It’s time to talk about President Joe Biden’s Trump dilemma regarding the Donald Trump indictment and the 2024 election.
Politics :
Almost immediately after Donald Trump was indicted late last week for stealing boxes of highly-classified documents from The White House and hoarding them at his Florida mansion, Republicans began crafting defensive talking points. They knew Trump was as guilty as sin and had created a national security crisis that was nearly impossible to defend. However, they also couldn’t turn their backs on ‘The Donald’ without alienating MAGA sycophants and the majority of their GOP voting base.
So, what did they do? They flipped the story, making Trump the victim and Joe Biden the big bully out for revenge.
Yes, Biden’s Trump dilemma involves the unprecedented act of a sitting US President allowing his Attorney General to indict his predecessor — a man who also happens to be the GOP frontrunner to unseat Biden in 2024. Oh, the optics are quite dangerous.
Naturally, Republicans have taken to every political news program available to chastise Mr. Biden for weaponizing the Justice Department in order to take down his political challenger. Now, President Biden is fighting back to avoid even the hint of a conflict of interest.
According to The Washington Post, The White House recently reminded political pundits and American voters alike of Joe Biden’s promise before taking office.
“I’m not going to be telling them what they have to do and don’t have to do,” Mr. Biden said in December 2020 about how his Justice Department would operate. “I’m not going to be saying, ‘Go prosecute A, B, or C.’ I’m not going to be telling them. That’s not the role. It’s not my Justice Department, it’s the people’s Justice Department.”’
Those words from 2020 couldn’t be more timely, as President Biden has spent the past several days going out of his way to distance himself from all legal dogfights related to one Donald J. Trump.
“President Biden has to keep a moat between himself and the Justice Department,” said author and presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, who recently discussed Biden’s Trump dilemma and the current indictment. “You definitely don’t want to see Biden and Merrick Garland whisper together. They barely can be seen at a public event together now. They certainly can’t be in huddle mode. That’s a strange scenario in itself.
“It sets our country up for a bizarre moment, with a sitting president trying to put an ex-president in jail,” Brinkley continued. “It’s super tricky. … It is a very fine dance that Biden has to do. He has to use all his finesse and make sure he doesn’t get trapped into attacking Trump in an unsavory manner about the Miami case. He makes one screw-up with that, and it blows up big.”
John Dean, former White House counsel for President Richard M. Nixon (whose congressional testimony against the president during Watergate quickened Nixon’s resignation), said that Mr. Biden has, at least so far, been “very, very savvy” by distancing himself from the investigation.
“As president, he’s in a delicate position,” Dean said. “Because this happened — because his predecessor compromised so much national security information by waltzing off with it at the end of his presidency.”
Still, Dean predicted that at some point, Mr. Biden may be forced to address the national security implications of Trump’s actions.
“It’s the national security, not the political implications, that could involve Biden,” Dean said. “A lot of diplomacy has to be going on, and it could escalate to his level to assure foreign governments that, ‘Yes we can handle our national security information.’”
To date, The White House has avoided discussing the Trump indictment like the plague — and for good reason.
When asked by the press to comment on the Trump indictment, the Biden team was decisive.
“We are just not going to comment on this case and would refer you to the DOJ, which runs its criminal investigations independently,” White House principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton said last Friday.
“I just don’t have any comment,” she reiterated at least 7 times.
For his part, Mr. Biden also took the high road when asked to comment on Trump’s arrest.
“I have no comment,” the president repeated. When asked if he’d spoken to his attorney general, Mr. Biden responded: “I’ve not spoken to him at all, and I’m not going to speak with him. And I have no comment on that.”
Still, despite Mr. Biden’s Trump dilemma and his (at least so far) delicate dance in avoiding even a whiff of impropriety, Donald Trump is continuing to play the role of the helpless damsel in distress who’s anxious to receive retribution against Biden and others.
On Tuesday, Trump vowed that when he wins the presidency in 2024, he will get revenge by appointing a “real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden. And the entire Biden crime family.”
Trump vows that if he wins the presidency, he will appoint a special prosecutor to “go after Biden” and “the entire Biden crime family.”
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 14, 2023
“I will totally obliterate the deep state,” Trump adds. “I am the only one who can save this nation.” pic.twitter.com/khb1T4ya6x
The plot thickens. Stay tuned…
OK WASSUP! discusses Politics:
Indictment: Joe Biden’s Trump dilemma.
Biden staying out of it makes a lot of sense. Repubs are trying to tie him to it so they can use it in the election. Blame everybody but Trump.