WASHINGTON – Decide Donald Trumpof hush money trial President Joe Biden’s campaign is exploring a shift to a new, more aggressive stance next week, according to two people familiar with the strategy.
Regardless of the outcome, top Biden campaign officials plan to stress to voters that Trump will be on the ballot in the fall and that no potential lawsuit will change that fact.
A person familiar with the discussions concluded: “Donald Trump’s legal problems will not keep him out of the White House. “Only one thing will do that: vote for Joe Biden this November.”
If Trump is found guilty in New York state court, the Biden campaign will also consider whether to label him a “convicted felon.” “That’s an open question.”
Campaign officials are also considering whether such messaging will be bolstered by on-air primary surrogates, ad buys, or both. The second source said that these negotiations are still ongoing.
“The only way to really stop Trump is to defeat him once and for all at the ballot box and not expect convictions to play a big role,” said Jim Messina, a Democratic strategist who was former President Barack Obama’s campaign manager. “The campaign’s job is to remind voters why they already voted for Trump and convince them to go for Biden by choosing between two very different candidates.
“Yes, one of them might be a soon-to-be-convicted felon, but that’s not as important to voters as the issues that directly affect their lives,” he said.
The campaign sees the conclusion of the trial as one of the campaign’s turning points, when the minute-by-minute sideshow of the courtroom comes to an end and it’s time for voters to focus on what’s at stake in November. sources said.
Even now, as the parties plan their summer nominating conventions, some voters say they still aren’t sure whether Trump or Biden will be on the ballot. But Biden aides say once the trial is over, the reality of the race will be clearer to voters, especially as the two candidates prepare for their first general election debate scheduled for June 27 and other big moments. , such as the Republican convention in July and the Democratic convention a month later.
Biden’s team hopes that if Trump is acquitted or has a jury, voters should not expect the outcome of his other legal issues to be decisive. Biden’s team believes Trump will be the nominee and nothing legal will change that.
Jennifer Palmieri, a longtime Democratic strategist, said Trump’s legal troubles and the relentless media coverage surrounding them made it difficult for Biden and his campaign messages to get across. The conclusion of the trial, he said, offers Biden and his campaign an opportunity to connect with voters who tune in or are still unsure whether Trump will be the Republican nominee.
“You’re going to look at the race and when you realize that the only way to stop Trump from becoming president is for Biden to win, you’re going to look at President Biden differently,” Palmieri said.
In a weeks-long feud in Manhattan, the Biden campaign and even Biden himself they only gave occasional comments About Trump’s time in court.
For the most part, Biden has been careful to avoid direct commentary on the court It plays with Trump’s narrative his legal troubles amount to election meddling by the Biden administration.
But he made a breakthrough last week that in a video posted on a social network, he agreed to spar with Trump and then said, “I heard you’re free on Wednesdays.” Biden cited Trump’s courtroom schedule, which allows him to rest every Wednesday. The line was widely shared on social media platforms and the campaign started selling t-shirts with it.
The Biden campaign had fun in court in wider strokesamplifier memes About Trump maybe he hung his head in court. At one point, the campaign released a story with the headline “After stormy abortion ban coverage, Trump Poll Memo tries to quell panic.”
The campaign’s planned approach to the end of Trump’s criminal trial mirrors how the Biden team handled a different trial — the first of two Trump impeachment trials in January 2020. Candidate Biden tried to emphasize during his run in the contests as he fought to pass before the primary Democratic primary that then-President Trump had put the nomination of a likely winner in November on the Democrats because he was headed for acquittal.
“The information was thrown here. I just have to beat him in the general election,” Biden said in the final days of the 2020 Iowa caucuses.
A senior Biden campaign official said the campaign began to pick up steam after his State of the Union address in March and the weekly campaign blitz that followed, but stalled as attention shifted to Trump’s legal drama in New York. The official even made a handcuffed gesture as he described the impact on the campaign since the trial began in mid-April.
Biden’s campaign has tried to take full advantage of rare days off during proceedings to steer the narrative.
If there is a conviction, Palmieri argued, Biden would have an opening to make an entirely different argument based on democracy.
“They can say that a jury of his peers convicted Donald Trump of a crime, and if voters elect him president after Americans find him guilty of a crime, it will seriously damage the reputation of the United States,” he said. “It’s a huge statement about the state of American democracy.”