A rchive Date
[ 16-06-2024 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/02/opinions/jill-biden-prophesy-trump-vs-biden-verdict-column-galant/index.html
Jill Biden’s prophecy
Opinion by Richard Galant, CNN
June 2, 2024
(CNN) - Trying to achieve moral virtue is not easy, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle taught. If you have to pick between two extremes, choose “the lesser of two evils,” because that’s likelier to bring you to the desired middle way.
That’s the approach President Joe Biden implies when he often quotes his father: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative.”
Yet, when first lady Jill Biden appeared on “The View” Wednesday, the choice was painted in much starker terms: “I believe Americans are going to choose good over evil.”
She predicted that the polls showing her husband trailing former President Donald Trump “are going to turn … as time goes on as, as people start to focus a little bit more about what’s at stake and start to become educated on the issues and the differences between them…”
A day later, Jill and Joe Biden got the biggest piece of evidence they can cite in hopes of moving the polls in his favor: A Manhattan jury returned a swift verdict of guilty against Trump on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Yet the former president didn’t miss a beat in his relentless effort to brand the trial and his conviction as “rigged,” falsely arguing that the outcome was orchestrated by the Biden campaign and using it to ramp up his fundraising.
And Republicans, particularly those seeking to become Trump’s vice president pick, flocked to condemn the verdict.
“Republicans have been lining up more quickly than kids at an ice cream truck to discredit the judicial process and declare their support for Trump,” Julian Zelizer noted.
Trump’s trial is over but America’s is still in its early stages. The voters are being tested by the politics of bitter division and will be asked to choose sides this fall between two deeply unpopular major party candidates.
“We’ve never had a trial of a president before,” observed legal analyst Norm Eisen, who penned a daily diary from the courtroom for CNN Opinion. “And yet, the trial was about one of the oldest American ideals: that no one is above the law. We overthrew a British king and put a constitution in his place. And with all of our ups and down as a nation, we have ever kept that idea alive. Having a president subject to the same laws, rules and procedures as any other American is a powerful reaffirmation of that idea.”
As president, Trump was acquitted in two impeachment trials in the US Senate, and he has so far fended off trials in three other criminal cases. But in New York Thursday, “the enormity of Trump being finally held accountable by a jury of his peers after so many allegations resonates across the nation and around the world,” Eisen observed.
“The ranks of the anti-Trump #Resistance haven’t celebrated this hard since November 7, 2020,” Patrick T. Brown pointed out. “Whatever the polls have said up until Thursday about the odds this November, progressives might tell themselves, being found guilty of all 34 charges of falsifying business records could be the silver bullet that prevents a second Trump term.”
“But let’s think about that logic: Trump’s personal eccentricities and baggage have been well-known for years. The act for which hush money was proffered - allegedly cheating on his postpartum wife with an adult film actress - has been known since 2018. Are there really that many voters whose view of Trump as a man, or politician, could be altered by bookkeeping irregularities? How many would-be Trump voters will be swayed against him because of miscategorized business expenses?”
And SE Cupp wrote, “Will his voters care now that they’re about to elect a convicted felon? Probably not. But how this will impact swing and undecided voters is the looming question - they might not be so forgiving.”
As legal analyst Joey Jackson noted, the Trump defense trained its fire on star prosecution witness Michael Cohen, an admitted liar and convict. “Team Trump called Cohen the ‘Greatest Liar of All Time’ (the ‘GLOAT’ for short) in addition to being a biased witness that hated Trump and had a huge axe to grind. The defense lambasted him, asserting that the jury could not convict based upon his word.”
“With the first note that the jury sent to Judge Juan Merchan, it became apparent that they did not disregard Cohen’s testimony at all…”
Political strategist Paul Begala wrote that Biden’s team should resist the temptation to center their election pitch around Trump’s felony conviction.
“Democrats should focus on voters’ lives, not Trump’s criminality. Democrats should put Trump ‘on trial’ for suggesting he was open to cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; for wanting to kick millions of Americans off Obamacare; for promising to roll back environmental rules and policies if oil executives raised $1 billion to return him to the White House; for stacking the Supreme Court with right-wing partisans who overturned Roe v. Wade and might come after gay marriage and contraception next. They should hammer Trump for tanking the strongest border security bill in decades; for kowtowing to the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, and for wanting to cut taxes for his fellow billionaires,” Begala advised.
De Niro’s moment
Biden’s campaign had been content to let Trump stew in his role as criminal defendant without getting involved. That changed Tuesday when the president’s team trotted out actor Robert De Niro and two police officers injured at the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot to face the press outside the criminal courthouse where Trump was on trial.
“The stated goal was to highlight Trump’s trespasses on democracy and general unfitness for office,” wrote David Axelrod, “but the scene quickly devolved into a shouting match between De Niro and a small crowd of hecklers who roasted him as he roasted Trump. Great fodder for ‘Saturday Night Live,’ but not necessarily the campaign.”
“Fingers were pointed between De Niro and the Trump-loving hecklers. F-bombs flew. And those images and De Niro’s impulse to plunge into the legal fray hours before the case would go to the jury became the story.”
Axelrod added, “It’s also a little bewildering why Team Biden, struggling with younger voters, cast De Niro as its point man here. After all, nothing speaks to Gen Z more than yet another octogenarian.”
“Who thought this was a good idea?”
In the Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove also questioned the strategy of enlisting De Niro, who said Trump “wants to destroy not only the city but the country, and eventually he can destroy the world.”
“It might’ve been convincing if Mr. De Niro argued that Mr. Trump’s policies would hurt the city, the country or even the planet. But what voter not already in the Biden camp would believe that Mr. Trump is a cartoonish supervillain bent on obliterating the globe?” Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene are offering equally unhinged statements, Rove argued.
“The campaign that figures out how to attack based on appeals to substance and reason rather than bluster and bombast will likely be November’s winner,” Rove observed.
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 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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