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    Biden Takes On Campaign Duty in Pennsylvania, Celebrating Unions

    As Jill Biden and JD Vance also made stops around Philadelphia, the president’s visit highlighted the intense struggle to persuade voters in what may be the most critical swing state.President Biden and Jill Biden, the first lady, joined the pitched electoral struggle over Pennsylvania on Tuesday, fanning out with three appearances across the Philadelphia area intended to aid Vice President Kamala Harris in what may be the most consequential swing state.While his wife helped staff a phone bank across town, Mr. Biden joined a dinner held by the Philadelphia Democratic City Committee at the local sheet metal workers’ union hall, where he revved up attendees with a punchy speech and unleashed a long list of attacks against former President Donald J. Trump.“He has the same ideas on race as the 1930s. Trump’s ideas on the economy are from the ’20s. Trump’s ideas on women are from the ’50s,” he said. “Folks, this is 2024. We can’t go back.”But as often as Mr. Biden sought to contrast his record with Mr. Trump’s, he carefully tacked back several times to express support for Ms. Harris. He compared her to himself in growing out of his role as former President Barack Obama’s running mate, seeking to support her without defining her in his own unpopular image.“I was loyal to Barack Obama, but I cut my own path as president,” he said. “That’s what Kamala is going to do. She’s been loyal so far, but she’s going to cut her own path.”Mr. Biden’s visit was a reminder that just three weeks before the election, even when the presidential candidates are not in Pennsylvania, they are well aware of the need to maintain a presence in the state. With 19 electoral votes, it is the largest of the battleground prizes, and both campaigns would face narrow paths to victory without it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    5 conclusiones de la entrevista de Vance con The New York Times

    Cuando se le preguntó si creía que las elecciones de 2020 habían sido robadas, Vance eludió responder repetidamente. Y defendió el sentimiento detrás de su comentario “señoras con gatos y sin hijos”, aunque se arrepintió de su elección de palabras.JD Vance sigue participando en la campaña.El candidato republicano a la vicepresidencia y senador por Ohio en su primer mandato habla con los periodistas en los mítines electorales. Está agendando entrevistas en cadenas de televisión y por cable. Y le concedió una entrevista a The New York Times.Algo ha cambiado en la política estadounidense cuando es digno de mención que un candidato se enfrente de manera voluntaria a una pregunta tras otra sin tener un guion. Pero así estamos.En su más reciente participación con los medios de comunicación, Vance se sentó con Lulu Garcia-Navarro, copresentadora de The Interview, un pódcast de The New York Times que presenta una conversación de una hora con un único invitado cada sábado.A continuación, ofrecemos cinco conclusiones de la entrevista de Vance:Sus críticos le llaman débil. Él dice que es complejoParece poco probable que Donald Trump se describa a sí mismo como una persona reflexiva. Vance no puede parar.La entrevista comienza con García-Navarro diciéndole a Vance que, mientras se preparaba para su reunión, surgió una pregunta persistente entre la gente: “¿Cuál JD se va a presentar?”.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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    On the Trail, Vance Is Dogged by Questions About Trump’s Loss in 2020

    Senator JD Vance of Ohio, who has faced renewed questions about the 2020 election since refusing at the vice-presidential debate this month to acknowledge that former President Donald J. Trump lost, falsely suggested on Saturday that the election had been “rigged.”“I think the election of 2020 had serious problems,” Mr. Vance said at a campaign event in Johnstown, Pa. “You want to call it rigged. Call it whatever you want to, it wasn’t OK.”Mr. Vance was asked five times in an interview with The New York Times this week whether Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election, and he declined to answer each time. Taking questions from reporters at a rally at a factory for military vehicles in Johnstown, Mr. Vance again refused to acknowledge his running mate’s defeat and downplayed the severity of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol even as he condemned it.“Yes, there was a riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but there was still a peaceful transfer of power in this country,” Mr. Vance said, describing the rioters as “a few knuckleheads who went off and did something they shouldn’t do.” The rioters, hundreds of whom were convicted of crimes in connection to the attack, had interrupted the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory as they stormed the Capitol that day.Johnstown, which has a storied history in the Pennsylvania steel industry, is in an overwhelmingly Republican county east of Pittsburgh that Mr. Trump won by 38 points in 2020. Some members of the audience at the event, filling roughly half the seats in the venue, stood up in their chairs and booed reporters as they asked questions about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 riot.Mr. Vance repeated his assertion that censorship by tech companies had hurt Mr. Trump in 2020. And he chided the press for asking him about that election, saying that he had not been asked one question about inflation or the economy.“I’m a hell of a lot more worried that American citizens can’t afford a good life in their country,” Vance said, “because Kamala Harris has been the vice president, and that is what I’m trying to change.” The audience of Trump supporters gave Mr. Vance a standing ovation, and broke out into chants of: “JD.”Later, after Mr. Vance departed Johnstown for a town-hall event in a packed airport hangar in Reading, Pa., Mr. Vance said that the attorney general would be the most important job in a second Trump administration. He vowed to “clean house” at the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, and to fire those people who were responsible for Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, which he characterized as “fake.”“Here’s what President Trump and I are going to do when we get in there: We’re going to fire the people responsible,” Mr. Vance said to raucous applause. More

