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      J.D. Vance’s Strange Turn to 1876

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      The most favorable gloss you could give to Donald Trump’s effort to “Stop the Steal” is that it was an attempt to deal with real discrepancies in the 2020 presidential race as well as to satisfy those voters angry about the conduct of the election.This, in fact, was the argument made by Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio in a recent interview with my colleague Ross Douthat. Vance defended the conduct of the former president and his allies, and condemned the political class for its attempt to “try to take this very legitimate grievance over our most fundamental democratic act as a people, and completely suppress concerns about it.”Vance briefly analogized Trump’s attempt to contest the election to that of the disputed election of 1876, describing the latter as an example of what should have been done in 2020. “Here’s what this would’ve looked like if you really wanted to do this. You would’ve actually tried to go to the states that had problems; you would try to marshal alternative slates of electors, like they did in the election of 1876. And then you have to actually prosecute that case; you have to make an argument to the American people.”Let’s look at what happened in 1876. In that race, the Democrat, Gov. Samuel Tilden of New York, won a majority of the national popular vote but fell one vote short of a majority in the Electoral College. The Republican, Rutherford Hayes, was well behind in both. The trouble was 20 electoral votes in four states: Florida, Louisiana, Oregon and South Carolina. In the three Southern states, where the elections were marred by fraud, violence and anti-Black intimidation, officials from both parties certified rival slates of electors.Hayes believed, probably correctly, that had there been “a fair election in the South, our electoral vote would reach two hundred and that we should have a large popular majority.” As the historian Michael Fitzgibbon Holt noted in “By One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876,” “Had blacks been allowed to vote freely, Hayes easily would have carried all three states in dispute, Mississippi, and perhaps Alabama as well.”In the weeks following the election, Democrats and Republicans in those states would fight fierce legal battles on behalf of their respective candidates. In South Carolina, where an election for governor was in dispute as well, Democrats threatened to seize the statehouse by force. The predominantly Black Republican majority in the state legislature tried to certify the Republican candidate as the winner, and Democrats went as far as convening a separate legislature, where they crowned their candidate, Wade Hampton III, the victor.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rule 1 to Be Trump’s Running Mate: Defend Him, but Don’t Steal the Show

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      Donald Trump’s search is still in its early stages, but he is said to be leaning toward more experienced options who can help the ticket without seizing his precious spotlight.The cavalry of Republican vice-presidential contenders and other party officials inside the courthouse for Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial was so large one day this week that the group initially had trouble arranging themselves in the two rows set aside for guests of the defense team.Wedged into their seats, they were immediately confronted with testimony accusing their party’s leader — who was trying to inoculate his 2016 presidential campaign from political damage — of writing checks for bogus legal expenses to hide hush-money payments to a porn star.None of the conservatives in the courtroom flinched or raised an eyebrow, including Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, both of whom are said to be under consideration for Mr. Trump’s running mate.Instead, their stoic, protective presence underscored the biggest political quandary facing ambitious Republicans who want Mr. Trump to pick them for vice president: how to fiercely defend him without stealing any of his precious spotlight.The prize for puzzling out the best approach could be a spot near the top of every ballot in the country this fall.“He always wants killers out there fighting for him,” said Barry Bennett, a Republican strategist who advised Mr. Trump’s first presidential campaign. “But he also needs someone with experience and skills who can help shape his message, massage it and make it stronger.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      J.D. Vance, in the Mix to Be Trump’s Running Mate, Joins Him in Court

