Ahead of their crucial debate confrontation next week, President Joe Biden is directly attempting to take advantage of Donald Trump's felony history in a significant new campaign ploy.
The Biden team unveiled a new advertisement on Monday that would be shown in states that are considered to be battlegrounds. It portrays the presumed Republican nominee as a self-centered felon. The tactic seems to settle a Democratic disagreement about how much to draw attention to the former president's legal issues during a close presidential contest.
The 2024 campaign saw the opening of a new front when Trump attempted to gain support among Black Americans, a traditional Democratic constituency that the former president is attempting to penetrate despite his tainted racial past. Republicans are going all in on Trump in an attempt to retake the Senate, the White House, and the House, even as they support their presumed nominee in spite of his convictions and attempt to change the results of the 2020 election.
In order to draw a clear contrast with Biden's persona, Biden's latest advertisement focuses exclusively on the guilty decision in Trump's hush money trial and his significant defeat in a civil fraud case. "This election is between a convicted criminal who's only out for himself and a president who is fighting for your family," the narrator states as the former president's mug image flashes on screen. This advertisement represents the Biden campaign's most overt exploitation of Trump's legal troubles as a political talking point to date.
Mitch Landrieu, the co-chair of the Biden campaign, clarified the reasoning on CNN's "News Central": "The purpose of this advertisement is to educate the American public about the qualities of wisdom, courage, and character that will determine the outcome of this campaign."
In response, Trump's team blasted the hush money trial as "election interference" and emphasized surveys that demonstrated the former president's dominance in swing states. A campaign spokesperson for Trump, Karoline Leavitt, wrote on X that "the contrast between President Trump’s strength and success versus Crooked Joe Biden’s weakness, failures, and dishonesty will be made clear on the debate stage next week."
One of the "scariest" aspects of a second Trump term, according to Biden, would be the potential for his opponent to appoint more staunchly conservative Supreme Court justices. On Saturday, Biden took off for a glamorous Hollywood fundraiser in Los Angeles, having just returned from his second trip to Europe in a week. While this was going on, former President Barack Obama lamented that Republicans were about to select a candidate who had been "convicted by a jury of his peers on 34 counts." Obama attended the fundraiser with his former vice president.
As they prepare for the first presidential debate, candidates
Ahead to the first presidential debate in 2024 on CNN on June 27, which might be a pivotal point in the campaign, the former president is ramping up his campaign. This could be the first time in history that an incumbent president is defeated by an outgoing president. The 81-year-old Biden will under tremendous pressure to demonstrate that he is capable of serving a second four-year term in Atlanta due to widespread voter concerns about his senior age and Trump's constant ridicule of the president's obvious declining mental and physical condition.
“However, it's possible that the ex-president's constant criticism of Biden's abilities is lowering expectations for the president's performance, creating the possibility that a strong performance could have the same effect as his barnstorming State of the Union address this year, which temporarily allayed worries about his age. The Biden team is making the case that Trump's mental state and his attempt to subvert American democracy four years ago make him unsuitable for office given his erratic behavior in recent days, which included his 78th birthday celebration on Friday. The campaign characterized Trump as "more deranged than ever before" last week after he visited Capitol Hill for the first time since the mob attack on January 6, 2021, and was welcomed by Republican senators and members of the House of Representatives."
Since this campaign's first presidential debate is taking place relatively early, the president may have an opportunity to shake up a close contest for the White House that has been quite consistent for months. In important swing states, Trump is polling quite well. Seemingly, Biden is clinging to a shrinking route on the national electoral map in order to obtain the 270 votes required to win the president. The president's ability to invoke nostalgia for the pre-pandemic economy during his term in office is limited by the pain that many Americans feel due to high prices and higher interest rates that have made it difficult to buy new homes and vehicle loans.
