Sunday, October 06, 2024
How the Push to Avert a Broader War in Lebanon Fell Apart
How the Push to Avert a Broader War in Lebanon Fell Apart
“Diplomats thought both Israel and Hezbollah supported a call for a temporary cease-fire. Then Israel killed Hezbollah’s leader.
Everything appeared to be heading in the right direction for a breakthrough in Middle East peacemaking, to avert a spiraling war that would embroil the region.
Officials from the United Nations, France and the United States had drafted a statement calling for a three-week cease-fire aimed at preventing a broader conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, and shared it with the two sides to consider.
Amos Hochstein, a White House envoy, told United Nations and Lebanese officials that Israel was ready to endorse the statement, according to four Western diplomats and three Lebanese officials who were involved in or briefed on the talks. The leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, also sent word through an intermediary that his powerful militia supported the call for a cease-fire, the officials said.
So on Sept. 25, as world leaders gathered in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, President Biden and President Emmanuel Macron of France announced the plan and released the statement, expecting the warring parties to publicly embrace it.
But two days later, before diplomats could draw up a detailed cease-fire proposal, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel declared at the United Nations that Israel must “defeat Hezbollah in Lebanon.” Soon after, huge bombs fell on Beirut’s southern outskirts, killing Mr. Nasrallah and extinguishing any immediate prospect of a cease-fire.
Now the expanded war in Lebanon that officials had been working to prevent is raging — and threatening to ignite a larger regional conflagration.
As Israel launches deadly strikes and its forces clash with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, interviews with nine officials with direct knowledge of the talks have revealed that progress toward a cease-fire was further along than previously known, but it was halted abruptly when Israel killed Mr. Nasrallah.
In an interview, Abdallah Bou Habib, the Lebanese foreign minister, accused Israel of extinguishing the possibility of a deal.
“They don’t want peace,” he said of the Israelis. “They want to continue fighting.”
Israeli officials have said that they seek to push Hezbollah away from the border so that more than 60,000 displaced Israelis can return home, and they doubt that a cease-fire alone could accomplish this.
A senior Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, said that Israel had engaged in initial talks about a potential cease-fire, but did not expect to reach a truce during Mr. Netanyahu’s visit to New York.
The call for a temporary cease-fire in Lebanon came after 11 months of failed diplomatic efforts to end the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and sought to prevent a second major war — between Israel and Hezbollah. The killing of Mr. Nasrallah was the second time in 10 weeks that Israel had quashed progress toward a cease-fire by striking a militia leader; Israel’s assassination in July of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, led to the hardening of that groupagainst any Gaza cease-fire proposal.
Hezbollah began firing on Israeli positions in support of Hamas after Hamas carried out its deadly assault on Israel last October. Israel struck back at Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, leading to frequent exchanges of fire that caused more than 150,000 people to flee both sides of the border.
Last month, Israel swiftly escalated its attacks on Hezbollah, remotely detonating the group’s pagers and walkie-talkies, launching extensive airstrikes that killed hundreds of people and assassinating Hezbollah leaders.
In an attempt to stop the violence and to head off an Israeli ground invasion, officials from the United Nations, France and the United States began what one official called a “massive effort” to negotiate a temporary cease-fire.
Top officials from the White House and Israel had an initial conversation on Sept. 23. Then Mr. Hochstein, a senior White House official who had helped broker a maritime border agreement between Lebanon and Israel in 2022, took the lead, telling Lebanese officials that if they could secure Hezbollah’s buy-in, he would do the same with Israel, according to a Lebanese official, a Beirut-based diplomat and a senior American official.
The proposal called for a 21-day pause in fighting to allow for diplomacy aimed at reaching a longer-term truce. Under the plan, Hezbollah would move its fighters and weapons out of the border zone, a major Israeli demand.
Mr. Nasrallah had said repeatedly that Hezbollah would stop firing on Israel only when Israel stopped attacking Gaza. So the proposal also called for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. That was included, officials involved in the talks said, to make it easier for Mr. Nasrallah to accept it.
Most of the diplomacy was indirect, since Lebanon and Israel have no diplomatic relations and the United States considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization, barring U.S. officials from interacting with its members.
Mr. Hochstein dealt with Mr. Netanyahu’s office in Israel. On the Lebanese side, he worked through Nabih Berri, the 86-year-old speaker of Parliament and a political ally of Hezbollah.
By Sept. 25, the diplomatic efforts seemed as if they were beginning to bear fruit.
That day, officials in Mr. Netanyahu’s office reviewed the proposal and raised some concerns, but Mr. Hochstein told officials from the United Nations and Lebanese officials in Beirut that Israel had agreed in principle to work toward a cease-fire, fueling hope that an accord was possible, according to several diplomats. But even as Israel gave these signals, it was already making plans to kill Mr. Nasrallah.