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      Senator J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican, joined Donald J. Trump’s entourage in court on Monday as the prosecution’s star witness, Michael D. Cohen, the former president’s fixer-turned-nemesis, took the stand.Mr. Vance’s presence could signal a new frontier for Mr. Trump’s testing of potential running mates. The former president has been encouraging vice-presidential contenders, including Mr. Vance, to grant interviews to a range of cable networks in order to measure their performance, as well as inviting them to join him on the campaign trail and to attend fund-raisers for his campaign.But Mr. Vance, who had been aggressively critical of Mr. Trump before running for office, has worked to repair that relationship, and is now one of his most vocal defenders in the Senate. Mr. Vance’s seat in court on Monday could also be chalked up simply as well-timed support for the former president.Other Republicans rounding out Mr. Trump’s support group in the courtroom included Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, who has a close relationship with the former president; Representative Nicole Malliotakis of New York; and Attorney General Brenna Bird of Iowa.Seated near the Republican politicians were Eric Trump, Mr. Trump’s son, and Alina Habba, a lawyer and spokeswoman for the former president. More

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      Potential Trump V.P. Picks Flock to CPAC, Auditioning for the Spot By His Side

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      The South Carolina primary is tomorrow, and Nikki Haley, a former governor of the state, is approaching a critical juncture in her presidential campaign. She is locked in a seemingly desperate struggle against former President Donald J. Trump, the dominant Republican front-runner, facing long odds in her home state as well as in crucial contests on Super Tuesday, March 5.But away from the campaign trail, conservatives near Washington are celebrating Mr. Trump as if he has already secured the Republican presidential nomination. At the influential Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC, which began on Wednesday, the question is not which Republican will face off against President Biden in November, but rather who will join Mr. Trump atop the ticket as his vice-presidential running mate.At least four people who will speak at CPAC today are widely seen as contenders in the made-for-television spectacle that Mr. Trump’s potential vice-presidential selection process has become: Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota and the entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.And while the conference will conclude on Saturday with the group’s traditional straw poll, for the first time in at least a decade, the survey will include a question about vice-presidential preferences, asking attendees to pick the best running mate for Mr. Trump.The former president has sought to cast an air of inevitability around his candidacy, and pushing a conversation about who will be on the ticket with him in November is one way he has tried to steer attention away from Ms. Haley.Emulating a season of “The Apprentice,” the reality television show he hosted in his pre-presidential life, Mr. Trump and his campaign have for weeks stoked speculation about whom he will pick — highlighting different contenders at different campaign stops, gauging the reaction of his loyal rally attendees and scrutinizing the candidates’ performance as surrogates both on and off the campaign trail.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Tries to Turn the G.O.P. Race Into a Vice-Presidential Casting Call

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      Painting himself as inevitable, and seeing who will butter him up the most, Donald Trump has paraded a series of possible running mates, including Tim Scott, Elise Stefanik and J.D. Vance.Donald J. Trump has won just a single nominating contest, but his potential running mates already outnumber his presidential rivals on the campaign trail.As he pursues a victory over Nikki Haley in New Hampshire that would send him on a glide path to the nomination, Mr. Trump seems to be holding casting calls for possible vice-presidential contenders onstage at his rallies and at other events.His goals are clear: Show off the sheer breadth of his institutional support in the Republican Party. Inject a sense of inevitability into the race. And, of course, see which underling will butter him up the most.On Friday alone, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio and Representative Elise Stefanik of New York rallied supporters for him. Ms. Stefanik held a second event on Saturday.The presence of all three, each of whom maintains a close relationship with Mr. Trump, generated headlines and fired up his base.But joining Mr. Trump’s ticket can come with risks. Former Vice President Mike Pence twice ran with Mr. Trump, but his refusal to violate the Constitution to help overthrow the 2020 election led to Trump supporters storming the Capitol and threatening to hang him. Mr. Pence and his family were forced into hiding inside the Capitol to avoid the mob.Mr. Scott’s stock seemed to rise with Mr. Trump after his endorsement of the former president on Friday, a move that showed the genial senator’s fealty and his surprising capacity for ruthlessness. In choosing Mr. Trump, Mr. Scott dealt a brutal rejection to Ms. Haley, his home-state compatriot and the woman who appointed him to the Senate.Mr. Scott’s remarks at the Trump rally on Friday in Concord projected a stirring energy often lacking in own presidential bid, which he ended in November.