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    Vance and Walz Make Dueling Appearances, as Voting Begins in Arizona

    Senator JD Vance of Ohio and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota opened the first day of voting in Arizona on Wednesday with a spree of campaign events across the state, zeroing in on a crucial swing state after their debate last week.Arizona, with its 15 Electoral College votes, has no clear favorite in the presidential race — even as polls there show a slight lead by former President Donald J. Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Trump won the state by a significant margin in 2016, and President Biden won the state in 2020 by less than 11,000 votes — a narrow victory that both campaigns highlighted as evidence that every vote in the state will matter this year.The two vice-presidential candidates fanned out in the morning from luxury hotels near Phoenix and Tucson, and their motorcades crisscrossed desert highways to campaign in the two urban centers. Mr. Vance first held a rally in Tucson before attending a town-hall event hosted by the Conservative Political Action Conference in Mesa, near Phoenix. Mr. Walz visited a Veterans of Foreign Wars post and met with tribal leaders on tribal land, near Phoenix, before holding a campaign rally in the evening at a high school gym in Tucson.Mr. Walz and Mr. Vance said little of each other — instead directing their attacks at each other’s running mates — even as the two came close to crossing paths in Phoenix. Mr. Vance flew from Tucson to Phoenix in the midafternoon, and his campaign jet was parked nearby as Mr. Walz boarded his own campaign jet for the short hop to Tucson later that day.Senator JD Vance greeting supporters at a campaign event in Tucson, Ariz., on Wednesday.Grace Trejo/Arizona Daily Star, via Associated PressGov. Tim Walz, also in Tucson on Wednesday, at a campaign rally at Palo Verde High Magnet School.Kelly Presnell/Arizona Daily Star, via Associated PressSpeaking to supporters at an outdoor rally in sweltering heat at the Tucson Speedway, Mr. Vance urged Arizona residents to vote early, saying that “the best way to make sure your voice is counted is to make sure it’s counted early.” The appeal contradicts the messaging by his running mate, Mr. Trump, who continues to stoke doubts about mail voting.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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    A ‘Hallowed Place,’ With a Whiff of Onion Rings and Sun Block

    Donald Trump returned to the site where he was shot in the ear. For some of his supporters, it was a religious event as much as a campaign rally.“We have fought together,” former President Donald J. Trump told his supporters on Saturday evening. “We have bled together.”He was back in Butler, Pa., where, in July, he was shot in the ear, one of his followers was killed and two others were injured. He stood behind the thickest, most bulletproof glass you have ever seen and looked out into maybe the biggest crowd he has had all year. He said that he had returned “by the hand of providence and the grace of God” and that he would not ever bend or break “even in the face of death itself.” He looked around the sprawling farm grounds and declared them a “hallowed place.”As holy sites go, this was an unusual one. The smell of onion rings and sunblock and cigarette smoke and diesel fuel and dirt swirled together in the air. There were a great many men with sniper rifles, prowling across nearby rooftops. There were monster trucks in the parking lot, and military veterans parachuting in as AC/DC’s “Back in Black” boomed from the sound system, and there was Elon Musk, dressed all in black, jumping up and down onstage.Elon Musk at the rally in Butler on Saturday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesStill, many of the former president’s supporters really do regard Butler as consecrated grounds. In the 12 weeks since the shooting, a spiritual lore has sprung up around the events of that day. It is a powerful lore that Mr. Trump, his campaign, his children and his running mate have nurtured, such that Saturday’s return to Butler was, for many of the movement’s followers, more than just a campaign rally — it was a religious event.And it marked the stunning endpoint of a journey that Mr. Trump has traveled with people of faith, one that was at first defined by a transactionalism and gaze aversion — We’ll look the other way at his sinning if he delivers on the issues we care about — but that has now transmogrified into something else entirely.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump’s Return to Scene of Attack Is a Do-Over in More Ways Than One

