Annie Karni

“You’ve got to be a realist and what I did not anticipate is an impeachment,” Sanford said at a news conference in Concord, New Hampshire, where he announced the end of his campaign.

Sanford conceded that his bid had been “a long shot, but we wanted to try and interject this issue, how much we’re spending, into the national debate, which comes along once every four years.” He said he found no “appetite for a serious nuanced debate with impeachment in the air.”

During his short-lived, quixotic campaign, Sanford made it clear he did not support the impeachment inquiry unfolding on Capitol Hill. And unlike the other two Republican primary challengers in the race, Sanford never mounted an argument based on Trump’s fitness for office, saying instead that he would support Trump in a general election if he became the party’s nominee.

“If you’re going to run against Trump without being able to criticize this abuse of power, there doesn’t seem to be a clear case for your candidacy,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who has been working to resist Trump from within the party. “He always tried to make it about an issue. A single-issue candidacy around the debt in this era can’t find much oxygen.”

Sanford was one of three Republican primary challengers attempting to peel off support from a president whose approval ratings in his own party rank consistently in the high 80s. He was joined in the David-vs.-Goliath struggle by Joe Walsh, a former Tea Party-backed congressman from Illinois, and William F. Weld, a former Massachusetts governor. Both are still running.

The “three stooges,” as Trump branded them on Twitter, saw themselves more as the Three Musketeers, who together hoped to create a chorus of Republican voices opposing Trump from different viewpoints.

A longtime foil for Trump, Sanford, who served two separate stints in the House of Representatives in addition to serving as governor, was seen in some respects as the most viable of the trio, as the one who might have had the most success in getting under Trump’s skin and hectoring him from the right on the issue of the federal debt.

A onetime A-list Republican with a strong conservative anti-spending message, Sanford’s political career almost ended for good in 2009, when he acknowledged an extramarital affair with a woman whom he secretly visited in Argentina while his aides claimed he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. He was censured but served out the rest of his term as governor, stepping down in 2011.

Sanford came back for another political act, however, winning reelection to the House in 2013. He was elected twice more but lost a Republican primary in 2018 to a candidate backed by Trump, Katie Arrington. Arrington was ultimately defeated by a Democrat.

Of the three Republican primary challengers, Sanford in the end had the hardest time differentiating himself from Trump after he said he did not support impeachment.

“I respect Mark,” said Bill Kristol, the conservative writer and former editor of the now defunct magazine The Weekly Standard. “He at least tried to step up, when so many other Republicans haven’t done anything.”

Kristol, who has been a prominent “Never Trump” Republican since Trump was elected in 2016, has been working hard over the past year to recruit candidates to run against him.

The Trump campaign dismissed Sanford’s exit from the stage in the same way it had dismissed him while he was running.

“His candidacy had escaped our attention,” said Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign.

In reality, however, the campaign had been systematically working to ensure the trio of challengers had no way to break through. The Republican Parties in Arizona, Kansas, Nevada and South Carolina, meanwhile, canceled the 2020 presidential primaries in their states, making it virtually impossible for Trump’s challengers to build support.

And the campaign has also changed the rules in 37 states and territories for choosing delegates to the Republican National Convention, an effort to ensure there are no dissenting voices at the party gathering in Charlotte, North Carolina, next year.

This article originally appeared in

Sanford Drops Trump Primary Challenge: 'You've Got to Be a Realist'

WASHINGTON — Former Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina said on Tuesday that he was ending his long-shot primary challenge to President Donald Trump just two months after announcing it, arguing that the impeachment inquiry had made it impossible for his message of fiscal conservatism to break through.

Former ambassadors, top foreign policy aides and once-loyal campaign donors are disregarding orders from the White House to ignore congressional subpoenas, trudging up to Capitol Hill for marathon sessions of closed-door testimony about President Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine for political help.

Former Trump aides are comparing each other to lethal weapons, and shadowy associates who did business for Trump’s personal lawyer are being indicted on campaign finance charges.