“We need Donald Trump,” Mr. Scott shouted to the audience.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe crowd matched his excitement with shouts of “V.P.,” and Mr. Scott ended his fiery call-and-response speech by shouting with the audience, “We need Donald Trump.”Mr. Trump noted Mr. Scott’s transformation.“He was great, don’t you think?” Mr. Trump said after the rally to a Republican consultant, who insisted on anonymity to describe the private conversation.Mr. Trump’s enthusiasm was a marked change from a year ago, when, after a lackluster debate performance by Mr. Scott, the former president raised eyebrows among some associates with offhand comments that the South Carolinian had not received much coverage.Ms. Stefanik has also seemed like an increasingly decent bet to be Mr. Trump’s running mate, winning acclaim throughout the conservative world for her role in taking down two presidents of elite universities after a contentious hearing on antisemitism and campus protests.At his Friday rally, Mr. Trump praised Ms. Stefanik, a one-time backbencher who rocketed to the party’s No. 4 House leadership job.“Elise became very famous,” he said of her prodding of the college presidents, describing her questioning as surgical. “Wasn’t it beautiful?”One potential hitch with a Stefanik pick: Mr. Trump mispronounced her last name as “STEH-fuh-nick” instead of “steh-FAH-nick.”On Saturday, Trump supporters also greeted Ms. Stefanik with “V.P.” chants as she visited with volunteers at the former president’s campaign office in Manchester.“I’d be honored — I’ve said that for a year — to serve in a future Trump administration in any capacity,” she told reporters.Rep. Elise Stefanik at a Trump rally in Concord, N.H.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAt the Saddle Up Saloon in Kingston, N.H., Mr. Vance mingled with dozens of Trump supporters as reporters asked about his prospects to join the presidential ticket.Mr. Vance, the best-selling author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” suggested he would be better utilized in the Senate during a second Trump term than as vice president. Still, Mr. Vance said, he would have to think about such an offer.“I want to help him however I can,” he said.Mr. Trump agonized over his pick for vice president in 2016, toggling potential picks until almost the moment of the announcement.But during this campaign, Mr. Trump teased his vice-presidential pick before the first nominating contest last week in Iowa, where he said on Fox News that he had decided on a running mate but declined to offer a name. Still, a formal announcement could remain far off: Several people close to Mr. Trump have privately suggested that his comment was more showmanship than serious.In Iowa, Mr. Trump also recruited a series of potential running mates to campaign for him: Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia; Kari Lake, a Republican Senate candidate in Arizona; and Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota.But the V.P. chants have grown much louder in New Hampshire.At an event in Atkinson on Tuesday, Vivek Ramaswamy made an impassioned defense of Mr. Trump — less than a day after ending his own White House bid, most of which he spent glorifying the former president.When the crowd chanted “V.P! V.P!” for Mr. Ramaswamy, an Ohio entrepreneur, Mr. Trump returned the approval.Mr. Ramaswamy, the former president said, is “going to be working with us for a long time.”Ms. Haley, who served in Mr. Trump’s administration as ambassador to the United Nations, has long been mentioned as a potential running mate.But during Friday’s speech in Concord, Mr. Trump seemed to rule out that possibility.“She is not presidential timber,” he said. “Now, when I say that, that probably means that she’s not going to be chosen as the vice president.”Neil Vigdor More

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      McConnell and Other Senate Republicans Criticize Trump’s Talk on Immigrants

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      The minority leader took an oblique swipe at Donald Trump’s rhetoric about migrants “poisoning the blood” of the country, but others like Senator Tommy Tuberville defended him.When Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, was asked about former President Donald J. Trump’s now-standard stump line claiming that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” Senator McConnell delivered an indirect but contemptuous response.