New information for the debate was released by CNN on Saturday and was approved by both campaigns. Instead of taking place in front of a live audience, the event will take place in a television studio. There will be two commercial breaks during which campaign officials will not be allowed to speak with their respective candidate. The men have both consented to appear at a uniform platform; a coin flip will decide their respective positions. All microphones will be silent unless during a candidate's speaking turn.
Later this week, Biden is anticipated to travel to Camp David for a rigorous debate camp led by Ron Klain, his former director of staff, who has spent decades training Democratic contenders for debates. While in Washington this week, Trump hosted a policy forum with a group of advisers including Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Eric Schmitt of Missouri. According to his advisors, the former president would refine his strategy through interviews and rallies rather than necessarily participating in conventional debate preparation. However, softball questions are frequently asked during Trump's interviews, which are primarily with conservative media.
Trump aims to weaken Black voters' support for Biden.
Any gains either candidate makes from the other's core base could be critical in a contest that hinges on a few swing states that could be decided by a few thousand votes. For this reason, Trump spent Saturday in Michigan in an attempt to capitalize on indications that Black voters are growing less enthusiastic about Biden. Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina are two well-known Black Republicans who have endorsed the former president's "Black Americans for Trump" coalition. During a Friday interview, Trump said, "I'm not racist." Semafor "I have so many Black friends that they wouldn't be friends if I were a racist, and they would know better than anybody, and fast," he continued.
Speaking on Saturday at a mostly Black church in Detroit, Trump made up the claim that Black workers performed significantly better under his first term than under Biden's in an attempt to turn immigration, the campaign's main platform, into a pitch to minorities he believes are being displaced by undocumented immigrants. Additionally, he draws attention to Biden's involvement as a senator in the 1990s crime bill's passage, which led to a disproportionate number of Black people being imprisoned. About one in ten Black voters supported Trump in 2020, according to CNN exit polls. According to a recent poll by the New York Times and Siena College, however, the former president is leading over 20% of Black voters in battleground states. In places like Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee, where Biden is most likely to win support from the crucial demographic, Trump may have a better chance of capturing Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, states that are on Biden's best route to retaining the White House.
In response to Trump's appeal to a dependable core of supporters that helped propel Biden to the presidency, the Biden campaign brought attention to a number of scandals, such as Trump's call for the death penalty for five young people who were falsely convicted of rape and assault in Central Park in the 1980s and his racist campaign concerning Obama's birthplace. Jasmine Harris, the director of Black media for the Biden campaign, stated, "We certainly haven't forgotten Trump repeatedly cozying up to white supremacists and demonizing Black communities to his political benefit—because that's exactly what he'll do if he wins a second term." When asked about Trump's assertions that he has done more for Black people than any president in history by late-night presenter Jimmy Kimmel at the Los Angeles fundraiser, Obama also aimed a jab at the presumed GOP nominee. "One thing he did, for example, was make them feel even better about the first Black president," the former commander in chief retorted.
Biden attacks the Supreme Court majority as "out of kilter."
Fundraisers for politics are frequently closed. However, the Biden team was eager to feature Obama and celebrities like Julia Roberts and George Clooney in an informal setting with the president. Before the ceremony, which took place days after his surviving son, Hunter Biden, was found guilty on gun charges during a trial in Delaware, the president only made a stop in Washington to refuel Air Force One on his way home from the G7 conference in Italy.
In a video from the fundraiser that the president's campaign made public on Sunday, Biden made reference to the controversy over flags hoisted by Justice Samuel Alito's wife, which some have cautioned are politically offensive. "He will appoint two more flying flags upside down if he is reelected," stated Biden.
When Kimmel asked Biden if he thought this was the scariest aspect of a second Trump administration, he said, "It is one of the scariest parts." "The Supreme Court has never been as out of whack as it is today, I mean never," the president continued.
Republicans made the fate of the country's highest court a central platform in their presidential campaign for years before the conservative majority that Trump crafted on the court struck down the constitutional right to an abortion. This past weekend, Biden provided the strongest hint yet that Democrats are suddenly itching to compete on the same field.