To what degree this drumbeat of dissension and disorder shapes the discussion at the debate is one of the big questions facing the 12 candidates who will be onstage. This is the first debate since Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared the formal beginning of an impeachment inquiry last month.

It’s a lot of drama to compete with — it was revealed Monday night that John Bolton, the former national security adviser, compared Rudy Giuliani to a “hand grenade,” after all — especially when the point of Tuesday’s debate is to compete with one another for the Democratic nomination.

Add to the mix the fact that one candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, was the target of the president’s efforts to press a foreign power for political dirt, and will be under pressure to respond to the inquiry on Tuesday night.

Even if the political chaos surrounding Trump looms over the program, the candidates should do their best to ignore it, according to some political strategists in both parties.

“The best thing the candidates could do is to compartmentalize it,” said Brian Fallon, who was the press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. “There’s very little opportunity for separation among the candidates, based on how they talk about Trump.”

Brendan Buck, a past adviser to former Speaker Paul Ryan, said a debate where everyone agrees that Trump deserves to be impeached is a snooze and a wasted opportunity.

“Other than Biden having his opportunity to say his piece, they’re generally better off leaving this debate to Nancy Pelosi,” Buck said. The impeachment probe, he said, “isn’t terribly tangible to people’s lives.”

Nor is it how most Americans would like to see Trump leave office. A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that 58% of Americans think Trump’s fate should be decided by voters next November, compared to 37% who think it should be decided by the impeachment process. (Even so, 52% of respondents in that poll approved of the decision to begin the impeachment inquiry.)

The focus on impeachment may make it difficult for lower-polling candidates like Beto O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman, or Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey to break through. But Democrats said that overall, the inquiry would be a huge gift to whoever emerged as the party’s nominee.

“It’s creating a permanent black cloud that will ultimately help the Democratic nominee,” Fallon said, pointing to the earned media coverage of impeachment as a way for Democrats to close the messaging gap with the Trump campaign, which is vastly outspending them online.

“It’s defining him in a way none of the individual campaigns could do during a primary,” Fallon said. “They should all be thanking their lucky stars.”

Trump and Impeachment: The Elephant in the Room at Tonight's Debate

WASHINGTON — Tuesday night’s Democratic debate will play out with some unusual background noise coming from Washington: whistles being blown by multiple people.

Walsh met on Thursday with Conway, a prominent conservative lawyer who is married to Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to Trump and one of his longest-serving aides. During the hourslong conversation, the two discussed strategy going forward, according to two people familiar with the conversation, and Walsh asked Conway if he would join his nascent campaign in a formal role.

Conway, who has gained a large following on Twitter for his increasingly virulent critiques of Trump and his mental state but who has never worked on a political campaign, told Walsh he would think about it but did not commit to anything, the two people said.

Walsh, a former representative from Illinois, has virtually no chance of wresting the Republican presidential nomination away from Trump, whose poll numbers with Republicans remain consistently in the high 80s.

But as a former supporter and media-trained radio show host attacking him from the right, he has an opportunity to rattle Trump with his television criticisms and with audacious moves like trying to work with Conway, whose denunciations have personally enraged the president and his family members.

In recent days, for instance, Trump has engaged with Anthony Scaramucci, who lasted 11 days as White House communications director and has since turned against his former boss and encouraged other Republicans to take a stand against him.

“I think Walsh’s plan to attack Trump for his dishonesty, amorality, instability and incompetence is absolutely the right approach, and I’ll do whatever I can to help,” Conway said in an interview, though he declined to say whether he would formally join the campaign.

Conway has been criticizing his wife’s boss for more than a year, after having supported him during the 2016 campaign, when Kellyanne Conway worked as Trump’s campaign manager. Now, with a reelection campaign at hand, Republicans like George Conway, who view Trump as a threat to democracy and the rule of law, are facing a new reality: Rather than just hurling criticisms at Trump from the sidelines, they now have the option to support or work for a primary challenger, or a Democrat, to help defeat him.

It’s still not clear if Conway will leave his more comfortable perch as an armchair critic to help Walsh, whose own history of calling President Barack Obama a Muslim and a “traitor” have made even some of his followers uncomfortable, even those who are encouraging him to challenge Trump.

