These were the images Americans were presented on Tuesday about their two choices for president: One taking his grandchildren to Dachau to bear witness to the horrors of Nazi death camps, the other sitting on a hotel bed in his boxer shorts waiting for sex with a porn star.

关于总统人选，美国人在周二得到的是这样两种形象：一个带着孙辈去达豪见证纳粹死亡集中营的恐怖，另一个穿着平角内裤坐在酒店的床上，等待与色情明星发生性关系。

It was perhaps a twisted cosmic coincidence that President Biden’s nationally televised speech on Holocaust remembrance would take place at the exact moment that former President Donald J. Trump was in a courtroom confronted by Stormy Daniels’s testimony about a sexual tryst gone wrong.

拜登总统就大屠杀纪念日发表全国电视讲话的同时，前总统特朗普正在法庭上面对暴风丹尼尔斯关于他们之间的一次不顺利的性爱约会作证，或许这是冥冥之中的巧合。

But the surreal synchronism of the disparate events 182 days before the election captured the sometimes unreal reality of a presidential race like none before it, at once profound and tawdry, a contest with momentous consequences and a circuslike surround sound. A nation grappling with two wars overseas and campus unrest at home is also being asked to parse through the unseemly details of a married man’s purported dalliance with a woman who had sex on camera professionally.

但在距离投票还有182天的时候，这两个截然不同的事件的超现实同步，捕捉到了总统选举中不时让人觉得亦真亦幻的现实。这是一场前所未有的总统竞选，有深刻的一面也有着艳俗的一面，这是一场具有重大后果的竞争，有着马戏团般的环绕音效。一个正在努力应对两场海外战争和国内大学校园骚乱的国家，还要奋力去了解一名已婚男子与一名以在镜头前做爱为职业的女子之间所谓风流韵事的种种不堪细节。

This may not have been what the founders had in mind when they established the presidency, watching Mr. Biden’s speech at the Capitol condemning “a ferocious surge of antisemitism” while internet feeds provided the latest from Ms. Daniels’s account about the particular coital position she and Mr. Trump assumed. Yet so goes 2024, a year of twists and turns that defy history and the imagination.

看着拜登在国会发表演讲，谴责“反犹太主义的迅猛激增”的同时，社媒时间线上却是丹尼尔斯关于她和特朗普采取的特定体位的最新描述，这恐怕有违国父们当初设立总统职位时的初衷。然而，2024年就是这样，这是一个扭转历史和想象的年份。

Mr. Biden had the more conventional though not inconsiderable challenge, exhibiting presidential leadership at a time of national trauma. He has come under fire from the left in his own party for not doing more to restrain Israel’s war in Gaza, but wanted to use the annual remembrance ceremony to link the murder of six million Jews during World War II to the killing of 1,200 people during the Oct. 7 Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel.

拜登面对的是相对传统却不容乐观的挑战，在国家遭受创伤的时刻，他需要展现身为总统的领导能力。由于没有采取更多措施来限制以色列在加沙的战争，他受到党内左派的抨击，但他希望用一年一度的纪念仪式，将“二战”期间600万犹太人遇害与10月7日哈马斯发动的对以色列的恐怖袭击中1200人遇害联系起来。

It was a speech with high-minded historical flourishes and deeply personal recollections, one aimed at summoning “our common humanity” while “heeding the lessons of one of the darkest chapters in human history.” He described his father teaching him about the Shoah, or Holocaust, at the dinner table when he was young and passing the lessons along to his children and their children when he was older.

这是一场充满崇高历史气息和深刻个人回忆的演讲，旨在唤起“我们共同的人性”，同时“汲取人类历史上最黑暗篇章之一的教训”。他说起小时候父亲在餐桌上向他讲解关于大屠杀的事，长大后他又把这些教训传授给他的儿孙。

“I want you to know,” Mr. Biden said in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall, speaking directly to the Jewish community, “I see your fear, your hurt, your pain. Let me reassure you, as your president, you’re not alone. You belong. You always have and you always will.”

“我想让你们知道，”拜登在国会大厦的解放大厅对犹太人社区说，“我看到了你们的恐惧、受到的伤害和痛苦。容我向你们保证，作为你们的总统，你们并不孤单。你们属于这里。你们一直都属于这里，也将一直如此。”

Mr. Trump’s challenge was vastly different, as he was forced to listen silently and sullenly as Ms. Daniels after all these years finally testified against him in a proceeding that could result in his imprisonment. While he has long denied the sexual encounter that he paid $130,000 to keep quiet, Ms. Daniels under oath provided one raw recollection after another.

特朗普面临着截然不同的挑战，他被迫保持沉默，闷闷不乐地听着丹尼尔斯在这么多年后终于在一场可能导致他入狱的诉讼中指证他。虽然他长期以来一直否认付给了对方13万美元的封口费，但丹尼尔斯在宣誓后提供了一个又一个未经修饰的回忆。

周二，前总统特朗普被迫在曼哈顿法庭上聆听暴风丹尼尔斯给出的对他不利的证词。

He listened unhappily as she described arriving for a dinner in July 2006 to find him in satin pajamas and talking about her work for a “condom-mandatory company” and her negative tests for sexually transmitted disease. He was 60 at the time and she was 27, just three years older than his daughter Ivanka. Indeed, she testified, he told her, “You remind me of my daughter. She is smart and blond and beautiful and people underestimate her as well.” He called her “honeybunch.”

