President Joe Biden’s months-long push for a cease-fire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas has been upended again in recent days, putting the deal on life support as U.S. officials say they have indefinitely postponed their plan to present the two sides with a “take it or leave it” proposal.

The latest obstacle — the abrupt introduction by Hamas of a new demand surrounding which prisoners Israel would release — underscores the frustrating, often excruciating process that has preoccupied top U.S. officials, and Biden himself, for nine months. At several recent points the United States, along with Qatar and Egypt, believed a deal was within reach, only for Israel or Hamas to derail the talks with new demands that set negotiators back weeks or months.

Overall, Biden’s chances of ending the 11-month war in Gaza and bringing home the remaining hostages before he leaves office appear ever more remote, making it more likely that he will end his presidency without mediating an end to the conflict that engulfed his final year in office and threatens to tarnish his legacy.

Negotiators increasingly fear that neither Israel nor Hamas is truly motivated to reach a deal. White House officials, lawmakers and diplomats say a cease-fire is key not only to addressing the tragic humanitarian situation in Gaza and releasing the remaining hostages, but also to avoiding a broader regional war.

“Most days, it’s pretty clear the Americans are working much harder than the Israeli government is working at this,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “I think [a cease-fire] has been not a terribly likely outcome because of the political calculations that both [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and Hamas make. I give a lot of credit to the Biden team for persevering and trying to restart and re-energize these talks, even as both sides seem to throw up significant obstacles.”

Earlier this week, as U.S., Qatari and Egyptian negotiators were working through the final details of a “bridging proposal” aimed at resolving the remaining differences between the two sides, Hamas introduced the new demand that has for now put a deal even further out of reach, according to a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential talks. Already, the negotiations had been stymied by demands Netanyahu introduced several weeks ago.

The two sides had tentatively agreed that at a certain point, Israel would release Palestinian militants serving life sentences in exchange for Hamas freeing Israeli soldiers. But this week, Hamas said civilian hostages would also need to be exchanged for these longtime prisoners, an idea the official called a “poison pill.”

The biggest and most vexing question hanging over the talks is how many of the roughly 100 hostages in Gaza are still alive. Earlier this week, the bodies of six hostages were recovered, setting off massive demonstrations in Israel against Netanyahu, who many Israelis think is not trying hard enough to reach a deal.

U.S. officials think a number of the remaining seven American hostages in Gaza are still alive and could be released in the first phase of a three-part deal, according to the senior official, along with a “significant number” of living hostages. Despite their concept of a “take it or leave it” offer, Biden officials said they will continue working toward a deal as long as they think it has even a small chance.

Some of Biden’s advisers want him to apply more pressure on Netanyahu, whom even Israeli officials have accused of sabotaging the negotiations. There has been a debate inside the White House over whether to publicly call out Netanyahu as a key obstacle to the agreement, but that is less likely after Hamas executed the six hostages, according to several people familiar with the discussions.

In Israel, long-simmering anger toward Netanyahu boiled over this week when the Israel Defense Forces recovered the bodies of the six hostages, who they said had been executed by their Hamas captors shortly before their bodies were discovered. At least three of the Israeli hostages, including Israeli American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who had lost part of his left arm in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, were on a list of those who would be released in the first phase.

Families of the hostages have for months accused Netanyahu of prioritizing his own political survival over a deal that would bring their loved ones home. Netanyahu upended the talks in late July when he introduced a new set of demands, including his insistence that Israeli troops remain in the eight-mile-long border between Gaza and Egypt known as the Philadelphi Corridor.

Israel’s war in Gaza has in many ways overtaken the final year of Biden’s presidency, as he has fought both privately and publicly with Netanyahu over issues ranging from humanitarian aid to civilian deaths.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the White House has not applied sufficient pressure on Netanyahu. Asked this week if the Israeli prime minister was doing enough to get an agreement, Biden replied, “No.” But he has shied away from penalizing Netanyahu, for example by imposing conditions on military aid to Israel.

