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Biden opts for silence in the face of the sound and fury of Trump

2023-04-10T10:47:56.148Z


The former president monopolizes the attention with his accusation for paying the silence of a porn actress. The White House hopes the impeachment will weaken the Republican candidate


A spacious hall with curtains and marble columns.

Lots of American flags.

Secret Service agents passing through the huddles to make sure everything was under control.

patriotic songs.

An absolutely dedicated audience.

And the big news television networks broadcasting live in unison.

It was not the White House, but Mar-a-Lago, the residence of Donald Trump in Florida.

And the one who was about to start speaking was not the president of the United States, Joe Biden, but his predecessor and candidate to succeed him in the 2024 elections. The real estate magnate had just appeared before a judge in New York on Tuesday to answer all 34 counts of falsifying corporate records against him, and was preparing to deliver a nearly half-hour speech on his case in prime time.

The televisions had dedicated hours of special programming, teams of journalists and even helicopters to cover every second of the event, the first time that a US president, active or retired, is accused by justice.

The same day,

Trump's impeachment has once again brought to the fore the drastic differences between the two presidents.

The Republican, an ostentatious television animal obsessed with audiences, always ready to be talked about, even if it's bad, and always ready to say something, no matter if it's true, false or an insult.

The democrat, a man who does not fall in love with the cameras, sometimes clumsy, unpopular - only four out of 10 voters approve of his work -, but who boasts of achieving results in his management without the need for fuss.

Trump has garnered all the attention since he assured on social media on March 25 that Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg was going to indict him three days later for the alleged crimes committed in paying porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about their sexual relationship just before the elections that led him to the White House in 2016. That notice that they were going to arrest him was not fulfilled: the announcement of the presentation of the accusations did not arrive until a week later.

A week in which in political circles only the former president was talked about and the real estate magnate monopolized front page after front page.

Instead, one of Biden's prominent foreign policy symbols, the second Democracy Summit sponsored by the White House and four other governments,

The situation was repeated before the imminent appearance of Trump in the courts of New York.

On Monday, Biden appeared in Minnesota to promote one of the jewels of his government program: the infrastructure law with which highways and airports are being built or renovated.

The means were waiting for him, yes.

But almost without exception, every question he was asked could be summed up as “what do you think of the Trump impeachment?”

At least for the moment, the president seems willing to leave the role to his potential electoral rival.

On Tuesday, the day of the formal indictment before the judge, Biden only held one public act, the meeting with his scientific and technological advisers to discuss artificial intelligence.

Before the media, he uttered a few sentences.

And he didn't answer questions.

On the same day, its spokesperson, Karine Jean-Pierre, opened her daily press conference by welcoming Finland to NATO and reporting on a telephone conversation between the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov.

“We are not going to comment on a case that is pending in court,” the spokeswoman argued over and over again, in what has been the standard White House response to the case against Trump.

“The president is going to focus on the people of the United States, like every day.

[The court appearance of his predecessor] is not something I have the focus on, ”she insisted.

The message that the White House wanted to convey was clear: the president was doing his job of managing the country, without distractions or chaos, like any other day, while his rival was having his fingerprints taken as a defendant for 34 crimes.

benefit for Biden

Democratic analysts are convinced that Trump's legal troubles represent a huge benefit for Biden, if the two finally face each other next year in the presidential elections, as they already did in 2020. The current occupant of the White House has not yet formally announced his candidacy, although he has repeatedly suggested that he is going to run.

The former Republican president has yet to prevail in his party's primary process.

“This is a time to reassure Americans by continuing to show what strong, stable, and effective leadership looks like,” said Democratic strategists like Karen Finney.

At first, Trump appears to have profited from his impeachment.

The polls indicate that he is the favorite candidate of the Republican base, well above his immediate rival, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who has not yet announced that he aspires to the White House, and that distance has increased in recent days. .

Since it was confirmed that he was going to be formally accused, the Trump campaign has raised almost 10 million dollars (about nine million euros).

But although his followers have closed ranks around the real estate magnate, the rest of the citizens are much more skeptical.

62% of independent voters declared themselves in favor of the impeachment, in a Quinnipiac poll carried out a week ago.

57% of those consulted were of the opinion that Trump should drop out of the electoral race if the charges were confirmed.

The images of Trump in front of Judge Juan Manuel Merchan in a Manhattan court have been the first of what promises to be a whole series.

The former president must appear again before the magistrate on December 4, but he faces half a dozen more causes in which he too can end up on the bench in the middle of the electoral campaign.

He already has an almost immediate appointment: on April 25, also in New York, he is summoned to respond in a civil case: the writer Jean Carroll accuses him of rape.

Reactions from Trump such as his references to removing Judge Merchan and Prosecutor Bragg, or his call on Wednesday to “defund the Department of Justice and the FBI,” may remind voters why they turned their backs on him in 2020. and they then leaned towards the return to calm that Biden represented.

Or at least that's what the White House hopes.

Democratic analysts are not the only ones making that reading.

“Right now, the political world revolves around Donald Trump again.

There is no room left for any other Republican who wants to rival him, and it allows Biden to essentially focus on governing and on his agenda,” Republican strategist Ryan Williams pointed out this week to US public radio NPR.

Karl Rove, former President George W. Bush's most trusted political adviser, wrote in an opinion piece for

The Wall Street Journal

: "This is the first election since 1920, when Eugene Debs was the socialist candidate, in which a accused or sentenced is presented to the presidency.

Whether the imputation of Mr. Trump will help him to get the candidacy (of the Republican Party) remains to be seen.

But the chances of him in the 2024 elections are now much smaller.

Paying money to porn stars to shut up is not a winning issue."

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-04-10

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