(CNN) — The political focus in the United States of a presidential election entangled in an unprecedented legal drama will shift this week from the criminal trial of a former president to that of the son of a sitting president as the campaign enters a new and intense phase.
Four days after Republican challenger Donald Trump was convicted on 34 counts in his hush money trial in New York, President Joe Biden’s son Hunter will be called to answer federal gun charges in Wilmington, Delaware. . The trial promises to be a moment of great personal anguish for the president and comes as he seeks to find a political opening after weeks of coverage of the Trump case.
Later this week, the president is expected to issue sweeping executive action that would sharply limit migrants’ ability to seek asylum at the southern border. The move, a pivotal moment in Biden’s tenure and his campaign, will be seen as an effort to mitigate Trump’s lead on an issue that is the foundation of his political career. But it could also risk angering progressive voters who are vital to the president’s hopes of victory in November but who have soured on some of his policies, including his support for Israel.
Hunter Biden (Credit: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
Democrats will also seek this week to highlight what they warn are far-right policies on abortion as the campaign heats up ahead of the first presidential debate, on CNN, at the end of the month.
Biden’s effort to seize the lead in an overly close campaign will come as fallout over the first conviction of a former president and major party candidate multiplies. Most Republicans have closed ranks around Trump, saying he is the victim of armed justice, and the former president’s team and the Republican National Committee boast of what they say is a $70 million fundraising haul after the verdict. Democrats, meanwhile, are debating how to take advantage of Trump’s conviction, with some calling for a more intense effort to criticize Biden’s foe as a convicted felon. It is too early to say whether the guilty verdict will have a significant political impact in a nation long polarized by attitudes toward the former president.
But a CBS/YouGov poll released Sunday showed that Americans believe 57% to 43% that the Manhattan jury reached the correct verdict. And in a new ABC/Ipsos poll, Americans said by a roughly 2-to-1 margin that the verdict was correct; However, opinions about Trump have barely changed since before the jury’s decision.
Trump was convicted of falsifying business records to conceal a payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. He has pleaded not guilty and plans to appeal.
While the charges in the New York hush money case are considered the least politically damaging of the four criminal cases against Trump, the conviction represents an ignominious moment for a twice-indicted former president who had previously enjoyed a lifetime of impunity. . The trial will resonate throughout the campaign, as Trump’s sentencing is set for July 11, just four days before the opening of the Republican National Convention, and the former president promises to turn the November election into a personal vindication of what which he wrongly claims is political persecution by the Biden administration.
Trump compares the United States to South American dictatorships
Republican acceptance of the party’s presumptive nominee—despite his conviction by a jury of his own peers—is a notable spectacle at a time when one of the country’s two major parties effectively turns its back on the rule of law. . The move suggests that in a possible second term — which Trump has promised to use as “retaliation” against his political enemies — Trump would not be limited by his party and potentially by the law.
Trump told Fox News in an interview broadcast Sunday morning that he was a victim. “It is a weaponization and it is something very dangerous. We’ve never had that in this country. Yes, they have it in other countries, in South American countries,” he said. His incendiary comments did not reflect the fact that his refusal to accept his 2020 election defeat and his demagoguery are far more reflective of the banana republics of the developing world than a fair jury trial.
Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law and co-chair of the Republican National Committee, told CNN’s Kasie Hunt on “State of the Union” on Sunday that Trump had been treated unfairly. “If his name had been anything other than Donald Trump, this case would never have seen the light of day,” she said. “What people are seeing now is that they can’t trust our justice system. (People) are very concerned about the country we face if this is the precedent we are setting in the United States.”
Democrats reject the GOP’s claim that Trump could never get a fair trial in New York because it is a liberal city. Some key party figures are also seeking to politically exploit the guilty verdict, even as Biden has largely stayed out of the race after saying the verdict showed that no one was above the law. California Rep. Adam Schiff, a Senate candidate, had a simple response to Trump’s complaints about the jury in the city where the former president made his name.