In March, when Conway raised new questions about the president’s mental health and said he was a “malignant narcissist” suffering from narcissistic personality disorder, the president took the bait, responding on Twitter by calling him a “stone cold LOSER &amp; husband from hell!”

Trump’s son Eric and his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, have also singled out Conway online for criticism. Trump and his close aides have spent less time focused on Conway in recent months, aides said, tuning him out as his criticisms have continued unabated.

This month, Conway criticized Trump’s staff on Twitter, writing: “I love how these people who work for a rapist have no compunction about making accusations of abuse by someone who criticizes the rapist.”

Trump’s reelection campaign has dismissed Walsh’s bid as a “certain failure” and declined to comment on its interest in Conway.

On the same day that Conway was meeting with Walsh, Kellyanne Conway headlined a “Women for Trump” event in Tampa, Florida, which drew hundreds of female supporters.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/us/politics/joe-walsh-trump-conway.html" id="10f797a3-2a8f-37bd-ac6e-d3ca0a33e091">The New York Times</a>.

Trolling Trump, Joe Walsh Tries to Recruit George Conway for Nascent Challenge

WASHINGTON — Signaling his intent to troll President Donald Trump as he plans a long-shot primary challenge, the conservative radio show host and former Tea Party congressman Joe Walsh is wooing George Conway, the husband of one of Trump’s top aides, for a senior role in his campaign.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday demonstrated the limited influence of allies or advisers who try to steer him away from preelection racial and cultural fights. He walked back his disavowal of a racially loaded chant at a campaign rally less than 24 hours after making it.

Acquiescing to behind-the-scenes pressure from nervous Republican lawmakers and from his elder daughter, Ivanka Trump, the president distanced himself Thursday from the chant of “Send her back!” that the crowd at his rally Wednesday in Greenville, North Carolina, directed at Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who was born in Somalia. Trump said he was “not happy” with the chant’s language and claimed, falsely, that he had tried to cut it off.

But Friday, the president appeared to disavow his disavowal — following the same three-stage crisis playbook he used after setting off a wave of criticism when he defended neo-Nazi protesters in 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia.

“No, you know what I’m unhappy with — the fact that a congresswoman can hate our country,” Trump said Friday, referring to Omar, when he was asked about the chant condemned by Republicans as well as Democrats. “I’m unhappy with the fact that a congresswoman can say anti-Semitic things. I’m unhappy with the fact that a congresswoman, in this case a different congresswoman, can call our country and our people ‘garbage.’ That’s what I’m unhappy with.”

Trump defended the crowd as “incredible patriots” and said that Omar, who was elected last November, was “lucky to be where she is.”

When asked about the chant again later in the day as he left Washington to spend the weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump refused to condemn them. Instead, he seemed to be repeating his criticism of Omar and her allies in Congress without mentioning any names.

“You know what’s racist to me, when someone goes out and says the horrible things about our country,” he said. “The people of our country that are anti-Semitic, that hate everybody, that speak with scorn and hate — that to me is really a dangerous thing.”

The reversal followed the same pattern as the one after Charlottesville.

After Trump’s original response to the violence that took place there in August 2017, a low point of his presidency, aides urged him to take the high ground. Days later, he finally relented, reading a brief prepared statement from the Diplomatic Room in the White House in which he, for the first time, unequivocally condemned neo-Nazi groups and stated that “racism is evil.”

But the next day, he reverted to his original stance in a combative exchange with reporters in which he again blamed both sides for the violence that left one demonstrator dead and dozens injured. But while business leaders and Republican lawmakers briefly distanced themselves from the president at the time, Trump appears to have suffered little long-term political damage because of the episode — and that lesson appears to have made an impression.

“It just destroys him to seem to be abandoning his base on any issue,” said Douglas Brinkley, the presidential historian. “When he originally said he distanced himself from the chant at the rally, one could have guessed he would go back and embrace the people who cheered ‘Send her back!’ Contrite is not in his playbook.”