“By not calling out Prime Minister Netanyahu’s intransigence, they have given him political cover to continue to stonewall,” Van Hollen said. “It’s a mystery to me as to why the administration doesn’t call him out more clearly, when the hostage families themselves know what an impediment he has been.”

Hamas militants on Oct. 7 stormed through the Israel-Gaza border fence, killing about 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostage. Israel immediately launched a retaliatory military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe in the enclave, including widespread hunger and mass displacement.

The latest setback to the cease-fire talks is the culmination of a process that started almost immediately after a one-week fighting pause in late November, which saw an increase in humanitarian aid into Gaza and more than 100 hostages released. The administration quickly began to work on another deal, one they hoped would last longer and lay the groundwork for a permanent end to the war.

Biden’s impatience with Netanyahu — particularly over Israel’s refusal to allow in more humanitarian aid as northern Gaza was on the brink of famine — reached a breaking point on April 1, when an Israeli airstrike killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen. That crystallized for Biden that Israel was not doing nearly enough to protect aid workers in Gaza or alleviate the suffering, according to several people familiar with the president’s thinking.

On a call with Netanyahu days after the deadly attack, Biden threatened to reassess the entire U.S. approach to the war if the prime minister did not make immediate changes, including opening a number of ports and crossings to let in more aid, according to a senior administration official briefed on the call.

Israel made the changes demanded by the president, but around the same time, it conducted an airstrike on an Iranian Embassy complex in Syria that killed seven senior members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. American officials were not notified ahead of time of the attack, which spurred an intensive effort by the White House to head off an Iranian attack against U.S. outposts and to prevent a war between Iran and Israel.

The United States, along with several Arab and European allies, helped thwart a retaliatory Iranian attack on Israel, a barrage of more than 300 missiles and drones. U.S. officials then urged the Israelis not to further escalate the situation, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose confidential discussions.

Israel ultimately opted to conduct a small precision strike on an Iranian facility outside the city of Isfahan, telling U.S. officials they would not publicly confirm it so that Iran could “save face and de-escalate,” according to a senior administration official.

By May 27, it looked like the negotiations had new life.

The Israeli cabinet had agreed to a number of Hamas’s demands and proposed that the first and second phase of a deal be linked. For months, Hamas refused to agree to a deal that did not immediately lead to a permanent cease-fire. Now Israel was suggesting that the temporary cease-fire in the first phase would continue as long as both sides were negotiating in good faith over the second phase, which would include a permanent cease-fire and the release of male IDF soldiers in exchange for “higher-value” Palestinian prisoners.

Four days later, on May 31, Biden delivered a speech from the White House laying out the Israeli proposal. The goal, senior administration officials and outside advisers said, was to box Netanyahu in politically and ensure that he could not back away from the deal, as well as to build international support and pressure Hamas for an agreement.

On July 2, Hamas agreed for the first time to a phased proposal that did not begin with a permanent cease-fire. The group had other demands, according to senior officials, but negotiators felt they were getting closer.

That was all upended on July 27, when Netanyahu issued a set of demands that again derailed the talks. Chief among them was his insistence that Israeli troops remain along the Philadelphi Corridor, an issue that had not previously been an explicit part of the talks. Days later, Israel conducted an airstrike that killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, which U.S. officials privately decried as unhelpful to the talks, since Haniyeh was playing a significant role in the cease-fire negotiations.

The costs of the delay are clear. Beyond the six dead hostages, about 4,000 additional Palestinians have been killed since Biden outlined the proposal in May, and polio has appeared in Gaza for the first time in 25 years. Gazans have been forced into smaller and smaller humanitarian zones as the flow of basic necessities remains stalled or haphazard at best.

Inside the White House, the news of the six slain hostages — particularly Goldberg-Polin, whose parents, Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin, had become well-known to Biden and his top officials, many of whom regularly texted with them as negotiations dragged on — personalized the impact of the failure to reach a deal. “Furious” and “horrified” were among the terms officials used to describe the news of his death.