“Well, it strikes me it didn’t bother him when he appointed Elaine Chao secretary of transportation,” Mr. McConnell, the Senate minority leader, said. Ms. Chao, who was born in Taiwan and immigrated to America as a child, is married to Mr. McConnell.Mr. McConnell referred to a feud that has simmered for more than a year over the former president’s racist attacks against Ms. Chao. Mr. Trump, often referring to her by the derisive nickname “Coco Chow,” has suggested that she — and by extension her husband, Mr. McConnell — are beholden to China because of her connections to the country.Mr. Trump repeated his “poisoning the blood” claim at a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday, prompting an outburst of criticism from Senate Republicans this week.Senator Susan Collins of Maine told a reporter for The Independent that the former president’s remarks were “deplorable.”“That was horrible that those comments are just — they have no place, particularly from a former president,” Ms. Collins said.Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, denounced Mr. Trump’s language as “unacceptable.”“I think that that rhetoric is very inappropriate,” Mr. Rounds said, according to NBC News. “But this administration’s policies are feeding right into it. And so, I disagree with that. I think we should celebrate our diversity.”Mr. McConnell’s own oblique retort, which did not directly criticize Mr. Trump’s language, signaled that even some of the former president’s boldest Republican critics on Capitol Hill are treading lightly, as he dominates the polls in the Republican presidential race.Mr. McConnell has spent years trying to steer the party away from Mr. Trump after the riot at the Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, in large part because he views the former president as a political loser. Often when Mr. McConnell criticizes Mr. Trump he does so by saying his behavior would make it hard for him to win another presidential election.Senate Republicans are also trying to negotiate a deal with the White House, proposing sweeping restrictions on migration in exchange for approving additional military aid to Ukraine and Israel, a top priority for President Biden.Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the Senate majority leader, denounced Mr. Trump’s remarks on Tuesday as “despicable” but signaled that Senate Democrats would push forward with negotiations on border restrictions.“We all know there’s a problem at the border,” Mr. Schumer said. “The president does. Democrats do. And we’re going to try to solve that problem consistent with our principles.”Other Senate Republicans more delicately admonished Mr. Trump for his remarks, referring to either their own immigrant heritage or the principle that America is a nation of immigrants.“My grandfather is an immigrant, so that’s not a view I share,” John Thune, the second-ranking Senate Republican, said in a CNN interview on Monday. He added, “We are a nation of immigrants, but we’re also a nation of laws,” describing illegal immigration as “a runaway train at the Southern border.”But other Senate Republicans embraced Mr. Trump’s language. Senator Tommy Tuberville, who had defended white supremacists serving in the military before retracting his remarks this year, said that Mr. Trump’s attacks on immigrants did not go far enough.“I’m mad he wasn’t tougher than that,” Mr. Tuberville told a reporter for The Independent. “When you see what’s happening at the border? We’re being overrun. They’re taking us over.”Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio said it was “objectively and obviously true” that “illegal immigrants were poisoning the blood of the country.” He also scolded the reporter who asked him about Mr. Trump’s remarks, accusing her of using Mr. Trump’s words to try to “narrow the limits of debate on immigration in this country.”Representative Nicole Malliotakis, the lone Republican in a House seat in New York City, denied that Mr. Trump’s remarks were referring to immigrants.“He didn’t say the words ‘immigrants,’ I think he was talking about the Democratic policies,” she said in a CNN interview on Monday. “Look, I know that some are trying to make it seem like Trump is anti-immigrant. The reality is, he was married to immigrants, he has hired immigrants.” More

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      Las inquietudes sobre el autoritarismo de Trump abren un debate en EE. UU.

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      El expresidente y sus aliados hacen poco para tranquilizar a quienes están preocupados por una posible dictadura. Incluso, con sus declaraciones y acciones parecen estar reafirmando esas alarmas.El otro día, cuando un historiador escribió un ensayo en el que advertía que elegir al expresidente Donald Trump el próximo año podría conducir a una dictadura, un aliado de Trump no tardó en responder con un llamado para que dicho historiador fuera enviado a prisión.Suena casi como una parodia: la respuesta a las inquietudes de un autor sobre una dictadura es procesarlo. Pero Trump y sus aliados no se están tomando la molestia de rechazar con firmeza la acusación de una dictadura para tranquilizar a quienes les preocupa lo que podría significar un nuevo mandato. En todo caso, parece que la están alentando.Si Trump regresara a la presidencia, sus allegados han prometido “perseguir” a los medios de comunicación, iniciar investigaciones penales contra excolaboradores que