But even some critics of Trump said that the walkback of the walkback was not necessarily damaging to him. “I wish I could say it was foolish, but what have been the actual consequences been in the real world or in Republican support of him sticking to his guns?” said William Kristol, the conservative columnist and prominent Trump opponent. “Being the tough, unapologetic guy, it keeps his brand stronger even if he takes a little bit of a hit.”

Trump continued his condemnation of Omar on Friday, claiming that she had “called our country and our people garbage.” It was not clear what remarks she made that he was referring to.

That attack continued his racially charged fight with Omar and three of her fellow Democratic congresswomen of color — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — into a sixth day.

Administration officials and campaign aides have rejected comparisons between Trump’s goading of elected women of color to “go back” to where they came from and what happened in Charlottesville. One was a deadly incident, they said, the other was a political fight.

But campaign aides have acknowledged that Trump’s tweets on Sunday — in which he used an age-old racist adage in telling the congresswomen to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came” — were unexpected, used loaded and unhelpful language, and any political strategy attached to them was reverse-engineered after the fact.

The president claimed his attacks were not politically motivated. “I don’t know if it’s good or bad politically; I don’t care,” he said. “I can tell you this, you can’t talk that way about our country. Not when I’m the president.”

While Republican lawmakers expressed outrage over what his supporters chanted in North Carolina, they kept their criticism of Trump to themselves.

Trump’s aides and allies did their advising in private, but his changing message made it hard for them to know whether they were on the same page as the man they work for.

One campaign aide, Mercedes Schlapp, retweeted criticism of the chant, prompting a commentator on Twitter to write that Omar was “an American citizen and chanting for her deportation based on her exercise of the First Amendment is disgusting.” On Friday, Schlapp said she stood by that tweet.

“I agree with the president on not going forward with the chant,” she said.

“When you look at her policies,” she said, referring to Omar, “that’s the problem. Her policies themselves are dangerous for America, and that’s what we’re concerned about.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/us/politics/trump-omar-disavowel.html" id="2a77e558-aa87-3cb6-a73d-84e8f6455f47">The New York Times</a>.

(White House Memo)

Trump's Art of Disavowing a Disavowal

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday said he plans to give Mexico a “one-year warning” before closing the southern border, retreating on a threat he made last week that he would close the border this week if Mexico did not halt all unauthorized immigration.

“The only thing, frankly, better and less drastic than closing the border is tariff the cars coming in, and I will do it,” Trump said, speaking to reporters after a meeting with the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council. “I don’t play games.”

He added: “If the drugs don’t stop or aren’t largely stopped, we’re going to put tariffs on Mexico and products, in particular cars — the whole ballgame is cars. And if that doesn’t stop the drugs, we close the border.”

Last Friday, Trump announced on Twitter that “If Mexico doesn’t immediately stop ALL illegal immigration coming into the United States through our Southern Border, I will be CLOSING the Border, or large sections of the Border, next week.”

But since then, the White House has backed off that time frame for an action that would carry severe economic consequences if Trump followed through with it. Nearly $1.7 billion of goods and services flow across the U.S.-Mexico border every day, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. About 500,000 legal workers, students, shoppers and tourists also cross the border on a daily basis.

Trump’s latest reversal came after Republican lawmakers and his own economic advisers warned him of the consequences of the move. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the Senate majority leader, warned, “I would hope that we would not be doing that sort of thing.”

And White House officials have been vague about the president’s plans to follow through on his threat. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, told reporters earlier this week that Trump “is not working on a specific timeline.” And on Tuesday, during a meeting with Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary-general, the president stated, “I haven’t made that intention known,” when asked specifically about his own threat to close the border this week.

Talking to reporters at the White House on Thursday, Trump said that he was going to either close the southern border with America’s third-largest trading partner, or “tariff the cars.” He said he would “probably start off with the tariffs.”

The president is scheduled to travel to Calexico, California, on Friday for a photo opportunity with a newly fortified section of the border.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/us/politics/trump-mexico-border-threat.html" id="38b74944-7462-3df6-aff9-84fcc2eff23b">The New York Times</a>.