In New York, on that same day, the Lebanese prime minister, Najib Mikati, and Mr. Bou Habib, the foreign minister, met in a hotel with Mr. Hochstein and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. Mr. Bou Habib said in an interview with The New York Times that the discussion focused on next steps, since the warring parties had indicated a willingness to go ahead.
“I went to a meeting with the Americans with the understanding that everyone was on board, Israel and Hezbollah,” he said. “We were all optimistic, as Hezbollah and Israel were on board.”
That afternoon, Mr. Berri told Mr. Mikati by phone from Beirut that Hezbollah had agreed to language in the cease-fire proposal. Mr. Berri also informed Mr. Hochstein, two Lebanese officials and two Western diplomats said.
That night, Mr. Biden and Mr. Macron announced the proposal, which had been endorsed by other Western and Arab nations.
“It is time for a settlement on the Israel-Lebanon border that ensures safety and security to enable civilians to return to their homes,” Mr. Biden said. “The exchange of fire since Oct. 7, and in particular over the past two weeks, threatens a much broader conflict, and harm to civilians.”
In a speech at the United Nations the next day, Sept. 26, Mr. Mikati affirmed Lebanon’s support for the initiative, since he had been told that Hezbollah had signed on.
Some Israeli officials made comments that morning opposing any idea of a cease-fire, and U.S. officials said they waited anxiously for Mr. Netanyahu to issue a public endorsement of the proposal. American and French officials kept reassuring their Lebanese counterparts that the endorsement would come.
It was not until that night that the Americans saw a statement from Mr. Netanyahu saying, “Israel shares the aims of the U.S.-led initiative.”
One U.S. official said those involved in the talks hoped they could scramble to get a cease-fire finalized the next day, Sept. 27. Some U.S. officials expected further signals of support for a cease-fire from Mr. Netanyahu in his speech that day at the United Nations.
But in his address, Mr. Netanyahu struck a hard tone, not mentioning the proposed cease-fire and vowing that Israel would keep fighting. American and French officials who had expected him to voice support for the diplomatic initiative said they were shocked.
Shortly after, Israeli fighter jets carried out a bombing south of Beirut, killing Mr. Nasrallah.
Many of the officials involved in the talks said they did not know why Israel had suddenly killed the prospect of a cease-fire. They guessed that Mr. Netanyahu faced pressure from hard-line members of his cabinet, or that Israel had a rare opportunity to assassinate Mr. Nasrallah and deemed it too good to pass up. Or that Israel had not been sincere in private talks with their proxies, the Americans.
Lara Jakes, Patrick Kingsley and Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.
Michael D. Shear is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Biden and his administration. He has reported on politics for more than 30 years. More about Michael D. Shear
Edward Wong reports on global affairs, U.S. foreign policy and the State Department. He is the author of the book “At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China.” More about Edward Wong“
Kamala Harris Is Turning a Trump Tactic on Its Head
Kamala Harris Is Turning a Trump Tactic on Its Head
By Susan Faludi
“Ms. Faludi is a journalist and the author of “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women.”
It’s a truism that female candidates for high office face obstacles that men don’t. Less acknowledged is that women face different obstacles each from the other. Individually and generationally, women confront their own particular impossible dilemmas.
Hillary Clinton’s dilemma was how to be forceful without coming off as fatally unfeminine, of seeming like a male impostor by virtue of being ambitious. Kamala Harris’s quandary is different. She’s not having to bat down accusations that her ambition makes her unwomanly, in part because she chose not to make breaking the glass ceiling a theme of her campaign. Her particular Achilles’ heel — pointed out by her opponent, who, whatever his manifest unfitness for the job, does have a talent for identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities — is contained in the word “protection.”
That’s the insinuation behind so many of the attacks on Ms. Harris’s presidential quest: How’s she going to protect voters who, knocked around by everything from contagion to inflation to war, feel unsafe and insecure? As much as the Harris campaign promotes “joy,” the national mood radiates fear — of exposure, threat, bodily harm. How’s a woman supposed to protect us from that? Protection is an area of American culture that is resolutely gendered. The problematic dynamics that traditionally govern protection of home and hearth also govern our politics, an arena in which, historically, women have been granted neither protector nor protected status.
In the public sphere, as in the personal, he who would dominate offers to protect. Forty-seven years ago, the feminist philosopher Susan Rae Peterson identified the syndrome of the “male protection racket,” asking, “Since the state fails them in its protective function, to whom can women turn for protection?” She explained that “women make agreements with husbands or fathers (in return for fidelity or chastity, respectively) to secure protection. From whom do these men protect women? From other men, it turns out.” She continued: “There is a striking parallel between this situation and tactics used by crime syndicates who sell protection as a racket. The buyer who refuses to buy the protective services of an agency because he needs no protection finds out soon that because he refuses to buy it, he very definitely needs protection. Women are in the same position.”
