Bitter tensions are escalating between Joe Biden and Donald Trump over the ex-president’s criminal conviction, race and the future of the Supreme Court as they gear up for the most critical presidential debate clash in years.
The 2024 campaign trail took a rare pivot from courtrooms at the weekend and toward more conventional battlegrounds: big-money fundraising, vital voting blocs and the swing states that will decide the election.
The Biden and Trump campaigns fought over the votes of Black Americans, a traditional Democratic power base where the ex-president is trying to make inroads despite his tarnished personal history on race. This comes as Republicans embrace their presumptive nominee despite his criminal conviction and bid to overturn the 2020 election result, going all in on Trump as they seek to win back the White House and the Senate and keep the House.
The president’s campaign unveiled a significant new strategic gambit Monday, zeroing directly in on the guilty verdict in Trump’s hush money trial and his huge loss in a civil fraud case to strike a sharp contrast with Biden’s character. A new ad that will air in battleground states highlighted Biden’s work for the middle class and Trump’s legal woes. As the ex-president’s mug shot flashes on screen, a narrator says: “This election is between a convicted criminal who’s only out for himself and a president who is fighting for your family.” The ad marks the Biden campaign’s most explicit strategic use so far of Trump’s legal woes in a campaign message.
Biden campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu explained the thinking on CNN’s “News Central”: “What this ad is about is about showing the American people about the issue that’s going to decide this campaign: wisdom, courage, character.”
Trump’s campaign responded by blasting the hush money trial as “election interference” and highlighted polls showing the former president’s strength in swing states. “The contrast between President Trump’s strength and success versus Crooked Joe Biden’s weakness, failures, and dishonesty will be made clear on the debate stage next week,” Karoline Leavitt, a campaign spokesperson, wrote on X.
Read more at CNN.com
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