marches, protests, gatherings, sun bathing, soccer games, chasing kids around, kite festivals and more. And it’s used by hundreds of thousands of people for some of these events.It cannot be full of wildflowers and, no, wildflowers are not easy to maintain in this sort of scenario.There is a section by the Tidal Basin south of the Washington Monument where flowers are planted that the author may enjoy, though it’s a small lot. Wildflowers on the Mall, though, would remove space for us to play. And we do play!Yes, its maintenance is expensive — but the National Mall is not an ecological disaster. It’s an event space.K. SpainWashingtonIndicted LawyersClockwise from top left, attorneys, John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Jeffrey Clark and Sidney Powell.Photographs by Jae C. Hong/Associated Press, Eduardo Munoz/Reuters, Michael A. McCoy/Getty Images and Jonathan Ernst/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “Why Are So Many of Trump’s Alleged Co-Conspirators Lawyers?,” by Deborah Pearlstein (Opinion guest essay, Aug. 15):Reading Ms. Pearlstein’s excellent essay, I was reminded of Anne Applebaum’s observation in her book “Twilight of Democracy”: “Authoritarians need the people who will promote the riot or launch the coup. But they also need the people who can use sophisticated legal language, people who can argue that breaking the constitution or twisting the law is the right thing to do.”Stronger ethics rules and laws, bolstered by the prosecutions and bar expulsions we are witnessing, will help, but ultimately, the problem is more fundamental.What Ms. Pearlstein refers to as a root cause — increased polarization of the legal profession — may be better described as a lack of commitment to democratic principles and, in some cases, a simple lack of character.Michael CurryAustin, TexasTo the Editor:Deborah Pearlstein’s guest essay on the politicization of the legal profession is spot on and reflects the larger problem with the legal profession today: an erosion of ethics.An old joke claims that “legal ethics” is an oxymoron; it is not a joke today. I believe that this is the reason a decreasing number of lawyers are members of the American Bar Association; the ethics code of the A.B.A., and associated state bar associations, is not compatible with their practice of law.Thomas CoxRichmond, Va.Sununu’s ‘Wishful Thinking’Eric Thayer for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “If Republicans Narrow the Field, We Will Beat Trump,” by Gov. Christopher T. Sununu (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Aug. 21):Yes, narrowing the field would help Republicans beat Donald Trump for the nomination, but Mr. Sununu is engaging in wishful thinking when he says that at this week’s debate, the other leading candidates should “break free of Mr. Trump’s drama, step out of his shadow.”That’s not possible for these debate participants, every one of whom will have signed a pledge to support the nominee — even if it’s Mr. Trump and even if he’s a convicted felon by November 2024.Moreover, even candidates like Chris Christie and Mike Pence, who now criticize Mr. Trump’s actions regarding the last presidential election, supported him all through the prior four years of his disastrous presidency.Mr. Sununu says the Republican Party needs to refocus “on a nominee dedicated to saving America.” In fact, it’s the Republican Party that needs saving from its current crop of leaders and candidates.Jeff BurgerRidgewood, N.J.End the Ukraine War Shuran Huang for The New York TimesTo the Editor:“Peace Activists Decide Ukraine Is an Exception” (front page, Aug. 15) correctly reports on how many progressive voices have been quiet on the war. But religious leaders, up to and including Pope Francis, as well as several faith groups like my own (Quakers), have been actively pressing to end the war and support the arduous work of peacemaking.Earlier this year, Pope Francis met with President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Vatican and called for a cease-fire and negotiations. Hundreds of religious leaders have now signed a letter in support of his call and are advocating an end to the war once and for all.You don’t have to be a pope or a pacifist to recognize the perils inherent in continued military escalation — for Ukrainians, Russians and the world. President Biden and Congress must invest much more in seeking a diplomatic path out of the conflict rather than relying on endless military aid. Peacemaking won’t be easy. It never is.But war is not the answer.Bridget MoixWashingtonThe writer is the general secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation.DeSantis and the IviesHaiyun Jiang for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Elites He Now Targets Gave DeSantis a Leg Up” (front page, Aug. 22):Ron DeSantis was so embittered by his exposure to elite liberalism at Yale that when he graduated, he went to Harvard Law School. You cannot make that up!Stephen T. SchreiberPrinceton, N.J.Pain Patients Deserve AnswersTo the Editor:Re “They Live in Constant Pain, but Their Doctors Won’t Help Them,” by Vishakha Darbha, Lucy King and Adam Westbrook (Opinion Video, Aug. 17):I’ve seen too many patients suffering from chronic pain who’ve been told it is in their heads or that nothing can be done. Believing that it’s acceptable to live with pain is unacceptable. If someone has pain, something is wrong. Ongoing pain after a previous trauma or surgical procedure may signal that a nerve is injured, which is an overlooked cause of chronic pain because it is hard to detect through imaging.Neuropathic pain, sometimes called the “invisible illness,” is the most common type of chronic pain, affecting one in 10 people. Yet many health care providers and patients don’t understand nerve injuries, how common they are, and the correlation to ongoing pain. It’s not unusual for people to see more than 20 providers before seeing a surgeon who specializes in nerves. This is not OK.People deserve to know that nerve injuries can often be surgically repaired. It’s time they get the answers and care they deserve.Adam B. StrohlPhiladelphiaThe writer is a surgeon at the Philadelphia Hand to Shoulder Center. More

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      DeSantis Defends ‘Listless Vessels’ Comments That Riled Trump Supporters