Or as Mae West putatively said: “Every man I meet wants to protect me. I can’t figure out what from.”
Donald Trump has it figured out. “Sadly, women are poorer than they were four years ago,” he told a Pennsylvania rally in late September. Also: “less healthy,” “less safe on the streets” and “more stressed and depressed and unhappy.” In a part of his speech aimed explicitly at female voters, he added, “I will fix all of that and fast, and at long last this nation, and national nightmare, will end.” Women, he promised, “will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared. You will no longer be in danger.” Why? “You will be protected, and I will be your protector.”
Mr. Trump is a master of the protection racket. He takes the old domestic savior scam national. He’s running a Halloween campaign, leaping from behind every podium to yell “Boo!” to scare his base, male and female both, with any hobgoblin he can conjure — migrants who are “vicious monsters,” who are “poisoning the blood of our country” and who will “rape, pillage, thieve, plunder and kill the people of the United States of America,” “radical left thugs” who “live like vermin” and “steal and cheat on elections,” Democratic governors who want to “execute” babies after they’re born, liberal schools conducting a “brutal operation” to change a child’s gender. Mr. Trump and his running mate have conjured childless women whose only companions are feline and illegal immigrants dining on felines. To save us from these monsters, Mr. Trump proposes himself.
His protection, of course, is as mythical as the threats he manufactures. Violent crime is near a 50-year low. Homicides fell nearly 12 percent from 2022 to 2023, the largest single-year drop in six decades, and rape declined by more than 9 percent. Women — and especially never-married women — have made significant economic gains since 2019. As for stress, as “The Daily Show” comedian Desi Lydic remarked after Mr. Trump’s speech, “I love how he’s acknowledging that we’re stressed out, as though he’s not the one stressing us out.” But that isn’t the point. The implicit point is: If this is a situation in which we need protection, would you trust Kamala Harris to protect you?
To understand why this is a loaded question, turn Ms. Lydic’s joke on its head. Can Ms. Harris protect Americans without stressing Americans out?
Many voters, especially men, perceive the prospect of being protected by a woman as a threat. In a society where men judge their worth by their ability to protect, being protected by a woman is seen as a disgrace, a stain on one’s honor.
I encountered this dynamic in the late 1990s when a book I wrote on men in crisis was reflexively denounced by male pundits, even before publication. “This woman is clearly on a mission,” declared one. “Find a soft place in the collective male self-esteem and drive at it until the lance runs red.” The “lance” in question? Supportive empathy. “I don’t want Susan Faludi’s pity,” a “Time”columnist began facetiously. “I want her tight little body.” The column was titled, “The Emasculation Proclamation.”
The messages were clear: You cannot defend us without unmanning us.
Women are allowed to play the protector in one arena: as mothers. The vice-presidential contender Sarah Palin famously tried to market herself as the “mama grizzly” candidate and said in 2010 in a speech to the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, “You thought pit bulls were tough. Well, you don’t want to mess with the mama grizzlies.” It’s no coincidence that at the same time that the Trump campaign is leaning on the “protector” theme, it’s disparaging Ms. Harris because she’s not a mother.
With his “I am your protector” speech, Mr. Trump was baiting Ms. Harris to cast herself as a protector, knowing he’d have her in a bind. He is a wizard at rope-a-dope, issuing an outrageous assertion in order to goad a response that will trap his opponent. He cast doubt on Ms. Harris’s racial credentials as an invitation for her to come out as an identity warrior. She didn’t take the bait. Now he’s floating protection as a theme, knowing how fraught its expression is for a female candidate. Again, Ms. Harris sidestepped the provocation. In an interview with MSNBC two days after Mr. Trump’s remarks, she responded: “I don’t think the women of America need him to say he’s going to protect them. The women of America need him to trust them.”
Strikingly, Ms. Harris is, in fact, a formidable protector. Protection comes in two forms: symbolic and practical. The symbolic is performative. Those who crave it don’t actually want effective measures to alleviate a threat. They wish to rage against the threat, and they seek a protector in chief who validates their wrath. For them, war’s the point, not victory — outrage, not outcomes, as victim cultures on both the right and the left amply demonstrate.
Symbolic and practical protection aren’t two means to the same end but rather are at cross-purposes, antithetical. The first nurtures a cause for grievance that the second would instead remedy. A failure to remedy the grievance only fuels the fury that symbolic protection thrives on.