se distanciaron del expresidente y expulsar del gobierno a los funcionarios públicos que consideran desleales. Cuando los críticos señalaron que el lenguaje de Trump sobre eliminar a todos los “parásitos” de Washington evocaba al de Adolf Hitler, un portavoz del expresidente dijo sobre los críticos que su “triste y miserable existencia será destruida” bajo el gobierno de Trump.El propio Trump hizo poco para calmar a los estadounidenses cuando su amigo Sean Hannity intentó ayudarlo en Fox News la semana pasada. Durante una reunión de foro abierto, Hannity le planteó a Trump lo que parecía ser una pregunta sencilla al pedirle que reafirmara que, por supuesto, no tenía la intención de abusar de su poder y usar el gobierno para castigar a sus enemigos. En lugar de tan solo concordar con esa afirmación, Trump aseguró que solo sería un dictador en el “Día 1” de un nuevo periodo.“Trump ha dejado bien claro, mediante todas sus acciones y retórica, que admira a los líderes que despliegan tipos de poder autoritario, desde Putin hasta Orbán pasando por Xi, y que quiere ejercer ese tipo de poder en casa”, comentó Ruth Ben-Ghiat, autora de Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, en referencia a Vladimir Putin de Rusia, Viktor Orbán de Hungría y Xi Jinping de China. “La historia nos demuestra que los autócratas siempre manifiestan quiénes son y qué van a hacer”, agregó. “Solo que nosotros no escuchamos hasta que es demasiado tarde”.A pesar de su enfrentamiento público con la dirigencia china, el presidente Trump ha elogiado al presidente Xi Jinping por sus políticas de hombre fuerte.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesEn los últimos días, las conversaciones sobre el posible carácter autoritario de una nueva presidencia de Trump han impregnado el debate político en la capital de Estados Unidos. Una serie de informes en The New York Times esbozaron varios planes desarrollados por aliados de Trump para imponer un enorme poder en un nuevo mandato y detallaron cómo el exmandatario tendría menos restricciones constitucionales. The Atlantic publicó una edición especial en la que 24 colaboradores pronosticaron cómo sería un segundo periodo presidencial de Trump, y muchos predijeron un régimen autocrático.Liz Cheney, quien fue legisladora republicana por Wyoming en el Congreso y vicepresidenta del comité de la Cámara de Representantes encargado de investigar el asalto del 6 de enero de 2021 al Capitolio, publicó un nuevo libro en el que advierte que Trump es un peligro claro y presente para la democracia estadounidense. Y, por supuesto, se publicó el ensayo del historiador Robert Kagan en The Washington Post que motivó a J. D. Vance, senador republicano por Ohio y aliado de Trump, a presionar al Departamento de Justicia para que lo investigara.Seamos claros, los presidentes estadounidenses han excedido los límites de su poder y han sido llamados dictadores desde los primeros días de la república. John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson y Franklin Roosevelt, entre otros, fueron acusados de ser déspotas. Se decía que Richard Nixon consolidó su poder en la “presidencia imperial”. Tanto a George W. Bush como a Barack Obama se les comparó con Hitler.Pero hay algo distinto en el debate actual, más allá de la retórica subida de tono o los desacuerdos legítimos sobre los límites del poder ejecutivo, algo que sugiere que este es un momento fundamental de decisión en el experimento estadounidense. Tal vez es una manifestación del desencanto popular con las instituciones del país: solo el 10 por ciento de los estadounidenses piensa que la democracia funciona muy bien, según una encuesta realizada en junio por The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.Tal vez es un reflejo del extremismo y la demagogia que se han vuelto tan comunes en la política de muchos lugares en el mundo. Y tal vez proviene de un expresidente que reclama su antiguo puesto y evidencia una afinidad tan desconcertante hacia los autócratas.En una ocasión, Trump expresó que no sentía ni un atisbo de remordimiento al compartir en redes sociales una cita de Mussolini y adoptó el lenguaje de Stalin al llamar a los periodistas los “enemigos del pueblo”. Le dijo a su jefe de gabinete que “Hitler hizo muchas cosas buenas” y luego expresó que deseaba que los generales estadounidenses fueran como los generales de Hitler.En diciembre del año pasado, poco después de iniciar su campaña de reaparición, Trump hizo un llamado a “poner fin” a la Constitución para retirar de inmediato al presidente Joe Biden del cargo y reinstaurarlo a él en la Casa Blanca sin tener que esperar a otras elecciones.Los defensores de Trump desestiman los temores sobre sus instintos autocráticos como quejas de los liberales que no lo apoyan ni a él ni a sus políticas y que intentan asustar a los votantes de maneras engañosas. Argumentan que Biden es el verdadero dictador, ya que su Departamento de Justicia llevará a juicio a su rival más contundente el próximo año por varios presuntos delitos, aunque no hay evidencia de que Biden haya participado personalmente en esas decisiones, y a pesar de que algunos exasesores de Trump afirman que las acusaciones son legítimas.