“The mood was, ‘We don’t have a deal, we now have six dead hostages, and we’re all not doing enough,’” a senior administration official said.

Negotiators increasingly fear that a deal is out of reach. Netanyahu has not wavered on the Philadelphi Corridor, despite rising pressure from hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have flooded the streets to protest his position. Even if Netanyahu agrees to phase one of a deal, negotiators are not confident he would ever accept a phrase two that includes a permanent end to the war.

Negotiating with Hamas has also proved agonizing, U.S. officials said. Only its leader in Gaza, Yehiya Sinwar, can sign off on behalf of the group, and it remains unclear how motivated he is to come to an agreement.

“You can’t be the mediator between two sides when you want something more than the two sides want it,” said Ivo Daalder, ambassador to NATO under President Barack Obama. “Just because there isn’t an alternative doesn’t mean this strategy is working. The amount of talent we’ve deployed to get where we are, which is nowhere, is really remarkable, and at some point you need to decide it doesn’t work.”

No matter who wins the White House, the next president is increasingly likely to face an unusual hurdle in their first days in office: a divided Congress.

Each of the last five newly elected presidents has entered office with his party holding the majority in the House and Senate, opening the door to an aggressive agenda. But now, Democrats need a net gain of just four seats to reclaim the House majority, while Republicans need just one more flip, with two big opportunities in conservative states, to win back the Senate.

Such a split verdict would be historic: The House and Senate have never both switched majorities in opposite directions in any election since the direct election of senators began 110 years ago. It would also guarantee that Kamala Harris or Donald Trump would enter the Oval Office on Jan. 20 without his or her party in full control of Congress.

From Bill Clinton in 1993 to Joe Biden in 2021, the most recent presidents took office with their party fully in charge on Capitol Hill and began to advance their most important agenda items.

Influential Capitol Hill veterans from that era said the winner in November could be immediately reined in by an opposing party holding the House or Senate, given this politically combustible time when bipartisan dealmaking has been limited to modest measures or must-pass legislation.

“A split Congress at this point means a legislative dead-end for major policy initiatives legislatively and would likely further enhance the subordination of the legislative to the executive branch, which will govern through executive actions,” said John Lawrence, who served as chief of staff in 2009 and 2010 for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) during a productive early part of Barack Obama’s presidency.

“Bipartisan lawmaking is possible, but it’s not going to be anywhere on the scale of what we’re used to,” said Brendan Buck, who served as counselor to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) in 2017 and 2018 during the early phase of Trump’s presidency.

In 1989, George H.W. Bush was the last president to enter office without his party in control of both chambers. The Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate limited Bush’s domestic agenda to mostly tax-and-spending battles, including a 1990 budget deal that undercut his campaign pledge of “Read my lips: no new taxes.”

Instead, he largely focused on foreign policy matters, and lost his reelection bid in 1992.

Trump’s agenda, as laid out on his campaign website, is light on issues that require congressional action; it focuses more on executive actions such as raising tariffs and securing the border.

But priorities such as extending many of the rates set in his 2017 tax law, as well as new cuts for corporations and the wealthy, would be curtailed by a House Democratic majority and a speakership held by Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who is currently House minority leader.

Likewise, Harris’s agenda includes certain items that need a stamp of approval from Congress, including a $6,000 child tax credit; a $25,000 subsidy for first-time home buyers; and new limits on the costs of prescription drugs.

Those would be very difficult to get approved if she’s dealing with “Senate Majority Leader John (TBD).” Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.) are the leading contenders to become Senate GOP leader after Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) steps down in November. Either would outright block Harris’s proposals or force enough revisions so that a majority of Republicans could support the final product.

This dynamic creates the potential for a continuation of the gridlock of the past two years in Washington, when President Joe Biden spent so much time struggling with the House GOP majority over fiscal matters. Next year requires another congressional hike of the nation’s borrowing limit, plus addressing the expiration of the Trump tax cuts and the annual brutal fight over funding for federal agencies.