This is how recent Republican administrations have profited from their own incompetence. Their inability to provide real protection (from, say, Osama bin Laden) fed the public’s desire for a symbolic act (like the “defeat” of Saddam Hussein). George W. Bush’s failure at practical protection — to heed the multiple warnings that a catastrophic attack on American soil was in the works — allowed him to play to the hilt the role of symbolic protector. A political advocacy group backing Mr. Bush in 2004 against John Kerry, a decorated combat veteran, aired a multimillion-dollar TV spot in which a girl whose mother was killed on Sept. 11 declared of Mr. Bush, “He’s the most powerful man in the world, and all he wants to do is make sure I’m safe.” Mr. Trump has pulled a similar switcheroo on countless fronts, from trade to manufacturing to immigration to lost elections.
Ms. Harris isn’t looking to compete on the symbolic field. She’s not playacting a guardian stereotype of either gender. If Mr. Trump embodies the make-believe rescuer, the bombastic redeemer who speaks loudly while carrying a tiny stick, Ms. Harris is his levelheaded, no-nonsense opposite. Her record of public service and her utilitarian policy plans attest to workable fixes to actual dangers instead of the amplification of invented ones. She offers herself up as the calmly common-sensical civic warden.
“I promise you,” Ms. Harris said when she discussed her economic plans in late September, “I will be pragmatic in my approach.” Then she invoked the American president who least relied on virile display, whose protective power lay not in his pugilism but in his pragmatism. “I will engage in what Franklin Roosevelt called ‘bold, persistent experimentation,’” she said. “Because I believe we shouldn’t be constrained by ideology and, instead, should seek practical solutions to problems.”
One of Ms. Harris’s assets is her refusal to demonize, even as she confronts America’s real demons. Real protection involves situation-room restraint at moments when symbolic protection chooses a dangerous jingoism. Thus, the letter from more than 700 former national-security and military officials endorsing Ms. Harris because she “defends America’s democratic ideals” while her opponent “endangers” them. Instead of playing footsie with foreign dictators while indulging in “America First” chest thumping, she’s been part of the Biden administration’s quiet resolve to rein in malignant adversaries and rebuild alliances.
As president, Mr. Trump undermined Ukraine’s sovereignty to serve his own political fortunes; Ms. Harris traveled to Europe a week before Russia’s invasion to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky to deliver U.S. intelligence assessments and discuss battlefield preparations. As a senator, Ms. Harris reached across the aisle in 2018 to co-sponsor (with the Oklahoma Republican James Lankford and others from both parties) the Secure Elections Act to shield American voting systems against internal chaos and foreign interference. Mr. Trump opposed the bill; it never came to a vote.
On the domestic front, Ms. Harris has stressed an ambitious set of economic programs to defend the working and middle class: investing in new industries, small-business start-ups and new housing; generating apprenticeships and employee profit-sharing programs; providing substantial financial assistance for new parents and new homeowners; capping medical costs; subsidizing child and elder care. She’s offering tools instead of tirades. Her success in enacting these policies would depend on down-ballot success, but these are specific, tangible steps toward protecting the average American from harm and humiliation.
Time and time again, nations that have sought protection under a fantasy führer — or a real one — have reaped the whirlwind. This fall, I’m voting my fears, too, but what I fear most is the whirlwind. I’m voting my need for protection, as well. I want a Constitution protected from the paper shredders. I want democratic process and the rule of law protected from rioters and scammers. I want reasoned and stable governance, exemplified by a president whose lodestar is the well-being and security of her citizenry, not the bloodlust of his base. I want, most of all, the fate of my nation to be protected against the judgment that history’s gods level against strongman societies.
In 1977, Ms. Peterson observed that, under the laws of the state, women are like the “victimized, unwilling clients of an organized protection racket, because they cannot turn to each other, being unorganized themselves.” But women have been organizing and demanding the state afford them equal protection, protections that are now under renewed attack. Ms. Harris has made more than clear her commitment to countering that assault and restoring women’s rights and freedoms. With those rights and freedoms come others, and a chance to solve the real problems all Americans face, instead of fulminating against phantoms.
Ms. Harris has demonstrated her ability to stand up to America’s most poisonous huckster without being intimidated by or engaging with his scare campaigns. That’s not all she needs to do, but it’s important. Crucial to our nation’s future, she’s proving to be an effective protector against the protection racket itself.‘
Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age
Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age
With the passage of time, the 78-year-old former president’s speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past, according to a review of his public appearances over the years.
By Peter Baker and Dylan Freedman
Videos by Chevaz Clarke and Aaron Byrd
Peter Baker covered the Trump presidency and wrote a book on it with his wife, Susan Glasser. Dylan Freedman is a machine-learning engineer and a journalist working on A.I. initiatives.