    Donald J. Trump returned to Butler, Pa., on Saturday for a massive rally at the fairgrounds where he was struck in July by a would-be assassin’s bullet, an event envisioned by his campaign as a show of strength and a memorial for the former volunteer fire chief who was killed during the attack. His speech quickly swung from a somber commemoration of the slain firefighter, Corey Comperatore, to a somewhat subdued, sanded-down version of his standard attacks on his opponent, complete with exaggerations and falsehoods. Mr. Trump commended his own performance in the face of adversity and brought out one of his biggest backers, the billionaire Elon Musk, who jumped up and down on the stage. For Mr. Trump, who has been jarred by the changes in the presidential race since he was attacked in Butler on July 13, the rally served another purpose: It offered him a chance to seek something of a do-over after a series of major events reshaped the contest just as the Republican convention in Milwaukee ended. The rally’s stagecraft and programming — with singers, family members and friends serving as “character witnesses” — echoed the convention’s grandiosity, down to the same opera singer who closed out the proceedings in Milwaukee performing a handful of songs.President Biden announced he was dropping his 2024 bid three days after Mr. Trump’s nominating convention, swamping all news coverage of the former president’s near-death experience and resetting the race with a new, younger Democratic opponent almost immediately. So in Butler on Saturday, Mr. Trump sought to recapture the same spirit that engulfed him in Milwaukee, where he was riding high in the polls as he was nominated for a third time just five days after the shooting. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    JD Smirks His Way Into the Future

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

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    Trump Rally in Michigan Dominated by More False Statements

    Former President Donald J. Trump held a rally on Thursday in the key battleground state of Michigan that was notable mainly for his continued false statements and exaggerations on a number of subjects as varied as the 2020 election and the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene.In the roughly 85 minutes that Mr. Trump was onstage, he repeated a pattern of untrue assertions that have characterized many of his events as the 2024 presidential race heads into its final weeks. The crowd of supporters in Saginaw County, which he narrowly lost four years ago, included Mike Rogers, the former Michigan congressman and the Republican candidate for Michigan’s open Senate seat, and Pete Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican Party chairman.Mr. Trump reiterated his familiar false claim that he had won the 2020 election and made no acknowledgment of new evidence that was unsealed against him on Wednesday in the federal election subversion case. He also said his campaign was up in all polls in every swing state, while several public polls show close races and Vice President Kamala Harris leading narrowly in a number of battlegrounds.Mr. Trump also mischaracterized the state of funding at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying that the Biden administration had stolen disaster-relief money allocated to the agency to give to housing for undocumented immigrants so they would vote for Democrats.He cast electric cars as a threat to the auto industry, while at the same time praising Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive who has endorsed his candidacy and featured him prominently on X, the Musk-owned social media platform.Michigan was one of a handful of swing states where Mr. Trump and his allies tried to overturn his defeat in 2020 through a series of maneuvers that included breaching voting equipment and seeking to seat a set of fake presidential electors. Some of his supporters have been criminally charged in the state, where Mr. Trump was named as an unindicted co-conspirator this year.Mr. Trump spent time in his speech taking satisfaction over his choice of running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, whose debate performance this week was applauded by many.“I drafted the best athlete,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Vance. The audience — several thousand supporters at a recreation center at Saginaw Valley State University, roughly 100 miles north of Detroit — cheered.And he mused, at one point, that instead of being on a beach in Monte Carlo or someplace else, he was running for the presidency again. “If I had my choice of being here with you today or being on some magnificent beach with the waves hitting me in the face, I would take you every single time.”Overall as of Thursday, Ms. Harris led by two percentage points in Michigan, according to The New York Times’s polling average, 49 percent to 47 percent. The vice president is scheduled to return to the state on Friday, campaigning in Detroit and Flint. More