“In short, next year a new president will struggle to move a big agenda in a divided Congress and will have to devote much of the year to dealing with tax and spending issues,” said Antonia Ferrier, who served in 2017 and 2018 directing a strategic communications office for McConnell.

David Krone, who served as a senior adviser to Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) in 2009 and 2010, recalled how his boss and Pelosi, the House speaker, used their large majorities to ride herd on their committee chairs to produce a massive economic stimulus package, the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank law rewriting oversight of Wall Street. Those served as some of Barack Obama’s grandest presidential achievements.

“Now, it’s reversed. The Senate majority leader and House speaker will have to rely more on a bottom-up approach. Sure, they can have huge influence, but deals in the Senate will have to come together through some cooperation,” Krone said, noting that many prominent dealmakers of the past decade will no longer serve in the Senate next year.

These prognostications could all be for naught if one party pulls off the political trifecta of winning the White House along with the House and Senate majorities. That would most likely require Harris or Trump winning convincingly enough to have coattails that would help down-ballot candidates win in very unfavorable regions.

The presidential race remains a toss-up. Harris’s momentum since taking over for Biden on July 21 has helped her claim leads in national polls, but she remains statistically tied in five battleground states in the fight for the electoral college, according to The Washington Post’s analysis.

In the House, Harris’s candidacy could be the jolt Democrats need in blue states like California and New York.

Of the 13 toss-up races Republicans are defending, as rated by the Cook Political Report With Amy Walter, 10 are in four states where Biden won by more than 15 percentage points four years ago. Harris will probably match or exceed that margin in November.

Democrats could win enough seats just in those friendly states to claim the House majority. In the Senate, however, Republicans have the much better political terrain, already holding 49 seats and the Democrats all but conceding West Virginia to them with the retirement of Sen. Joe Manchin III (I).

Barring a major upset of either Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) or Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Democrats need Harris to win and defend every remaining seat of theirs, including those of Sens. Jon Tester (Mont.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio), states where Trump might win by double-digit margins.

Facing a GOP Senate could cause immediate headaches for a Harris administration. Biden managed to efficiently get every single Cabinet secretary confirmed by the spring of 2021, as well as Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson a year later, with the narrowest of Senate majorities.

Harris would have the luxury of asking some secretaries and deputies to remain in their posts, but history suggests many would prefer to move on.

Lawrence recalled how different times were in 2001, when George W. Bush became president with similarly narrow majorities for Republicans. He won a sizable bloc of Democrats for his 2001 tax cuts and a majority for his No Child Left Behind Act.

By the time that education bill got signed into law, Democrats had taken over the Senate majority because of a party switch, but it did not matter. Bush had won the support of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. George Miller (Calif.), the top Democrats on education policy.

In 2009, Obama briefly had a 60-seat majority in the Senate and a bulging House majority with more than 255 Democrats. Fearing political extinction, Republicans decided to almost unanimously oppose every big presidential agenda item.

That required legislative tacticians to maneuver some measures to pass on a fast-track process. “Senator Reid had the ability to shape what he wanted. Same with Speaker Pelosi,” Krone recalled.

Likewise, Republicans had some successes and some failures in 2017, when they tried a similar go-it-alone approach. They failed miserably in their attempt to repeal the ACA despite seven years of promising to do so, but they succeeded in ramming through a nearly $2 trillion tax cut plan without a single Democratic vote.

“Both parties have just used brute political force when they had the opportunity,” Buck said.

Biden and Democrats used brute force to pass a nearly $2 trillion pandemic rescue package in 2021 and a massive climate and prescription drug law in 2022. They also scored some bipartisan success on projects ramping up infrastructure spending and rebuilding chip manufacturing. Those deals, however, would have looked less desirable for Democrats if they were in the minority and Republicans were leading negotiations.

Now, as Harris and Trump look ahead to the possibility of taking office on Jan. 20, both might have to reconsider their expectations for early success.