Former President Donald J. Trump vividly recounted how the audience at his climactic debate with Vice President Kamala Harris was on his side. Except that there was no audience. The debate was held in an empty hall. No one “went crazy,” as Mr. Trump put it, because no one was there.
Anyone can misremember, of course. But the debate had been just a week earlier and a fairly memorable moment. And it was hardly the only time Mr. Trump has seemed confused, forgetful, incoherent or disconnected from reality lately. In fact, it happens so often these days that it no longer even generates much attention.
He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own “beautiful” body. He relishes “a great day in Louisiana” after spending the day in Georgia. He expresses fear that North Korea is “trying to kill me” when he presumably means Iran. As late as last month, Mr. Trump was still speaking as if he were running against President Biden, five weeks after his withdrawal from the race.
With Mr. Biden out, Mr. Trump, at 78, is now the oldest major party nominee for president in history and would be the oldest president ever if he wins and finishes another term at 82. A review of Mr. Trump’s rallies, interviews, statements and social media posts finds signs of change since he first took the political stage in 2015. He has always been discursive and has often been untethered to truth, but with the passage of time his speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past.
According to a computer analysis by The New York Times, Mr. Trump’s rally speeches now last an average of 82 minutes, compared with 45 minutes in 2016. Proportionately, he uses 13 percent more all-or-nothing terms like “always” and “never” than he did eight years ago, which some experts consider a sign of advancing age.
Similarly, he uses 32 percent more negative words than positive words now, compared with 21 percent in 2016, which can be another indicator of cognitive change. And he uses swearwords 69 percent more often than he did when he first ran, a trend that could reflect what experts call disinhibition. (A study by Stat, a health care news outlet, produced similar findings.)
Mr. Trump frequently reaches to the past for his frame of reference, often to the 1980s and 1990s, when he was in his tabloid-fueled heyday. He cites fictional characters from that era like Hannibal Lecter from “Silence of the Lip” (he meant “Silence of the Lambs”), asks “where’s Johnny Carson, bring back Johnny” (who died in 2005) and ruminates on how attractive Cary Grant was (“the most handsome man”). He asks supporters whether they remember the landing in New York of Charles Lindbergh, who actually landed in Paris and long before Mr. Trump was born.
He seems confused about modern technology, suggesting that “most people don’t have any idea what the hell a phone app is” in a country where 96 percent of people own a smartphone. If sometimes he seems stuck in the 1990s, there are moments when he pines for the 1890s, holding out that decade as the halcyon period of American history and William McKinley as his model president because of his support for tariffs.
And he heads off into rhetorical cul-de-sacs. “So we built a thing called the Panama Canal,” he told the conservative host Tucker Carlson last year. “We lost 35,000 people to the mosquito, you know, malaria. We lost 35,000 people building — we lost 35,000 people because of the mosquito. Vicious. They had to build under nets. It was one of the true great wonders of the world. As he said, ‘One of the nine wonders of the world.’ No, no, it was one of the seven. It just happened a little while ago. You know, he says, ‘Nine wonders of the world.’ You could make nine wonders. He would’ve been better off if he stuck with the nine and just said, ‘Yeah, I think it’s nine.’”
While elements of this are familiar, some who have known him for years say they notice a change. “He’s not competing at the level he was competing at eight years ago, no question about it,” said Anthony Scaramucci, a former Trump ally who has endorsed Ms. Harris. “He’s lost a step. He’s lost an ability to put powerful sentences together.”
“You can like Trump or hate Trump, but he’s been a very effective communicator,” Mr. Scaramucci continued. But now, he added, “the word salad buffet on the Trump campaign is being offered at a discount. You can eat all you can eat, but it’s at a discount.”
Sarah Matthews, who was Mr. Trump’s deputy press secretary until breaking with him over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, said the former president had lost his fastball.
“I don’t think anyone would ever say that Trump is the most polished speaker, but his more recent speeches do seem to be more incoherent, and he’s rambling even more so and he’s had some pretty noticeable moments of confusion,” she said. “When he was running against Biden, maybe it didn’t stand out as much.”
Mr. Trump dismisses any concerns and insists that he has passed cognitive tests. “I go for two hours without teleprompters, and if I say one word slightly out, they say, ‘He’s cognitively impaired,’” he complained at a recent rally. He calls his meandering style “the weave” and asserts that it is an intentional and “brilliant” communication strategy.
Steven Cheung, the campaign communications director, called Mr. Trump “the strongest and most capable candidate” and dismissed suggestions that he has diminished with age. “President Trump has more energy and more stamina than anyone in politics, and is the smartest leader this country has ever seen,” he said in a statement.
The former president has not been hobbled politically by his age as much as Mr. Biden was, in part because the incumbent comes across as physically frail while Mr. Trump still exudes energy. But his campaign has refused to release medical records, instead simply pointing to a one-page letter released in July by his former White House doctor reporting that Mr. Trump was “doing well” after being grazed by a bullet in an assassination attempt.