“Los comentarios relacionados con una dictadura que realizan Kagan y sus colegas escritores liberales es un intento de asustar a los estadounidenses no solo para distraerse a sí mismos de los errores y la debilidad del gobierno de Biden, sino porque hay algo que ellos temen aún más: que un segundo gobierno de Trump tenga mucho más éxito a la hora de implementar su agenda y deshacer políticas y programas progresistas que el primero”, escribió Fred Fleitz, quien trabajó brevemente en la Casa Blanca de Trump, en el sitio web American Greatness el viernes.Kagan, un académico muy respetado de la Institución Brookings y autor de numerosos libros de historia, tiene muchos antecedentes de apoyar una política exterior firme que, en opinión de la izquierda, dista mucho de ser liberal. Pero desde hace años ha sido un crítico firme y declarado de Trump. En mayo de 2016, cuando otros republicanos se hacían a la idea de la primera nominación de Trump a la presidencia, Kagan advirtió: “así es como el fascismo llega a Estados Unidos”.Su ensayo del 30 de noviembre sonó como una nueva advertencia. Puede que los intentos de Trump para poner en marcha sus ideas más radicales en su primer mandato hayan sido obstaculizados por asesores republicanos y oficiales militares más moderados, argumentó Kagan, pero no se va a volver a rodear de esas figuras y encontrará menos de los controles y contrapesos que lo limitaron la última vez.Los defensores del expresidente califican los temores sobre los instintos autocráticos de Trump como quejas de liberales que intentan asustar a los votantes.Jordan Gale para The New York TimesEntre otros ejemplos, Kagan citó el intento de Trump por anular una elección que había perdido, sin tomar en cuenta la voluntad de los votantes. También señaló los comentarios francos de Trump sobre llevar a juicio a sus adversarios y desplegar al ejército en las calles para reprimir las manifestaciones. “En unos pocos años, hemos pasado de tener una democracia relativamente segura a estar a unos pasos cortos, y a escasos meses, de la posibilidad de vivir una dictadura”, escribió Kagan.Vance, senador recién llegado que buscó el apoyo de Trump y la semana pasada fue mencionado por Axios como un posible compañero de fórmula a la vicepresidencia en 2024, se ofendió en nombre del expresidente. Envió una carta al fiscal general Merrick Garland en la que sugería que Kagan debía ser llevado a juicio por incitar una “rebelión abierta”, y basó su argumento en una parte del ensayo de Kagan que señalaba que los estados dirigidos por demócratas podrían desafiar la presidencia de Trump.Vance escribió que “según Robert Kagan, la perspectiva de una segunda presidencia de Donald Trump es tan terrible como para justificar una rebelión abierta contra Estados Unidos, junto con la violencia política que invariablemente le seguiría”.El artículo de Kagan no abogaba realmente por la rebelión, sino que pronosticaba la posibilidad de que los gobernadores demócratas se opusieran a Trump “mediante una forma de anulación” de la autoridad federal. De hecho, llegó a insinuar que los gobernadores republicanos podrían hacer lo mismo con Biden, algo que tampoco defendía.Vance intentaba establecer un paralelo entre el ensayo de Kagan y los esfuerzos de Trump para revertir las elecciones de 2020. El senador escribió que, según la lógica del Departamento de Justicia al investigar a Trump, el artículo de Kagan podría ser interpretado como una “invitación a la ‘insurrección’, una expresión de ‘conspiración’ delictiva o un intento de ocasionar una guerra civil”. Para enfatizar su idea, insistió en que hubiera respuestas para el 6 de enero.Kagan, quien publicó otro ensayo el jueves sobre cómo detener la trayectoria hacia la dictadura que él vislumbra, comentó que la intervención del senador validaba sus argumentos. “Es revelador que su primer instinto tras ser atacado por un periodista es sugerir que lo encierren”, señaló Kagan en una entrevista.Los ayudantes de Trump y Vance no respondieron a las solicitudes de comentarios. David Shipley, editor de opinión de The Washington Post, defendió el trabajo de Kagan. “Estamos orgullosos de publicar los reflexivos ensayos de Robert Kagan y animamos al público a leer sus artículos del 30 de noviembre y del 7 de diciembre juntos, y a sacar sus propias conclusiones”, dijo. “Estos ensayos forman parte de una larga tradición de Kagan de iniciar conversaciones importantes”.Es una conversación que tiene meses por delante y un final incierto. Mientras tanto, nadie espera que Garland tome en serio a Vance, incluido casi con toda seguridad el propio Vance. Su carta era una declaración política. Pero dice algo de este momento que su propuesta de procesar a un crítico se pueda ver como un triunfo político.Peter Baker es el corresponsal jefe del Times en la Casa Blanca. Ha cubierto a los cinco últimos presidentes estadounidenses y a veces escribe artículos analíticos que sitúan a los mandatarios y sus gobierno en un contexto y un marco histórico más amplios. Más de Peter Baker More

