Democrats are hopeful that President Biden’s freedom to hit the campaign trail while former President Trump is stuck in a New York courtroom for weeks, maybe months, gives his reelection campaign a jolt.
The president is spending several days this week covering crucial ground in Pennsylvania, including a visit to his hometown, while Trump sits through what’s expected to be a monotonous jury selection process.
Trump’s court battles so far have boosted him by giving him free publicity and rallying his supporters around the idea that he is a martyr facing a corrupt system.
But Democrats are optimistic that, this time, sitting in court day after day could have a different outcome for the presumptive Republican nominee.
“Trump lost the popular vote twice and has a lot of ground to make up from his 2020 loss. It’s going to be hard to move any swing voters while there’s wall-to-wall coverage of Trump campaigning from a courtroom,” Jim Messina, former President Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, told The Hill.
It’s unlikely Trump will get a break from the New York trial. The judge denied his request to attend historic Supreme Court arguments next week in D.C., opened the door to the trial being five days a week if it falls behind and even punted a decision on whether to let Trump attend his youngest son’s high school graduation.
“First, for anyone who was starting to feel nostalgic for the past, the daily courtroom news will remind them how exhausting it was to live through the never-ending drama of a Trump presidency and why they voted for normalcy in 2020,” said Democratic communications strategist Katie Grant Drew.
“And second, it will provide a stark contrast between the priorities of President Biden, who will be focused on getting work done for the American people, and Trump, who will be focused on his own personal legal travails,” added Drew, a principal at Monument Advocacy.
As the court case picks up steam, Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in this fall’s election, leads Biden. According to a Decision Desk HQ/The Hill average of polls, the former president is ahead nationally by 0.6 percentage points.
But Biden started the week with some much-needed good news, with his approval rating finally ticking up to a five-month high.
However, Ivan Zapien, a former official at the Democratic National Committee, argued that the daily horse race of polling should be “noise” to the president’s campaign and that critical voters will notice the different between how Biden and Trump spend their days.
“They need to obsess about the handful of voters deciding this election. The contrast between Biden working and campaigning and Trump in the courtroom works to Biden’s benefit with these handfuls of voters,” he said. “Will that manifest in polls? No. But they need to keep an eye on the prize.”
Trump acknowledged Tuesday that sitting in a courtroom means he can’t campaign, while blaming Biden for the situation. There is no evidence the Biden White House played a role in the decision to bring charges against Trump.
“I should be right now in Pennsylvania, in Florida, in many other states, in North Carolina, Georgia, campaigning. This is all coming from the Biden White House because the guy can’t put two sentences together,” Trump said.
Meanwhile, Biden, in Scranton, Pa., joked with supporters that a “defeated looking guy” came up to him asking for help because he was in debt, due to legal fees. “I’m sorry Donald, I can’t help you,” Biden said he replied, to applause and laughter from the room.
“[Biden] is going to travel across Pennsylvania, he’s gonna travel across the country,” Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler told reporters on Monday. “No matter where Donald Trump is, whether it’s in Mar-a-Lago or a courtroom or anywhere else, he will be focused on himself, his toxic agenda, his campaign of revenge and retribution.”
Trump will campaign Saturday in North Carolina, a state that the Biden team wants to flip in November after Trump won it in 2020. Just before his New York City trial, he held a rally in Pennsylvania.
A source familiar with the Biden campaign told The Hill the plan is to not directly touch or comment on Trump’s legal issues, but instead keep focusing on the president’s reelection.
“This week the president’s going to be out there campaigning, talking about the economy and meeting with voters as crime goes down and jobs keep going up — and Trump is going to continue focused on his personal issues and obsession with his personal issues,” the source said.
Messina said the Biden campaign’s move to let Trump “dig his own grave” is a smart strategy.
“It’s smart for the campaign to focus on the issues that matter to voters and not give any fodder to the MAGA argument that this trial is political,” he said. “It’s not, it’s about Trump being held accountable for paying off a porn star he cheated on his wife with — with bonus points for him showing off he’s not up for the job by falling asleep during the trial.”
Democratic strategists, including Biden and former Obama alums like Messina, mocked Trump for appearing to sleep in the courtroom Monday.
Trump has used his legal appearances to his advantage and argues that he’s a victim of political persecution — a tactic that has worked with his base and kept him ahead of Biden in many polls.
But Trump is known for his ability to fill a rally and energize his supporters when he’s on the road, another reason why sitting in the courtroom for a long stretch of time may not help him.
“It’s hard to see how being stuck in a criminal trial helps a candidate who is a strong campaigner, but one wonders how many persuadable voters are actually paying attention prior to judgment day where a verdict is announced,” said Bruce Mehlman, a former official under President George W. Bush.
In this New York case, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records of reimbursements to his then-fixer, Michael Cohen, who paid adult film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 just before the 2016 election to stay quiet about an alleged affair with Trump.
The Biden campaign dove right into mocking Trump on Monday night with a campaign email using Daniels’s name: “Wake Up Donald: After Stormy Abortion Ban Coverage, Trump Poll Memo Attempts to Hush Panic.” The email argues that Trump’s campaign is in panic mode over abortion since Arizona reverted back to a centuries-old law making abortion a felony.
“We’ll tell you what your pollsters won’t: The women of America will not be gaslit into forgetting what you’ve done, and you will face the consequences at the ballot box this November,” Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer said in a statement.
Tyler Mitchell