How much his rambling discourse — what some experts call tangentiality — can be attributed to age is the subject of some debate. Mr. Trump has always had a distinctive speaking style that entertained and captivated supporters even as critics called him detached from reality. Indeed, questions have been raised about Mr. Trump’s mental fitness for years.
John F. Kelly, his second White House chief of staff, was so convinced that Mr. Trump was psychologically unbalanced that he bought a book called “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” written by 27 mental health professionals, to try to understand his boss better. As it was, Mr. Kelly came to refer to Mr. Trump’s White House as “Crazytown.”
Some of Mr. Trump’s cabinet secretaries had a running debate over whether the president was “crazy-crazy,” as one of them put it in an interview after leaving office, or merely someone who promoted “crazy ideas.” There were multiple conversations about whether the 25th Amendment disability clause should be invoked to remove him from office, although the idea never went far. His own estranged niece, Mary L. Trump, a clinical psychologist, wrote a book identifying disorders she believed he has. Mr. Trump bristled at such talk, insisting that he was “a very stable genius.”
“There were often discussions about whether he could comprehend or understand the policy and knowing that he didn’t really have a grasp on those kinds of things,” Ms. Matthews said of her time in the White House. “No one wanted to outright say it in that environment — is he mentally fit? — but I definitely had my moments where I personally questioned it.”
A 2022 study by a pair of University of Montana scholars found that Mr. Trump’s speech complexity was significantly lower than that of the average president over American history. (So was Mr. Biden’s.) The Times analysis found that Mr. Trump speaks at a fourth-grade level, lower than rivals like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who speaks at an eighth-grade level, which is roughly average for modern presidents.
Mr. Trump’s complexity level has remained relatively steady and has not diminished in recent years, according to the analysis. But concerns about his age have heightened now that he is trying to return to office, concerns that were not alleviated by his unfounded debate claim about immigrants “eating the pets” in a small town.
Polls show that a majority of Americans believe he is too old to be president, and his critics have been trying to focus attention on that. A group of mental health, national security and political experts held a conference at the National Press Club in Washington last month on Mr. Trump’s fitness. The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group of former Republicans, regularly taunts him with ads like one calling his debate with Ms. Harris “a cognitive test” that he failed.
Mr. Trump has appeared tired at times and has maintained a far less active campaign schedule this time around, holding only 61 rallies so far in 2024, compared with 283 through all of 2016, according to the Times analysis, although he has picked up the pace lately. He appeared to nod off during his hush-money trial in New York before being convicted of 34 felonies.
Experts said it was hard to judge whether the changes in Mr. Trump’s speaking style could indicate typical effects of age or some more significant condition. “That can change with normal aging,” said Dr. Bradford Dickerson, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School. “But if you see a change relative to a person’s base line in that type of speaking ability over the course of just a few years, I think it raises some real red flags.”
One person who has detected a change is Ramin Setoodeh, author of a new book on Mr. Trump’s days hosting “The Apprentice.” Mr. Setoodeh, who has written about Hollywood for years and first met Mr. Trump during his television days, was surprised at how much the former president had changed when he arrived at Mar-a-Lago for the first of six interviews for the book, “Apprentice in Wonderland.”
“The Donald Trump I interviewed in the early seasons of ‘The Apprentice’ had a stronger sense of time and space, and his narratives were a lot clearer,” Mr. Setoodeh said. “And the Donald Trump I interviewed for my book, ironically, could remember things that happened in the ‘Apprentice’ years well, but he struggled with more recent events.”
For instance, Mr. Trump could not remember the day in 2015 that NBC called to cut ties with him after he made derogatory remarks about Mexican immigrants. “He was very clear in terms of his memory of the shows,” Mr. Setoodeh said, even though his versions were often exaggerated or fabricated. “But when we went to more recent years, things got foggier.”
So foggy, in fact, that he forgot Mr. Setoodeh himself. After interviewing Mr. Trump in May 2021, Mr. Setoodeh returned in August. “When I said, ‘Do you remember sitting down with me?’ he said, ‘No, that was a long time ago,’” Mr. Setoodeh said. “It was like we started from square one. He started telling me the exact same stories. He didn’t remember what we had talked about. He didn’t remember me.”
Others who have encountered him since he left the White House have likewise described moments of forgetfulness. Most notable, perhaps, was his deposition in the defamation lawsuit brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused Mr. Trump of raping her in the 1990s. Shown a picture of Ms. Carroll, Mr. Trump confused her with his second wife, Marla Maples. (A jury later found that Mr. Trump sexually abused and defamed Ms. Carroll.)