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      Talk of a Trump Dictatorship Charges the American Political Debate

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      Former President Donald J. Trump and his allies are not doing much to reassure those worried about his autocratic instincts. If anything, they seem to be leaning into the predictions.When a historian wrote an essay the other day warning that the election of former President Donald J. Trump next year could lead to dictatorship, one of Mr. Trump’s allies quickly responded by calling for the historian to be sent to prison.It almost sounds like a parody: The response to concerns about dictatorship is to prosecute the author. But Mr. Trump and his allies are not going out of their way to reassure those worried about what a new term would bring by firmly rejecting the dictatorship charge. If anything, they seem to be leaning into it.If Mr. Trump is returned to office, people close to him have vowed to “come after” the news media, open criminal investigations into onetime aides who broke with the former president and purge the government of civil servants deemed disloyal. When critics said Mr. Trump’s language about ridding Washington of “vermin” echoed that of Adolf Hitler, the former president’s spokesman said the critics’ “sad, miserable existence will be crushed” under a new Trump administration.Mr. Trump himself did little to assuage Americans when his friend Sean Hannity tried to help him out on Fox News this past week. During a town hall-style meeting, Mr. Hannity tossed a seeming softball by asking Mr. Trump to reaffirm that of course he did not intend to abuse his power and use the government to punish enemies. Instead of simply agreeing, Mr. Trump said he would only be a dictator on “Day 1” of a new term.“Trump has made it crystal clear through all his actions and rhetoric that he admires leaders who have forms of authoritarian power, from Putin to Orban to Xi, and that he wants to exercise that kind of power at home,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” referring to Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Viktor Orban of Hungary and Xi Jinping of China. “History shows that autocrats always tell you who they are and what they are going to do,” she added. “We just don’t listen until it is too late.”Despite his public sparring with China’s leaders, President Trump has praised President Xi Jinping for his strongman policies.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesTalk about the possible authoritarian quality of a new Trump presidency has suffused the political conversation in the nation’s capital in recent days. A series of reports in The New York Times outlined various plans developed by Mr. Trump’s allies to assert vast power in a new term and detailed how he would be less constrained by constitutional guardrails. The Atlantic published a special issue with 24 contributors forecasting what a second Trump presidency would look like, many of them depicting an autocratic regime.Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman from Wyoming who was vice chairwoman of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, published a new book warning that Mr. Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy. And of course, there was the essay by the historian, Robert Kagan, in The Washington Post that prompted Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio and a Trump ally, to press the Justice Department to investigate.To be sure, American presidents have stretched their power and been called dictators going back to the early days of the republic. John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, among others, were all accused of despotism. Richard M. Nixon was said to have consolidated power in the “imperial presidency.” George W. Bush and Barack Obama were both compared to Hitler.But there is something different about the debate now, more than overheated rhetoric or legitimate disagreements over the boundaries of executive power, something that suggests a fundamental moment of decision in the American experiment. Perhaps it is a manifestation of popular disenchantment with American institutions; only 10 percent of Americans think democracy is working very well, according to a poll in June by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.Perhaps it is a reflection of the extremism and demagoguery that has grown more prevalent in politics in many places around the world. And perhaps it stems from a former president seeking to reclaim his old office who evinces such perplexing affinity for and even envy of autocrats.Mr. Trump once expressed no regret that a quote he shared on social media came from Mussolini and adopted the language of Stalin in calling journalists the “enemies of the people.” He told his chief of staff that “Hitler did a lot of good things” and later said he wished American generals were like Hitler’s generals.Last December, shortly after opening his comeback campaign, Mr. Trump called for “termination” of the Constitution to remove Mr. Biden immediately and reinstall himself in the White House without waiting for another election. The former president’s defenders dismiss the fears about Mr. Trump’s autocratic instincts as whining by liberals who do not like him or his policies and are disingenuously trying to scare voters. They argue that President Biden is the real dictator because his Justice Department is prosecuting his likeliest challenger next year for various alleged crimes, although there is no evidence that Mr. Biden has been personally involved in those decisions and even some former Trump advisers call the indictments legitimate.