Trump Retreats on Threat to Close Mexican Border, Offering a 'One-Year Warning'

Body

“We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall &amp; also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with,” Trump tweeted Friday. “Hard to believe there was a Congress &amp; President who would approve!”

Trump escalated his threats as up to 800,000 government workers were left in limbo and with Congress not set to take up the issue again until after the new year. “At this point, it looks like we could be in for a very long-term shutdown,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a close ally of Trump’s, told CNN

Democrats stood firm against agreeing to funding for a border wall, according to a spokesman for Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the incoming House speaker. “Democrats are united against the President’s immoral, ineffective and expensive wall, the wall that he specifically promised that Mexico would pay for,” the spokesman, Drew Hammill, said in a statement. Hammill also noted that the White House has made no formal outreach to Pelosi since Dec. 11, when she and Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, met with the president at the White House.

Trump also reiterated his threat on Twitter on Friday to cut off aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador as punishment to countries he claimed “are doing nothing for the United States but taking our money.”

Migrants have been fleeing Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, choosing to join caravans and confront Trump’s threats to prevent them from crossing the border over the dangers of life at home.

Trump has made threats to shut down the border completely before. Last month, Trump said he would close the border “permanently” if Mexico refused to send asylum-seekers back to their native countries.

His latest warning comes as Democrats are preparing to take control of the House of Representatives and have shown no sign of caving on his demands for $5 billion for a border wall. Democrats are considering three different ways to reopen the government, none of which include money for Trump’s proposed wall, his signature campaign promise.

In a series of tweets Friday morning, Trump also complained that the North American Free Trade Agreement cost the United States so much money “that I would consider closing the Southern Border a ‘profit making operation.'”

In another sign that the White House sees no end to the shutdown in sight, Mick Mulvaney, the budget director who is set to take over as acting White House chief of staff in the new year, said on “Fox &amp; Friends” on Friday that Trump would remain in Washington through New Year’s Eve.

Trump, who had been scheduled to spend a 16-day stretch over the holidays at his private club in Florida, has postponed the trip because of the shutdown. His wife, Melania Trump, left on Thursday for the Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago, a spokeswoman said.

When asked about Trump’s threat to close the border entirely, Mulvaney said that “what the president is trying to do, and rightly so, is shed some light on what’s happening here.”

Mulvaney also sought to divide Democrats, indicating that while he believed Schumer might be willing to come to a compromise on wall funding, “the more we’re hearing this week is that it’s Nancy Pelosi who is preventing that from happening.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/us/politics/trump-border-threatens-shutdown.html" id="356ae5af-b261-382e-a893-6accc00b347e">The New York Times</a>.

Trump Threatens to Close Border if Congress Won't Fund Wall

WASHINGTON — On the seventh day of a partial government shutdown, President Donald Trump threatened on Friday to close the southern border and cut off aid to Central America if Congress refuses to fund a wall.

Migrants have been fleeing those countries, choosing to join caravans and confront Trump’s threats to prevent them from crossing the border over the dangers of life at home.

Trump has made threats to shut down the border completely before. Last month, Trump said he would close the border “permanently” if Mexico refused to send asylum-seekers back to their native countries. His latest warning comes as Democrats are preparing to take control of the House of Representatives and have shown no sign of caving on his demands for $5 billion for a border wall.

<h1>WASHINGTON — He stood in the middle of the debate stage and raised his hand to indicate he would not pledge to support the Republican nominee for president — unless it was him.</h1>

Confronted by his own history of referring to women as fat pigs, dogs and slobs, he countered that the big problem in the country was political correctness.

And he launched into one rival, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, by noting that he never attacked his appearance but said, “Believe me, there’s plenty of subject matter there, that I can tell you.”

Four years after Donald Trump, a long-shot candidate up against many more experienced Republicans, blew up the expectations for how a candidate is expected to behave in a debate, he will loom over the 20 Democrats who take the stage in Miami this week.

In the minds of many Democratic voters, the criteria for judging whom they like over the next two nights will be as much about how they imagine a candidate will stand up to Trump’s unorthodox bullying in televised confrontations in the fall of 2020 as about position papers and experience.