他满脸不高兴地听她说起2006年7月去参加一个晚宴时，发现他穿着缎面睡衣，谈论着她在“必须戴套的A片公司”的工作，以及她的性病检测的阴性结果。当时他60岁，她27岁，只比他的女儿伊万卡大三岁。事实上，她作证说，他跟她说出了这样的话，“你让我想起了我的女儿。她聪明、金发、漂亮，她也是被人低估的。”他管丹尼尔斯叫“宝贝”。

Ms. Daniels delved into considerable specifics — Mr. Trump’s lawyers and even the judge thought too many specifics — about the encounter itself, how she went into a bathroom and emerged to find him “minus a lot of clothing” on the bed. “I felt the blood leave my hands and my feet almost like if you stand up too fast,” she said. “I thought, ‘Oh, my God, what did I misread to get here?’” Nonetheless, she took her clothes off and “next thing I know I was on the bed.”

丹尼尔斯详细地描述了那次约会的细节——特朗普的律师甚至法官都认为太过详尽——她进了浴室，出来后发现他“几乎一丝不挂”躺在床上。“我感觉手脚缺血，就好像你起身太快的那种感觉，”她说。“我心里想，‘天啊，我是误解了什么，来到了这里？’”尽管如此，她脱掉了衣服，“接着我就发现自己躺在床上了。”

While other presidents have gotten embroiled in public sex scandals, none have ever faced an accuser in court like this. The closest predicate would be the exceedingly graphic testimony elicited by the independent counsel Ken Starr’s prosecutors from Monica S. Lewinsky in 1998 about her affair with President Bill Clinton. But that was conducted behind closed doors in front of a grand jury and later communicated to the public through transcripts.

虽然其他总统也曾卷入公开的性丑闻，但从来没有人像他这样在法庭上面对指控者。最接近的是独立检察官肯·斯塔尔在1998年从莱温斯基那里得到的极为生动的证词，讲述了她与克林顿总统之间的风流韵事。但那是在大陪审团面前闭门进行的，后来通过文字记录公之于众。

The House that went on to impeach Mr. Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice to cover up the affair never actually called Ms. Lewinsky to testify. When the Senate conducted its trial, leaders of both parties were so nervous about a public discussion of sex that they arranged for her to be deposed in private. Lawyers for the two sides were then allowed to publicly show only carefully edited snippets of a less-salacious nature from her interview.

众议院后来以克林顿为了掩盖外遇做伪证和妨碍司法的罪名，对其进行弹劾。但他们实际上从未传唤莱温斯基作证。在参议院进行审判时，两党领导人都对公开讨论性问题感到很不自在，因此安排莱温斯基私下作证。然后，双方的律师只被允许公开经过精心编辑、没有那么露骨的审问片段。

There was no such editing on Tuesday in a Manhattan courtroom.

然而，在周二的曼哈顿法庭上，没有类似的编辑工作。

The contrast between the two presidents on display on this particular day was as stark as could be conceived but may not necessarily surprise many Americans.

在这一天，两位总统之间展现出来的反差如此之大，但许多美国人恐怕未必会感到惊讶。

Voters at this point have known about Ms. Daniels’s account for years, along with the stories of many other women who have accused Mr. Trump of sexual misconduct, and many have long factored these allegations into their judgments of him, for good or ill. Indeed, he was found liable by a jury in a civil case last year of sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll without any meaningful impact on his poll numbers.

截至目前，选民多年来一直知道丹尼尔斯的说法，以及其他许多女性对特朗普做出的性行为不端指控，无论是好事还是坏事，总之许多人早已将这些指控纳入了对他的判断中。事实上，在去年的一起民事案件中，陪审团判定他对性侵E·珍·卡罗尔负有责任，但这并没有对他的民调数字产生任何实质性的影响。

Since Ms. Daniels’s testimony was not broadcast, Americans were left to absorb her narrative through reporters conveying it on television, radio, online or in print, which may have less power to shock the public. Mr. Trump did what he could through his lawyers and social media account to turn attention away from his alleged infidelity to what he claims is the unfairness of the legal action against him.

由于丹尼尔斯的证词没有进行直播，美国人只能通过电视、广播、网络或印刷品上的转述来了解她的叙述，震撼力可能会大打折扣。特朗普通过他的律师和社交媒体账户竭尽所能，将人们的注意力从他所谓的不忠转移到他声称的这些法律行动的不公正性。

Mr. Biden, for his part, made no mention of the events in New York, as he spoke somberly and evoked the ghosts of Elie Wiesel, Raoul Wallenberg and Tom Lantos. The anger he faces over his support for Israel’s war is real and a political threat to him in a closely matched race where small shifts in critical states could make all the difference.

拜登只字未提纽约发生的事情，他的语气庄重，召唤着埃利·威瑟尔、拉乌尔·瓦伦贝格和汤姆·兰托斯的魂灵。他因支持以色列的战争而面临的愤怒是真实存在的，这对他来说是一种政治威胁，因为在这场势均力敌的竞选中，关键州的微小变化可能会就可能决定一切。

He, of course, knew that. And he, of course, knew what his opponent was doing on this day. The president said what he had to say and headed back to the White House. And a campaign focused on atrocities and absurdities wrapped up another day with 181 still to go.

他当然知道这一点。他当然知道他的对手在这一天在做什么。总统说了他要说的话，然后回到了白宫。一场以暴行与荒谬为焦点的竞选，就这样又过了一天，接下来还有181天。