“In the first 100 days, when a new president wants to put points on the board to show that they can deliver, that might not be the reality,” Ferrier said.

MOSINEE, Wis. — A day after spending much of a 49-minute news conference revisiting — and denying — sexual misconduct allegations leveled against him, Donald Trump used part of a campaign rally in Wisconsin on Saturday to discuss another subject that has bedeviled his campaigns for president: Russian interference in U.S. elections.

U.S. intelligence officials warned Friday that the Russian government’s covert efforts to sway the presidential election are “more sophisticated than in prior election cycles,” and that Moscow is using artificial intelligence to create increasingly convincing fake content that could aid Trump. Four years ago, the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously endorsed the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in an effort to boost Trump.

But Trump, who has repeatedly described the probes into Russian interference in the 2016 election as a “hoax,” is dismissing them this time around, too.

“The Justice Department said Russia may be involved in our elections again,” Trump told the crowd at his rally. “And, you know, the whole world laughed at them this time.”

The Republican presidential nominee’s comments appeared to reference the indictment Wednesday of two Russia-based employees of Russia’s state-run news site, RT, in an alleged scheme in which they paid an American media company to spread English-language videos on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and X.

“It’s Russia, Russia, Russia all over again. But they don’t look at China and they don’t look at Iran. They look at Russia. I don’t know what it is with poor Russia,” Trump said.

Trump’s rally, at the airport in Mosinee, Wis., was billed as focused on “draining the swamp,” but featured a stump speech that meandered from familiar attack lines about inflation and jobs to falsehoods about sex-change operations for minors, conspiracy theories about government employment statistics and dismissals of Russian interference in American elections.

The indictments were part of the administration’s most sweeping effort yet to tackle what it described as Russian disinformation campaigns ahead of the November election.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told The Washington Post this week that the indictments were “nonsense” and denied Russian interference in the elections. And Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said that he wants Vice President Kamala Harris to win the election, rather than Trump, in a tongue-in-cheek endorsement that was widely viewed — including by the former president — as an effort to undermine rather than support her.

“I knew Putin, I knew him well,” Trump said at the rally Saturday. “The other day he endorsed Kamala. He endorsed Kamala. I was very, offended by that … I think it was done maybe with a smile.”

Peskov said in an interview on Russian TV this month that Moscow views Harris as a more predictable opponent than Trump. “The Democrats are more predictable. And what Putin said about Biden’s predictability applies to almost all Democrats, including Ms. Harris,” he said.

But Russia, which is in the midst of a bloody, protracted invasion of its neighbor Ukraine, has other interests at stake in the 2024 election.

Trump, who has often boasted about his relationship with Putin and claimed without evidence that Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if he was president, has expressed deep skepticism about continuing U.S. military aid to Ukraine.

Harris has vowed to maintain Biden’s stance as Kyiv’s ally and most important financial and military backer, while Trump has privately suggested pressuring Ukraine to cede territory to Russia to end the war.

“I will have that war finished and done and settled before I get to the White House,” Trump vowed Saturday, repeating sentiments that the Kremlin has previously dismissed. “As president elect, I will get that done.”

Cheeseman reported from Washington. Azi Paybarah contributed to this report.

With less than 10 weeks before the presidential election, Donald Trump had a message for voters in late August: He would be selling more digital trading cards for $99 each.

“Fifty all new stunning digital trading cards — it’s really something,” Trump says in the ad. “These cards show me dancing and even holding some bitcoins.”

Buy 15 or more of the digital cards, he said, and he would mail a single physical trading card. Those came with a special perk: “An authentic piece of my suit that I wore for the presidential debate.” Five of the suit pieces would even be autographed, he promised. Those willing to buy 75 of the cards — at a total cost of $7,425 — were invited to attend a gala dinner at his country club in Florida, he said. “Let’s have fun together,” he said

On Tuesday, he again took to Truth Social for another post: selling a book — $99 without his autograph, $499 with his autograph — of pictures of himself. “A MUST HAVE on U.S. History,” he called it.