“People view these as gladiator contests,” said Brett O’Donnell, a veteran Republican debate coach who worked for John McCain and Mitt Romney; neither competed directly with Trump but were both objects of his taunts. “They want to know who is the best person to go into the arena with Trump.”

Trump landed like a fireball on the first Republican debate stage in 2015, eliciting loud boos that turned into laughs from the audience as he made clear through his blunt and unapologetic style that he represented something completely different from the long roster of elected officials playing by the rules.

He was not a particularly skilled debater and did not win every debate. But his performances, as a whole, set the chaotic tone for the Republican primaries.

“In debates, what really stood out to me is just how different he sounds,” said Philippe Reines, who played Trump in mock debate sessions with Hillary Clinton in 2016. “He has the vocabulary of a fifth grader. But to some people, that is normal talk. If you’re sick of political speak, normal talk is going to be appealing.”

Democrats who specialize in presidential debate prep said Trump succeeded because his shock-jock personality was well suited to the current media environment. When debates are covered in real time and voters are taking them in with play-by-play commentary on Twitter, the behavior of candidates onstage is dictated by the need for short, punchy moments that differentiate them from the pack. Trump did not create that dynamic, they said; he just benefited from it.

“Since the rise of contemporaneous coverage, there is a greater imperative to have a breakout moment in the very early minutes of the debate,” said Karen Dunn, a lawyer who helped oversee Clinton’s debate prep and is currently unaffiliated with any campaign.

But the ways that Trump was able to appeal to Republican primary voters do not necessarily translate to the other side of the aisle — or to anyone else.

“Trump has a super power, which is utter shamelessness that is hard for sane humans to replicate,” said Tim Miller, who served as a campaign adviser to former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, one of Trump’s opponents. “I think he has probably opened up a wider prism of possibilities in how a candidate could act in debates successfully. But I don’t know that we’ll see a lot of traditional politicians go that route.”

The field of Democratic candidates may be diverse in terms of race, gender and age. But what has emerged in the top tier is a group of conventional presidential candidates, all current or former elected officials. That lineup bucked a brief moment of expectation that someone — Mark Cuban, the billionaire; Michael Avenatti, the celebrity lawyer — would emerge as a Democratic version of Trump.

Democratic strategists said that was a good thing for the party.

“You don’t beat him by matching him. You beat him by appealing to some of his voters,” said Jennifer Palmieri, who served as communications director on Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “And you beat him because we’re able to turn out a lot of Democrats.”

Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, said that a better model for Democratic candidates to study on the debate stage would be President Barack Obama.

“The one lesson from Trump that Democrats may want to take to heart is the value of saying things clearly and unambiguously, not in nuanced shades of gray,” he said. “But it’s incumbent on any Democrat to appeal to a different set of values and completely avoid the clownishness.” He said that what a winning Democrat needs to project is the “return to the power of a good idea well expressed.”

Trump would not have to insert himself into the Democratic primary process for his presence to be felt in the air over two hot Miami nights. But it has at least been suggested that he could live-tweet the proceedings during his trip to Asia for a major international summit meeting with foreign leaders.

If he follows through, it would be a change from how Trump typically employs the medium — he more often reacts to coverage of events, rather than the events themselves. In 2016, he live-tweeted only one event, the vice-presidential debate, when he retweeted accounts that mocked Sen. Tim Kaine’s appearance.

Dunn said that if Trump chose to weigh in, it would be a gift to the candidates he targeted. “I would think the candidates would think, Terrific,” she said. “Nothing could be better than walking out of the debate with the president tweeting at me.” In terms of appearing to present a real threat and contrast to Trump, she said, “you couldn’t make the point better.”

The Republican National Committee is not outsourcing all of its rapid response to the president. The committee’s chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, will be in Miami during the debates, talking about the “socialist policies” promoted by the Democratic field, according to an organization official. The committee, officials said, is also planning to put out a response to the debates in English, Spanish and Mandarin.