Roberta Kaplan, who was Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, said Mr. Trump lost control at times during the proceedings, blowing up when he should have remained calm. “I assume that was always part of his personality,” she said in an interview. “But it may be getting worse.”
Others who have spent time with Mr. Trump in private, however, insist that they notice no difference.
“I never felt that cognitive ability or age was an issue,” said James Trusty, an attorney who represented Mr. Trump in his classified-documents criminal case until resigning last year after reported friction with another lawyer close to Mr. Trump.
“Like any high-powered executive, there were going to be times when he didn’t like hearing what I had to say or when we had spirited disagreements over strategy,” Mr. Trusty added. “But it was never something where I felt there was an intellectual disconnect.”
Sam Nunberg, a former Trump political adviser, said he still talked with people who see him almost daily, and had not heard of any concerns expressed about the former president’s age. “I don’t really see any major difference,” he said. “I just don’t see it.”
“He’s not linear,” he added. But “he was never linear.” At the debate with Ms. Harris, Mr. Nunberg said, Mr. Trump “seemed like he was tired” and “had an off night.” And, he added, “of course he doesn’t prepare.” But “that’s not like a Biden off night.”
Either way, watching recordings of Mr. Trump over the years yields a pretty clear evolution. The young media-obsessed developer and reality television star who spoke with a degree of sophistication and nuance eventually gave way to the bombastic presidential candidate with the shrunken vocabulary in 2016 and eventually to the aged former president seeking a comeback in 2024.
Consider the following: In 2002, Mr. Trump was interviewed for an Errol Morris documentary about “Citizen Kane,” the iconic Orson Welles film about a media tycoon. Mr. Trump gave a thoughtful analysis of the movie with a degree of introspection that would be hard to imagine today. “In real life, I believe that wealth does in fact isolate you from other people,” he said. “It’s a protective mechanism. You have your guard up much more so than you would if you didn’t have wealth.”
In 2011, as he was contemplating a run for the presidency, Mr. Trump addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference and sounded more partisan notes. While many of the themes would be familiar to today’s voters, he stuck closer to his script and finished his thoughts more often. His speeches in 2015 and 2016 were more aggressive, but still clearer and more comprehensible than now, and balanced with flashes of humor.
Now his rallies are powered as much by anger as anything else. His distortions and false claims have reached new levels. His adversaries are “lunatics” and “deranged” and “communists” and “fascists.” Never particularly restrained, he now lobs four-letter words and other profanities far more freely. The other day, he suggested unleashing the police to inflict “one really violent day” on criminals to deter crime.
He does not stick to a single train of thought for long. During one 10-minute stretch in Mosinee, Wis., last month, for instance, he ping-ponged from topic to topic: Ms. Harris’s record; the virtues of the merit system; Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement; supposed corruption at the F.D.A., the C.D.C. and the W.H.O.; the Covid-19 pandemic; immigration; back to the W.H.O.; China; Mr. Biden’s age; Ms. Harris again; Mr. Biden again; chronic health problems and childhood diseases; back to Mr. Kennedy; the “Biden crime family”; the president’s State of the Union address; Franklin D. Roosevelt; the 25th Amendment; the “parasitic political class”; Election Day; back to immigration; Senator Tammy Baldwin; back to immigration; energy production; back to immigration; and Ms. Baldwin again.
Some of what he says is inexplicable except to those who listen to him regularly and understand the shorthand. And he throws out assertions without any apparent regard for whether they are true or not. Lately, he has claimed that crowds Ms. Harris has drawn were not real but the creation of artificial intelligence, never mind the reporters and cameras on hand to record them.
He mispronounces names and places with some regularity — “Charlottestown”instead of “Charlottesville,” “Minnianapolis” instead of “Minneapolis,” the website “Snoops” instead of “Snopes,” “Leon” Musk instead of “Elon.”
In Rome, Ga., he went on an extended riff about Mr. Biden in swim trunks on a beach. “Look, at 81 — do you remember Cary Grant? How good was Cary Grant, right? I don’t think Cary Grant, he was good. I don’t know what happened to movie stars today. We used to have Cary Grant and Clark Gable and all these people. Today we have — I won’t say names because I don’t need enemies. I don’t need enemies. I got enough enemies. But Cary Grant was like, Michael Jackson once told me, ‘The most handsome man, Trump, in the world.’ Who? ‘Cary Grant.’ Well, we don’t have that anymore. But Cary Grant at 81 or 82 — going on 100, this guy, he’s 81 going on 100 — Cary Grant wouldn’t look too good in a bathing suit either, and he was pretty good-looking, right?”