In both cases, the money was not going to his campaign but to for-profit ventures he earns millions from promoting. No presidential candidate has ever so closely linked his election with personal for-profit enterprises, selling a staggering array of merchandise that includes signed Bibles where he receives a royalty for hawking them, pricey sneakers, gold necklaces, cryptocurrency cards, pens, books, licensing fees on overseas properties and more.

His company’s website also sells a variety of political merchandise at higher prices than his campaign charges for the same items. A “Make America Great Again” hat that sells for $55 on his company website costs $40 through the campaign. A 3×5 flag from the campaign costs $43, while the same size flag on the company’s site costs $86.

“There’s no precedent in history at all, and certainly not in modern history, for somebody who has monetized the office or running for office of president the way he has,” said Don Fox, former general counsel for the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.

But Trump’s various moneymaking strategies also further a narrative that Democrats say resonates with voters: that the former president only cares about himself.

“One of the many arguments we make against Trump is that he cares solely about himself and his bottom line more than anything else, including the American people, it manifests itself in all sorts of different ways,” said Ammar Moussa, director of rapid response for the Harris campaign. “We have a lot of different proof points, and it’s not just him hawking bibles and ugly sneakers. It’s also, for instance, when he uses donor money to pay for his personal legal fees.”

A spokeswoman for Trump did not answer questions about how many deals he had struck, how much money he had made or whether he would continue such deals should he win the White House.

“President Trump left his multibillion-dollar real estate empire to run for office, donated his presidential government salary, and was the first President to actually lose net worth while serving in the White House,” spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said. “Unlike most politicians, President Trump didn’t get into politics for profit. He ran for president because he genuinely loves the people of this country and wants to make America great again.”

There are advisers and lawyers inside the campaign who say the deals are a little “slimy,” but “Trump relishes being able to market his name,” said one campaign adviser, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal details.

“His general belief is, ‘If I’m going to get attacked and have to pay all these lawyers and deal with everything, I need to make some money off it,’” the adviser said.

Trump has privately complained that being president has cost him money at some of his hotels, golf courses and luxury properties, a fact that is borne out by federal financial disclosures. In other places, he has made far more money because of the gig — jacking up his Mar-a-Lago Club’s membership fee to $700,000, for example, giving people a chance to have access to him.

“There’s nothing surprising considering the individual,” Fox said. “How does any of that commercialization of his former office and the one that he seeks again — how does that translate to making the lives of ordinary Americans better? It doesn’t. It just goes to lining his own pocket.”

Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University, said former presidents have often made money by selling books, giving speeches or serving on boards. “They raise money for their libraries, and they get big checks for their memoirs,” Brinkley said.

But he said no president or major-party presidential candidate had ever marketed themselves the way Trump has — with extensive licensing deals for gear, or merging a campaign for the presidency with a private business enterprise.

“In the sense of marketeering themselves in the way that Trump does, selling bobbleheads and MAGA gear, it’s a new lurch into campaign capitalism and profiteering off the White House,” he said. “It’s a real blurring of the lines between his private marketeering and campaign politics. You can quickly confuse the voting public.”

Leavitt called Brinkley’s criticism “an absurd allegation from someone who has no idea what he’s talking about.”

“President Trump had multiple No. 1 best-selling books long before he ever stepped foot in the White House,” she said.

Trump is interested in licensing deals and one-off deals where he does not have to make large time commitments, according to people who have dealt with the issue. In particular, he has liked the book deals where he makes millions from writing, or approving quick captions on pictures and signing some of the books — both with an upfront payment and a portion of the sales. He also has expressed a preference for deals where he can be paid to show up somewhere, particularly at events at his own club.

A person with knowledge of the discussions said the deals usually came directly to Trump or family members and were later scrutinized by lawyers, often after Trump had already said yes. Most of the deals were in the low millions of dollars, this person said.

“What he was willing to do depended on how much money he was getting, who was asking and what mood he was in,” the person said.