That piece of the Republican response is more similar to how incumbents have outsourced reaction in the past.

“We, as a campaign, monitored and commented on statements that were made during debates,” said David Axelrod, a former adviser to Obama. “Occasionally, the president may have inserted a comment in a speech based on something that was said. But he wasn’t live-tweeting the other side’s race. He was busy with his day job.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/us/politics/democrats-debate-trump.html" link="null" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

What will Democrats look for in debates? Someone they can imagine onstage with Trump

Confronted by his own history of referring to women as fat pigs, dogs and slobs, he countered that the big problem in the country was political correctness.

The entrance from the Oval Office’s French doors, and the ensuing walk down the colonnade, is richly symbolic.

And the presidential podium perched on the steps in front of the manicured grass conveys power.

The Rose Garden, a 125-foot-long French-style garden, has in recent months become President Donald Trump’s preferred venue for public events at the White House, whether he is hosting athletes and world leaders, or pitching his own defeats as victories.

He has insisted on the locale even when it has been uncomfortably cold.

Trump, a showman and former reality show star with a keen interest in production values, has always cared deeply about the image he projects.

Now in his third year in office, as Democratic presidential candidates sort through the process of choosing a nominee, Trump has increasingly embraced the Rose Garden — a literal interpretation of a time-tested strategy for incumbents seeking to harness the power of the presidency to secure their re-elections.

President Gerald Ford employed a “Rose Garden strategy” in his 1976 re-election campaign, not leaving the White House for months in what was deemed by one aide to be a “no campaign campaign.” President Jimmy Carter followed his lead four years later, staying in the White House to weather the Iran hostage crisis. President George H.W. Bush was criticized for isolating himself from voters by running for re-election from the Oval Office.

Trump appears to be trying a version of the strategy for himself.

In the first five months of 2019, Trump has held at least 11 Rose Garden events — more than double the number of events he staged there during the first five months of 2017.

This year Trump has chosen the Rose Garden to announce he was caving on his demand for a border wall and ending a 35-day government shutdown. He stood outside to declare a national emergency on the border with Mexico, amid opposition from lawmakers in his own party. He has made congressmen who did not wear coats shiver beside him while he bandied for more than an hour with journalists.

The Rose Garden has been a key tool for White House communications operations for decades, often used as the backdrop for the signing of major pieces of legislation.

For Trump, it has also served as a venue for declaring victory prematurely. After the House voted to repeal most of the Affordable Care Act in May 2017, Trump staged a Rose Garden celebration with about 100 Republican lawmakers in attendance. The measure failed in the Senate two months later.

This article originally appeared in <a id="de136fbe-5e0f-36ba-a835-9504069759be" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/us/politics/trump-rose-garden.html">The New York Times</a>.

Why Trump can't get enough of the Rose Garden

WASHINGTON — The natural light is flattering.

But Trump may not like how his brand is faring in one important metric: his “E-Score,” a number compiled by E-Poll Market Research that is not publicly available, but which marketing executives, network television stations and advertisers rely on to figure out which personalities appeal to audiences — and which do not.

Like the Q Score, which measures the appeal of celebrities, the E-Score calculates awareness and appeal of individuals in the public eye. But it also tracks how individuals score on more than 40 personality and physical attributes.

In terms of those attributes, Trump was most often described as “aggressive” (48 percent) and “mean” (38 percent), according to his scores from December that were obtained by The New York Times. He also scored high for being “insincere,” “confident” and “creepy.” But he scored between 0 and 4 percent for the attributes of “sexy,” “impartial,” “handsome” and “physically fit.”

About 29 percent of people described Trump as “overexposed.” And his overall strong positive appeal is 14 percent, compared with an overall strong negative appeal of 39 percent.

Among adults over the age of 55, Trump consistently held more positive appeal than among those who are younger. Trump also consistently held more positive appeal with men than with women, across all age groups.

Marketing, advertising and entertainment executives pay E-Poll Market Research an annual subscription of $17,000 and up to access its database, allowing them to analyze the views of American consumers and assess the marketing effectiveness of each celebrity rated. The company, which has about 10,000 profiles in its database and surveys about 1,100 online participants every week, started tracking Trump when he was a television personality on “The Apprentice,” according to a spokesman, Randy Parker.

