MACON, Ga. — When the crush of inflation became too much to bear a year and a half ago, Rashad James and Justin Williams began hauling their smoker into an abandoned parking lot off Macon’s Route 41, dishing out $10 to $20 platters of pork chops, ribs and chicken four days a week. That side hustle formed with family and ...

CAMP DAVID, Md. — President Biden’s debate prep went fine. In the sessions, the president still spoke haltingly. He sometimes confused facts and figures. He tripped over words and meandered. Debate prep would not fix his stutter or make him appear any younger, aides knew. But as Biden boarded Marine One to leave the rustic Camp David presidential retreat for ...

Several Democratic allies of the president fanned out on Sunday to defend keeping President Biden as their party’s nominee, even as some donors, commentators and voters worry that his debate performance last week raised fresh concerns about whether he can defeat former president Donald Trump in November. “I think he’s the only Democrat who can beat Donald Trump,” Sen. Chris ...

Stephen K. Bannon — the sometime adviser to presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump and influential podcast host who will report on Monday to serve a four-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress — predicted that President Biden’s debate performance will force him out of the race, denying Republicans their weakest opponent. “The campaign is starting to wake up after spiking ...

Publicly, President Biden’s allies have spent the past several days aggressively downplaying his missteps in Thursday’s debate by assailing the “bedwetting brigade” of nervous Democrats, highlighting a record influx of campaign donations and noting the long history of incumbents who stumbled during their first debates. Privately, they have worked the phones to reassure nervous donors, pleaded with concerned lawmakers to ...

James Carville, the longtime Democratic strategist known as the “Ragin’ Cajun,” said in an interview published Saturday that he does not think President Biden will be on the ticket come Election Day. But hours after the story was published, the Biden campaign sent a fundraising message invoking his name. “Hi, it’s James Carville. I need you and Democrats everywhere to ...

CNN moderator Dana Bash wanted to know how Donald Trump would fight climate change — the existence of which Trump has repeatedly questioned over decades in business and as president despite the voluminous scientific evidence to the contrary. But Trump had a few other things on his mind. “Well, let me just go back to what he said about the ...

Rep. Eric Swalwell (Calif.) struck the biggest moment of his bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination on June 27, 2019. He did it by quoting from a Joe Biden speech in 1987 about passing “the torch” to a younger generation. “Joe Biden was right when he said it was time to pass the torch to a new generation of ...

Former president Donald Trump’s campaign advisers are pushing to significantly simplify and streamline the official platform of the Republican Party, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post. Trump campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, the authors of the memo, criticized the “textbook-long platforms” the party has published for decades, which they said should be free from “special ...

Shares of Nike plunged Friday after the retailer cut its full-year guidance and said it expects sales to drop 10% during its current quarter as it warned of soft sales in China and “uneven” consumer trends across the globe. The expected 10% first-quarter slump is far below the 3.2% drop that analysts had expected, according to LSEG. The sneaker giant now expects ...