Trump often caused challenges to his lawyers and aides — for example, he demanded that the pro shop in his golf course sell MAGA hats, which was campaign merchandise that his private club cannot sell. Eventually, lawyers suggested an iPad be brought into the clubhouse so that people could make a donation to his campaign to get the hats.

Trump has sold a license agreement to a company that markets a panoply of products branded in his name. Those include various styles of golf shoes, perfume, coolers, and sandals among other projects. Trump hawked the athletic shoes during a stop at a Pennsylvania sneaker event this year, because part of the deal required him to promote them.

Last year, he reported making $300,000 from promoting a Bible with musician Lee Greenwood, who often appears at Trump events. The former president, who is not known to be particularly religious, asked his supporters to pay about $60 for the Bible. Greenwood approached Trump directly about the deal, people familiar with the matter said.

“All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It’s my favorite book,” Trump said in a Truth Social video. “I’m proud to endorse and encourage you to get this Bible. We must make America pray again.”

Some of Trump’s former and informal advisers have discussed launching a Trump vodka line, according to people familiar with the discussions. So far, that has not come to market. A person close to Trump said he has no plans to endorse or start a vodka line.

One of the more prominent deals includes Trump promoting shoes with his name and autograph on them. Those include “Never Surrender Gold Low Tops” that cost $499. There is a “Crypto President” pair of bitcoin orange sneakers for the same price, and a $299 pair of “Fight Fight Fight” shoes that include his bloody face and his arm foisted in the air after the July attempted assassination attempt in Butler, Pa.

“GetTrumpSneakers.com is not political and has nothing to do with any political campaign. 45Footwear is not owned, managed or controlled by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, CIC Ventures LLC or any of their respective principals or affiliates. 45Footwear uses Donald J. Trump’s name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Ventures LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked according to its terms,” the website says.

CIC Ventures is a Trump company. The deal includes Trump getting profits in exchange for promotion and autographed materials. He also had to approve the designs.

It is unclear exactly who profits — Trump advisers would not say, and 45Footwear is affiliated with an LLC by the same name that is based in Sheridan, Wyo., according to state records. The LLC was filed by a Wyoming lawyer named Andrew Pierce.

Pierce’s bio on his company’s website says he was “initially a Caribbean business developer” who “learned the hard way the importance of correct business structuring. His firsthand experiences led him to advocate for accessible legal guidance, culminating in the creation of WyomingLLCAttorney.com.”

On some occasions, Trump has benefited from political organizations that he controls. For example, at various political events, donors, supporters and allies are given copies of his picture book, including at the Republican National Convention in July, per attendees. The party has purchased the books.

One adviser described Trump spending hours signing the copies of the book but said he viewed it as worth the money.

MOSINEE, Wis. — Former president Donald Trump wants to correct the record: Actually, women love him.

“Somebody said women don’t like Donald Trump,” the Republican presidential nominee told the crowd at a recent rally in Johnstown, Pa. “That’s wrong. I think they love me, I love them.”

Polling says otherwise.

President Joe Biden won women by 15 points over Trump in 2020, according to exit polls, up from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s 13-point victory among women in 2016. Polls suggest that this year, women prefer Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris over Trump by similar margins. Harris led Trump by 13 points among women in an ABC News/Ipsos poll released last Sunday. Before the Democratic National Convention last month, the same poll found her leading him by six points among women.

Trump appears to be trying to narrow that gap. In just the past several weeks, he has promised to have the government or private insurance companies pay for in vitro fertilization treatments (without offering specifics), debuted a muddled, confusing plan to address child-care costs (“a very important issue”) and promised his administration “will be great for women and their reproductive rights” (though he has also bragged about appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade). But he also spent much of a 49 minute news conference Friday railing against women who have accused him of sexual misconduct, describing their allegations as meritless.