“We do not approve of the use of E-Poll’s data in this story and cannot confirm or deny the information you were given,” he said.

In 2010, during the heyday of “The Apprentice,” Trump’s Q Score showed he was more popular with African-American and Hispanic audiences than he was with white audiences, according to “Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the Nationalist Uprising,” by journalist Joshua Green.

Back then, advertisers viewed Trump as a symbol of multiculturalism, according to Green’s book. But Trump no longer has an updated Q Score because he left the entertainment industry; the company Marketing Evaluations stopped tracking him in the winter of 2015.

“He definitely had the profile of a ‘love to hate’ personality going into the election,” said Henry Schafer, executive vice president of the company. “He had one of the lowest positive Q Scores and one of the highest negative Q Scores. It looks like he just continued doing that up until today.”

Schafer said the key to Trump’s success was “extremely high awareness,” even if much of it was negative. “You always have a portion of the population that enjoys that kind of reality, and that’s his base,” he said.

Officials in the Trump White House also receive E-Scores, in part because networks often want to know how those officials are perceived.

Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter, has about 70 percent name recognition, compared with 35 percent for her husband, Jared Kushner; 37 percent for Kellyanne Conway, a White House counselor; and 37 percent for Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the press secretary, in a reminder of the overwhelming celebrity power of her last name. Kushner and Conway’s scores were from May, while Ivanka Trump’s and Sanders’ score were compiled in December.

In terms of facial recognition, Ivanka Trump scored 47 percent, slightly higher than Conway and Sanders, the most public-facing administration officials, who both scored a 32 percent for facial recognition.

Ivanka Trump’s overall strong positive appeal was 12 percent, compared with an overall strong negative appeal of 21 percent. While she was more disliked than liked among every age group by men and women alike, she consistently had a slight edge with men over women.

Ivanka Trump is most popular among adults over the age of 55 and least popular with adults between the ages of 18 and 24.

In a list of attributes that celebrities are graded on, she was most often described as “attractive” (32 percent), “beautiful” (28 percent) and “glamorous” (25 percent). She ranked lowest on “funny” (1 percent), “can identify with” (2 percent) and “exciting” (3 percent).

That was higher than the ratings for Kushner, whose overall strong positive appeal was 6 percent and whose overall strong negative appeal was 36 percent. Kushner rarely appears on television and has no social media profile. But he is a constant figure in the news, given his broad portfolios and influence in the White House.

Kushner scored highest for the attributes of “insincere” (29 percent), “creepy” (27 percent) and “overexposed” (22 percent). He was lowest in terms of “exciting,” “glamorous” and “emotional,” rating 1 percent in those categories.

Conway, a regular presence on network and cable television touting Trump’s accomplishments and criticizing the way he is covered, had a strong positive appeal of 9 percent and a strong negative appeal of 43 percent.

Sanders, who has phased out the regular White House press briefing, which often had contentious back-and-forths with reporters, and is now more often seen in friendlier venues like morning show “Fox &amp; Friends,” ranked somewhat higher, with a strong positive appeal of 19 percent and a strong negative appeal of 28 percent.

The scores show that the public views Sanders as more of an honest broker than Conway, who became infamous in the administration’s early days for coining the phrase “alternative facts.”

Sanders scored 15 percent for “trustworthy,” compared with Conway’s 8 percent ranking in the same category. Conway was described by 31 percent of respondents as “insincere,” compared with 27 percent for Sanders.

This article originally appeared in <a id="4bc4d47b-4526-4ce0-bc93-def369a4a9d2" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/us/politics/trump-e-score-rating.html">The New York Times</a>.

In These Ratings, President Scores High for 'Aggressive' and 'Mean'

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has long been focused on measuring his brand, obsessively reviewing television ratings, cataloging his magazine covers and fixating on polls.

In these ratings, President scores high for 'aggressive' and 'mean'

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Annie Karni

Articles written by the author

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