Joe Biden seeks a balance between his institutional role, as president, and his partisan role, as candidate, when referring to Donald Trump. While from the White House he has been cautious in his assessment of the verdict that declares his rival guilty of 34 crimes in the presidential elections on November 5, in the campaign he has chosen to be more direct. This Monday, at an event held in Greenwich (Connecticut), he openly called his predecessor a “convicted felon” and warned that a second term for his predecessor would be more dangerous than the first.
The president and Democratic candidate has recognized that Trump’s conviction represents an unprecedented political earthquake. “Friends, the campaign entered uncharted territory last week. For the first time in American history, a former president who is a convicted felon is now seeking the Presidency. But as disturbing as this is, the more damaging is the total attack that Donald Trump is making on the American justice system,” the president said at the campaign event on the same day that the trial of his son, Hunter Biden, began. charged with the illegal purchase and possession of a firearm.
One of the Democrats’ doubts was whether to systematically refer to Trump in the remaining five months of the campaign as a “convicted felon.” It is the first time that Biden says it, although the Democratic ranks had already begun to define him as such. The president, however, avoided referring to his rival in those terms when he appeared at the White House on Friday and addressed that burning issue. The trial, he said Friday, reaffirmed “the American principle that no one is above the law.” He added that it is “reckless, dangerous and irresponsible” for someone to say the trial has been “rigged” just because they don’t like the verdict, a reference to Trump, whom he did not cite.
This Monday, the president returned to some of the themes he has used in the past, such as the threat that, in his opinion, Trump poses to democracy. It was one of the successful axes of his campaign in the 2022 legislative elections, halfway through his term and, in some way, it was also at the essence of his message in the 2020 presidential elections. Biden has shown signs that he wants to insist on that message
“This is what is becoming clearer every day. The threat posed by Trump would be greater in a second term than in the first. This is not the same Trump who was elected in 2016. He is worse. Something broke in him when he lost in 2020. He can’t accept that he lost and it is literally driving him crazy. (…) he Now he introduces himself again. And not only is he obsessed with having lost in 2020, but he is clearly unhinged. Just listen to it. He says he wants to be, in his words, ‘a dictator on day one.’ He says he wants to, in his words, ‘end the Constitution.’ When asked if he believed there would be violence if he lost again he said ‘it depends’. He calls the convicted insurrectionists now in jail ‘patriots.’ And if he is re-elected he wants to pardon ‘every one’ of them. Trump says that if he loses again in November there will be, in his words, a ‘bloodbath,’ Biden said, in the latter case taking Trump’s words out of context, which within his chaotic speech seemed to refer to a figurative economic bloodbath in the automobile sector.
“Throughout this campaign, Trump has made it clear that he is running for revenge. Now, after his criminal convictions, it is clear that he is concerned about preserving his freedoms,” the president added.
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Trump will be sentenced on July 11 by Judge Juan Merchan. The 34 felony counts of falsifying business records of which Trump was convicted are punishable by up to four years in prison. It is not yet clear whether prosecutors will seek prison sentences and even less clear whether the judge will impose that sentence if the judge requests it. For first-time offenders like Trump, probation is the most likely option, especially while the sentence is not final. The former president can appeal in several instances.
Beyond criticizing his predecessor for his criminal problems, Biden has also pointed out in his event that Trump is “selling bibles and gold slippers and selling his presidency to the highest bidder.” He has criticized the promises to oil sector managers in exchange for them making contributions to his campaign. At a recent event at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, the former president asked oil company executives to contribute $1 billion to his campaign. Following reports that Trump had asked for that sum of money in exchange for rolling back environmental regulations, speeding approvals of drilling permits and leases, and preserving or improving tax benefits enjoyed by the oil and gas industry if returns to the White House, several Democratic senators have opened an investigation. “Such an obvious policy-for-money transaction reeks of cronyism and corruption,” the letters said.
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