The press is reporting that President Biden plans to opine on the verdict in the Manhattan case against Donald Trump once the jury decides. If that’s true, it would be another lousy White House political decision that plays into Mr. Trump’s hands and underscores the partisan nature of the prosecution.
Mr Biden is better advised to say nothing. Even a platitude — a statement in the event of a conviction that the will of the jury should be respected — will sound like an expression of satisfaction by a President whose allies convicted a political opponent. Mr Biden’s son Hunter is slated to go on trial on felony charges in early June. Will he comment on that proceeding, too?
The issue here is presidential decorum and political judgment. The President has already come close to taunting Mr. Trump for his legal predicament.
At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, in late April, Mr. Biden boasted of having “a great stretch” lately, as opposed to Mr. Trump, who’s “had a few tough days lately. You might call it stormy weather” — a reference to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, one of the star witnesses in New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case that Mr. Trump committed felonies by falsifying business records.
On May 15, when Mr. Biden agreed to debate Mr. Trump in a video posted on social media, the President quipped, “I heard you’re free on Wednesdays.” The court in which Mr. Trump is under indictment wasn’t meeting on Wednesdays. Good one.
On Tuesday the President’s re-election campaign staged a press conference around the corner from the Manhattan courtroom where his 2024 rival is being tried. Mr Biden wasn’t there, but the campaign recruited the actor Robert De Niro to denounce Mr. Trump.
Mr De Niro is a longtime fierce critic of the 45th President. Readers may remember his witty and endearing admonition, delivered at the 2018 Tony Awards: “I’m gonna say one thing. F— Trump. It’s no longer ‘Down with Trump,’ it’s ‘F— Trump.’”
At Tuesday’s press conference, Mr. De Niro’s fulminations were only slightly more nuanced. “Donald Trump wants to destroy, not only the city, but the country,” he said. “And eventually he could destroy the world … The fact is, whether he’s acquitted, whether it’s a hung jury, he is guilty — and we all know it.”
This presumption of guilt comes from a campaign that vilifies Mr. Trump as a “threat to democracy.” This may thrill MSNBC, but it won’t persuade anyone else.
Mr Biden was elected in 2020 in large part as the anti-Trump who would restore calm and dignity to the Oval Office. But one irony of the Biden Presidency has been its habit of imitating Mr. Trump’s political style of over-the-top rhetoric and disdain for political norms.
That’s never been clearer than in the decision by multiple Democratic prosecutors to indict a presidential opponent for the first time in history. Democrats thought the Manhattan trial would hurt Mr. Trump, but so far he’s gained in the polls. Now they think a guilty verdict will take him down, and they want to gloat about it. But voters may conclude that stretching the law to turn a misdemeanour offence into a felony is more politically significant as an abuse of the justice system.
If Mr. Biden tries to exploit a conviction as a campaign theme, voters will have even more reason to believe Mr. Trump when he says the prosecution was political from the start.
The Wall St Journal
More Coverage
60 days to smash Hezbollah threat
Proposal allows Israel to continue striking Lebanon, but that could face resistance from Hezbollah and the Lebanese government.
The WSJ’s verdict on Kamala Harris
At home, she’s no centrist. Abroad, she seems unprepared for the dangers ahead. If she does win, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will quickly test her mettle.