Talking on another occasion about how tough illegal immigrants are, he drifted off into a soliloquy about whether actors could portray them in a movie: “They can’t play the role. They’ll bring in a big actor and you look and you say, ‘Look, he’s got no muscle content. He’s got no muscle! We need a little muscle!’ Then they bring in another one. ‘But he’s got a weak face! He looks weak!’” Still, he has rather high regard for his own physique. “I could have been sunbathing on the beach,” he said at another point. “You have never seen a body so beautiful. Much better than Sleepy Joe.”
He considers himself the master of nearly every subject. He said Venezuelan gangs were armed “with MK-47s,” evidently meaning AK-47s, and then added, “I know that gun very well” because “I’ve become an expert on guns.” He claims to have been named “man of the year” in Michigan, although no such prize exists.
He is easily distracted. He halted in the middle of another extended monologue when he noticed a buzzing insect. “Oh, there’s a fly,” he said. “Oh. I wonder where the fly came from. See? Two years ago, I wouldn’t have had a fly up here. You’re changing rapidly. But we can’t take it any longer.”
But like some people approaching the end of their eighth decade, he is not open to correction. “Trump is never wrong,” he said recently in Wisconsin. “I am never, ever wrong.”
Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The Times. He has covered the last five presidents and sometimes writes analytical pieces that place presidents and their administrations in a larger context and historical framework. More about Peter Baker‘
Saturday, October 05, 2024
Opinion | JD Smirks His Way Into the Future - The New York Times
Maureen Dowd
JD Smirks His Way Into the Future
Opinion Columnist, reporting from Washington.
"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.”
Even though Trump lives in a miasma of self-pity and his businesses often ended up in bankruptcy, somehow his fans mistake his swagger and sneers for machismo. What a joke. Trump is the one who caves, a foreign policy weakling and stooge of Putin.
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This weekend, he is martyr-milking the one moment where he did show courage, the assassination attempt in Butler, Pa., by returning to the crime scene and treating it as hallowed ground for his quasi-religious lion imagery. After vowing at the convention to never discuss the event again — “It’s actually too painful to tell” — he wants to wallow in accolades from Elon Musk and JD Vance, and sell more of his $299 “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT” high-tops depicting his bloody face and raised fist.
His new ad slams Harris for “anti-Israel statements” that Hamas will use as a green light “to keep murdering Israelis.”
But Harris has said she would always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and she praised Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, saying he was “a terrorist with American blood on his hands.”
She has, however, shown more sympathy for Palestinians than has Joe Biden. In a Trumpworld that thrives on mendacity, demonizing and dividing, sympathy is weakness.
Unless you need to fake it to improve your favorability numbers — like Vance did in his debate against Tim Walz.
David Axelrod had predicted it would be a match between a Labrador retriever and a coyote. But there were two Labs onstage.
Vance’s performance was chilling. Once I thought Trump would be an aberration for Republicans. But on Tuesday night, I saw the future of the party and it was lies piled on lies, and darkness swallowing darkness.
Vance seemed like a replicant. There was no sign of the smarmy right-wing troll who said Harris “can go to hell” and told CNN’s Dana Bash that he created stories about migrants eating cats and dogs to dramatize a narrative that helps the Republican ticket. (A racist narrative.)
His views against abortion are adamantine and, until recently, he was an I.V.F. opponent. He has a bizarre, degrading view of the role of women in American society.
But on Tuesday night, he put on a mask of likability and empathy. “Christ have mercy, it is awful,” Vance said, looking down and shaking his head, when Walz told of his teenage son witnessing a shooting.
The chameleon brought back the JD Vance who was the darling of Hollywood, when “Hillbilly Elegy” was made into a movie, before he ambitiously code-switched into a Trumper. His wife, Usha, a debate adviser, helped him craft a persona that made him more palatable to women.
He was wily and deceptive in how he talked about abortion, stressing that women needed “options” and sending his love to an old friend who he said had had an abortion.
One woman in the CNN focus group was impressed with his empathy and talk of options, saying she was surprised and encouraged that Vance sounded so “progressive.”
But before the 40-year-old JD teamed up with the 78-year-old Donald, his abortion position was draconian. For women in the wrong states, the need to get an abortion is a terrifying prospect that could lead to death, if you are denied the proper treatment. And treatment is harder to get because doctors fear going to jail.
It’s remarkable, given Vance’s compassionate tone in his book, and his plea that the people of Appalachia be understood rather than ridiculed, how easily he morphed into someone with no compassion, stereotyping migrants and women.
After nearly 90 minutes of being lulled by Vance’s sham persona, Walz finally ripped his opponent’s mask off when Vance refused to say Trump lost the last election.
“Tim,” Vance protested, “I’m focused on the future.”
It was the truest thing Vance said in a night of lying about his own positions and mythical Trump achievements.
Vance was focused on the future — his own."