At a rally Saturday in Mosinee, Wis., Trump again said he supports exceptions to abortion bans in cases of rape or incest, or to protect the life of the mother. But he also continued to praise the Supreme Court justices who made strict abortion bans possible by overturning Roe, saying he was “happy we had Supreme Court justices that had the courage to do that.”

“We did a great thing when we got Roe v. Wade out of the federal government,” the former president said. “We put it in the hands of the people and they’re voting.”

Trump’s rush of comments on child care, abortion rights and IVF are “clearly an effort to appeal to female voters,” said Tresa Undem, a partner at PerryUndem research, a polling firm that studies gender issues. But she predicted Trump’s efforts would not have much impact.

“Maybe some of his pro choice voters … maybe it sort of provides a little bit of relief if they hear he supports IVF, if they hear he supports abortion in some cases,” Undem said. “But I don’t think it’ll draw voters to him.”

In interviews at Trump’s rally at an airport in this small central Wisconsin city, women who support him said they were surprised by the gender gap in polling. Only some attendees had heard about his IVF proposal. Several said they were pro-life but supported his messaging that abortion laws should be left up to the states.

“I’m not going to vote for someone because they’re a woman,” said Pam Botwinski, a 68-year-old rally attendee from Mosinee, referring to Harris. “They always say he’s against women,” she added, before noting that Trump employs women throughout his campaign. “I mean come on, open your eyes.”

Darcy Yde, a nurse who also attended the Mosinee rally, described Trump’s IVF proposal as “pro-life” and said it could help him attract more female voters. She also acknowledged Trump’s latest messaging on abortion.

“He doesn’t want to turn off voters so he has to be a little muddy about that, I understand that,” Yde said, who identified herself as pro-life. “I think that it’s okay. I think that’s a subject that we’ve gone through so many times and I think people just kind of put it to the side because there are other big issues to contend with.”

In response to a request for comment, the Trump campaign did not expand on his IVF or child care statements and did not offer more detail on how the campaign plans to appeal to female voters.

Democrats hope that at least some Republican women will follow the lead of former congresswoman Liz Cheney and other GOP women who have turned against Trump.

“They’re misogynistic pigs,” Cheney, who represented Wyoming and has been a fierce Trump critic, said of Trump and Vance in an interview on Friday. “If you listen to what [Vance] he said about women and you look at Donald Trump, and what he has done and what he says about women, these are not people we can entrust with power again.”

Trump’s event in Mosinee had all the traditional trappings of a Trump rally. Attendees held signs that said “Drain the Swamp.” A screen behind the stage featured messages that highlighted the approaching the Nov. 5 election, encouraging attendees to “Make a plan to Vote” and to volunteer for the campaign. But Trump spoke behind bulletproof glass, a recent change since a gunman attempted to assassinate him in Butler, Pa., in July.

Attendees cheered as Trump’s airplane, Trump Force One, flew overhead, and they chanted “Fight, Fight, Fight” — echoing Trump’s own words after the assassination attempt — as he came onto the stage.

Trump’s speech was billed as focused on “draining the swamp,” but the former president, as he often does, rambled from subject to subject, complaining about immigrants, transgender people and his legal cases, and peppered his comments with falsehoods, including baseless claims that the Bureau of Labor Statistics intentionally manipulated its job numbers and that all new jobs are going to undocumented immigrants.

Trump didn’t talk about his IVF proposal or revisit his child care comments at Saturday’s rally. But he found time to compliment some of his fans from North Carolina on their hair. “I never see their husbands, so I don’t know what the hell is going on there,” he said. “Beautiful. And they’re always perfectly coifed. That means they have money.”

Trump received 56 percent and 58 percent of the vote in Marathon County, Wis., in 2016 and 2020, outperforming Mitt Romney and President George W. Bush. President Barack Obama is the only Democratic presidential candidate to carry the county in recent years, winning it in 2008.

The rally marked Trump’s second visit to Wisconsin in a little more than a week. Harris leads by four points in the state, according to The Washington Post’s polling average.

Dan Keating and Emily Guskin contributed to this report.