“The dictator talk by Kagan and his fellow liberal writers is an attempt to scare Americans not just to distract them from the failures and weakness of the Biden administration but because of something they are even more afraid of: that a second Trump administration will be far more successful in implementing its agenda and undoing progressive policies and programs than the first,” Fred Fleitz, who served briefly in Mr. Trump’s White House, wrote on the American Greatness website on Friday.Mr. Kagan, a widely respected Brookings Institution scholar and author of numerous books of history, has a long record of support for a muscular foreign policy that hardly strikes many on the left as liberal. But he has been a strong and outspoken critic of Mr. Trump for years. In May 2016, when other Republicans were reconciling themselves to Mr. Trump’s first nomination for president, Mr. Kagan warned that “this is how fascism comes to America.”His essay on Nov. 30 sounded the alarm again. Mr. Trump may have been thwarted in his first term from enacting some of his more radical ideas by more conventional Republican advisers and military officers, Mr. Kagan argued, but he will not surround himself with such figures again and will encounter fewer of the checks and balances that constrained him last time. The former president’s defenders dismiss the fears about Mr. Trump’s autocratic instincts as complaints by liberals who are trying to scare voters.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesAmong other things, Mr. Kagan cited Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn an election that he had lost, disregarding the will of the voters. And he noted Mr. Trump’s overt discussion of prosecuting opponents and sending the military into the streets to quell protests. “In just a few years, we have gone from being relatively secure in our democracy to being a few short steps, and a matter of months, away from the possibility of dictatorship,” Mr. Kagan wrote.Mr. Vance, a freshman senator who has courted Mr. Trump’s support and was listed by Axios this past week as a possible vice-presidential running mate next year, took umbrage on behalf of the former president. He dispatched a letter to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland suggesting that Mr. Kagan be prosecuted for encouraging “open rebellion,” seizing on a point in Mr. Kagan’s essay noting that Democratic-run states might defy a President Trump.Mr. Vance wrote that “according to Robert Kagan, the prospect of a second Donald Trump presidency is terrible enough to justify open rebellion against the United States, along with the political violence that would invariably follow.”Mr. Kagan’s piece did not actually advocate rebellion, but simply forecast the possibility that Democratic governors would stand against Mr. Trump “through a form of nullification” of federal authority. Indeed, he went on to suggest that Republican governors might do the same with Mr. Biden, which he was not advocating either.But Mr. Vance was trying to draw a parallel between Mr. Kagan’s essay and Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. By the Justice Department’s logic in pursuing Mr. Trump, the senator wrote, the Kagan article could be interpreted as “an invitation to ‘insurrection,’ a manifestation of criminal ‘conspiracy,’ or an attempt to bring about civil war.” To make his point clear, he insisted on answers by Jan. 6.Mr. Kagan, who followed his essay with another on Thursday about how to stop the slide to dictatorship that he sees, said the intervention by the senator validated his point. “It is revealing that their first instinct when attacked by a journalist is to suggest that they be locked up,” Mr. Kagan noted in an interview.Aides to Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance did not respond to requests for comment. David Shipley, the opinion editor of The Post, defended Mr. Kagan’s work. “We are proud to publish Robert Kagan’s thoughtful essays and we encourage audiences to read both his Nov. 30 and Dec. 7 pieces together — and draw their own conclusions,” he said. “These essays are part of a long Kagan tradition of starting important conversations.”It is a conversation that has months to go with an uncertain ending. In the meantime, no one expects Mr. Garland to take Mr. Vance seriously, including almost certainly Mr. Vance. His letter was a political statement. But it says something about the era that proposing the prosecution of a critic would be seen as a political winner. More