“That jury was selected in part by Donald Trump and his lawyers. They examined each of the jurors. He had all the rights that any other criminal defendant has in that courtroom,” Schiff said, also on “State of the Union” on Sunday. “This ordinary jury of peers found him guilty on all charges. So if you don’t want to be tried in New York, don’t commit crimes in New York.”
Joe Biden accompanies his son Hunter before his trial
The start of jury selection in the first trial of a son of a sitting president could mitigate GOP claims that the Justice Department is only targeting Republicans at a time when a Democratic senator, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, is also on trial in New York. The indictment against Hunter Biden was brought by Trump-appointed prosecutor David Weiss, who was promoted to special prosecutor by Attorney General Merrick Garland last year to oversee the investigation. The president’s only living son is accused of illegally purchasing and possessing a gun while he was abusing or addicted to drugs, a violation of federal law. He has pleaded not guilty to all three charges.
The White House has ruled out the possibility of a pardon, but the president has said his son did nothing wrong and has turned his life around after battling alcohol and crack addiction. Hunter Biden is entitled to the same presumption of innocence and a trial by a jury of his peers as Trump. In a symbolic show of support, the president was seen with his son taking a bike ride near his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on Saturday.
While Democrats hope to use Trump’s conviction in their quest to win over independent and moderate voters in swing states that decide the election, they will also try this week to get more political oxygen for their key campaign issues after Trump’s trial. former president dominated the headlines since mid-April.
Democrats line up attacks against abortion
In addition to Biden’s big announcement on immigration, Democrats will seek to draw attention to hardline Republican policies on abortion. The Democratic National Committee, for example, plans on Monday to highlight a Texas Supreme Court ruling last week that said a medical exemption in the state’s new abortion law applies only when there is a risk of death or serious physical impairment. Democrats say the law is the type of measure Republicans would seek to implement nationwide if Trump, who won the Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, wins a second term. The former president insists, however, that abortion policy should be left in the hands of the states.
In another sign of a growing Democratic offensive on reproductive rights, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York announced that he will hold a vote on a “right to contraception” bill on Wednesday, when Democrats mark two years this month since the Supreme Court struck down the nation’s constitutional law on abortion rights. “Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans will not be able to move on from their anti-abortion record, because the American people know that, given the chance, extremist Republicans will not cease their campaign to strip this country of fundamental freedoms,” he said. Schumer in a letter to his Democratic caucus.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries previewed Sunday how his party seeks to simultaneously emphasize Trump’s conviction and autocratic rhetoric while trying to draw attention to its own agenda. The New York Democrat said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that a jury had delivered justice in an “affirmation of the American justice system,” adding: “This is America. We are not a system occupied by a monarch, a king or a dictator. “We are a democracy and in a democracy no one is above the law.”
Jeffries also pivoted to a broader campaign message, arguing that Democrats would reduce housing costs and address high prices, which are hurting many people in the president’s economic agenda. Jeffries said that while Republicans lied for Trump, Democrats would address the issues that most voters consider important. “I’d rather be on President Biden’s side in that contrast than on the extreme Republican side of MAGA,” he said.
Trump, after complaining bitterly almost every day that the trial kept him off the campaign trail, will not return to the fray immediately. However, this week he is expected to embark on a fundraising campaign that will include a stop in Beverly Hills, California, on Friday and a rally on Sunday in Nevada, a battleground state between the parties in elections. In the press release before the rally, Trump’s team did not mention his condemnation, but instead delivered an economic message. “Weak Joe Biden and his Democratic friends woke up They have declared war on the middle class. Nevadans are suffering under the Bidenomics with inflation in Nevada,” the statement said, also highlighting high gasoline prices.
Sen. Tom Cotton, who has generated buzz as Trump’s potential running mate, leaned into the former president’s economic speech on NBC. “The real verdict will be given on Election Day and it will come from the American people,” the Arkansas Republican said Sunday. “It will be based on things like they can’t pay rent and put food on the table for their kids; the border is chaos; We have wars all over the world.”
The emerging economic argument between the two campaigns shows that Trump’s legal quagmire, despite dominating campaign coverage for months and rallying core Republican voters around the former president, may not, in the end, be the issue that decides who will take over as president after January.