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      Mr. DeSantis brought a backlash over the weekend for comments that some of Donald Trump’s backers interpreted as insulting.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Monday defended his remarks urging Republican voters not to be “listless vessels” that automatically support former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. DeSantis said in an interview with The Florida Standard, a conservative news outlet, last week that the conservative movement “can’t be about the personality of one individual.” “If you’re not rooted in principle, if all we are is listless vessels that’s just supposed to follow whatever happens to come down the pike on Truth Social every morning, that’s not going to be a durable movement,” Mr. DeSantis added.The comments quickly prompted backlash over the weekend from Mr. Trump’s campaign and supporters, who said the comments insulted his voters. Many likened Mr. DeSantis’s remarks to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 comments that half of Mr. Trump’s supporters fit into a “basket of deplorables.”A spokeswoman for MAGA Inc., Mr. Trump’s super PAC, Karoline Leavitt, said on Saturday in a statement posted online that “DeSantis must immediately apologize for his disgraceful insult.”Asked about the remarks during an appearance on Fox News on Monday afternoon, Mr. DeSantis said he was referring to members of Congress who had called him a “RINO,” or “Republican in Name Only.”“The people in Congress that I was referring to, that have attacked me and tried to say somehow that I was a RINO, they’re putting entertainment and personality over principle,” he said. “Our voters want us to stand on principle and fight for them.”Mr. DeSantis, who remains in a distant second place to Mr. Trump, has in recent weeks faced a series of campaign woes that included significant campaign staff cuts, stagnant polls and a leaked debate strategy memo. He has received frequent criticism from Mr. Trump and will most likely be the target of further attacks by others at the Republican National Committee debate Wednesday as the leading candidate onstage in Mr. Trump’s absence.“Looks like Ron DeSanctimonious just had his ‘Basket of Deplorables’ moment. Not good!” Jason Miller, an adviser to the Trump campaign, said Saturday on X, formerly known as Twitter.Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who has been critical of Mr. Trump but has defended him more frequently in recent months, told Fox News that Mr. DeSantis’s comments occurred “while his numbers were tanking” and helped explain why other candidates, such as the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, were “on the rise.”“I don’t know why anyone running for president would put down half of the electorate and identify them, call them listless vessels, because they support the former president,” she said.Others in the presidential race seized the opportunity to criticize Mr. DeSantis as well. Mr. Ramaswamy wrote on Sunday that “the real danger to our movement is the rise of ‘listless-vessel’ robot politicians who blindly follow the commands of their Super PACs,” an apparent reference to the Never Back Down super PAC that has effectively taken over Mr. DeSantis’s campaign. The New York Times reported last week about a trove of documents that a political consulting firm associated with the super PAC had posted online. The documents described key details about how Mr. DeSantis might approach the debate, including suggested language for attacking Mr. Ramaswamy.Bryan Griffin, a DeSantis spokesman, pushed back and said Saturday that Mr. DeSantis’s remarks were aimed at Mr. Trump and his “congressional endorsers.”“The dishonest media refuses to report the facts — Donald Trump and some congressional endorsers are ‘listless vessels.’ Why? Because Trump and D.C. insiders feel he is entitled to your vote,” Mr. Griffin wrote on X.“That’s why Ron DeSantis will be showing up on Wednesday night to debate, and Donald Trump will not,” he added.Mr. DeSantis said in his Monday interview on Fox News that he had intended to emphasize what he saw as “one of the big problems with our party for many, many years,” which is that people “say they’re going to do certain things and then don’t end up following through.”He called for a focus, instead, on “delivering for the people that have put us into office.” More

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      Trump Allies May Be Kept Out of Fox News Spin Room After Trump Shuns Debate

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      Fox News, which is hosting the event, will allow aides only for the candidates on the stage.Former President Donald J. Trump’s plan to have prominent surrogates make his case in Milwaukee without attending the debate himself may already be hitting a snag as he clashes with Fox News.Mr. Trump’s campaign had previously arranged for prominent supporters to visit the “spin room,” where candidates and their allies interact with members of the media after the debate.But Fox News, which is hosting the matchup, will grant access to the spin room only to aides of candidates who are participating, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times. Aides of nonparticipating candidates will have access only if they are invited as guests of media organizations.“In addition to the (5) Spin Room credentials referenced in a previous email, we’ll also issue (1) Media Row credential to any participating candidate/campaigns,” the memo says. “Any non-participating candidate/campaign is welcome in the Spin Room or Media Row as a guest of one of the media organizations with positions in those locations, using one of their credentials.”The memo, which was first reported by Axios, does not mention Mr. Trump, and the restrictions apply to all candidates who aren’t participating — a category that also includes those who didn’t meet the donor and polling thresholds to qualify. In practice, though, it will affect Mr. Trump more significantly than anyone else, since he is the front-runner in the Republican primary and is actively trying to snub the debate while still getting its benefits.Mr. Trump’s decision to skip the first Republican National Committee-sanctioned debate of the 2024 race was a slap in the face to both the party and Fox News. Mr. Trump has frequently complained about Fox News’s coverage of him. He has recorded an interview with Tucker Carlson, who was fired from the network this year, that will post on X, formerly known as Twitter, during the debate.At least three senior members of Mr. Trump’s campaign — Chris LaCivita, Jason Miller and Steven Cheung — plan to attend the debate in person, The Times has reported.Among the prominent Trump backers planning to attend Wednesday’s debate are Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor in Arizona who lost last year and has loudly echoed Mr. Trump’s election lies; Mr. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr.; and Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Byron Donalds of Florida.“Kari Lake looks forward to attending the debate, and if Fox thinks otherwise, they’re welcome to call her,” a senior adviser to Ms. Lake, Caroline Wren, told NBC News on Monday.The Fox News memo does not describe any restrictions on audience members, however, only restricting access to the spin room where reporters will be doing the bulk of their post-debate interviews. More