Biden Should End His Vow Of Silence On Trump's Legal Jeopardy
Biden Should End His Vow Of Silence On Trump's Legal Jeopardy
Many facts are not seriously in dispute, and Trump is filling the void with lies.
Close readers have probably noticed I’m a fan of the Biden campaign’s rapid-response team, and its punchy Twitter account. It’s fairly comprehensive and speaks in the right register: Not panicky, not defensive. Disdainful, contemptuous.
It’s also, to me, a useful window into the campaign’s strategic thought. For instance: No matter how relevant or topical Trump’s legal jeopardy has been, the rapid-response team has been silent about it. I’ve taken this all along to reflect Biden’s mistaken decision to muzzle himself, his administration, and the campaign with respect to Trump and the administration of justice. The same kind of strategic thinking drove Biden’s effort to “move on” from Trump in January 2021, and it should be obvious now, if only in hindsight, how mistaken that decision was.
But on the first day of Trump’s Manhattan hush-money trial, the rule changed. Kinda.
More examples followed, here and here, too. The campaign even issued a press release with the subversive headline “Wake Up Donald: After Stormy Abortion Ban Coverage, Trump Poll Memo Attempts To Hush Panic.” (Emphasis added, for the benefit of people experiencing denseness.)
As an amateur Kremlinologist (Demlinologist?) I’d observe that these entries conspicuously omit key context (Trump was in criminal court for his first felony trial) to focus on the embarrassing fact that sleepy Don nodded off. The embedded media content does all the dirty work, and to the extent that the campaign alluded to Stormy Daniels and hush money—well, the clever use of double entendres provides a berth of plausible deniability.
It’s an evolution, but a small one. It’d be a reach to assume that Biden’s philosophy has changed, and what little reporting we have on the question conjures Democrats as we know them.
“Mr. Biden and his campaign have said nothing publicly about the criminal indictments against Mr. Trump, worried about improperly influencing the cases or stoking Mr. Trump’s repeated allegations—made without evidence—that Mr. Biden has engineered the charges,” the New York Times noted Monday. “Many of the deep-pocketed outside Democratic groups supporting the Biden campaign are charting a similar path. Part of their calculation, they say, is that ads promoting Mr. Biden’s record or arguing that Mr. Trump is a threat to democracy are testing better with voters than highlighting Mr. Trump’s legal troubles. Another consideration is that the Manhattan case, which is being brought by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is not easily explained in a sound bite or a 30-second ad.”
I hope the reporting is wrong. As a basic practical matter, this trial may take weeks, and Trump will have to plant himself in the courtroom every day of it. If Biden and his campaign have a policy of saying nothing about their opponent’s legal jeopardy, what’s the plan now that his legal issues represent the entirety of his public life?
More importantly, in the void of Biden’s silence, Trump has insisted to the world that Biden himself is the motive force behind the trial. He asserts, falsely, that he’s receiving especially unfair treatment for a criminal defendant, and suggests Biden’s responsible for that as well. Without opining on Trump’s guilt, Biden can and should speak, and free surrogates to speak, on incontestable facts: Trump is on trial because of choices he made. Neither Biden nor anyone in his administration has anything to do with it. The conduct in question relates to the integrity of the 2016 election.