Trump v Biden: Pivotal week may portend turning point
45 faces mounting criminal jeopardy while 46 ditches ‘bipartisan’ for belligerence
What a difference a week can make.
The noose of criminal investigations involving the 45th president and his immediate family tightened appreciably.
Meanwhile, a year into his presidency, the 46th president clearly dumped his bipartisan patina and took the gloves off in an attempt to get his agenda back on track despite a fractured and dysfunctional Congress.
Both of these developments – separately and together – may indicate a significant turning point for the incumbent and the country. Almost exactly one year since Inauguration Day, the political landscape shifted suddenly and significantly. We won’t know for sure for awhile, but eventually we may look back on January 2022 in a far different way than January 2021.
President Joe Biden’s change of tone was remarkable in its suddenness and forcefulness. Clearly frustrated with his inability to unite his party behind major planks of his legislative program, he took the gloves off – lashing out at “obstruction” from Republicans and calling explicitly for filibuster reform after dithering for months.
But as you can tell from the authoritative graph above updated Friday, his approval rating has been trending in a negative direction for several months already… and it sagged further this week.
The president’s change of tone first became apparent with his hard-charging speech Jan. 11 in Atlanta, Georgia on Martin Luther King Day.
Unusually for Biden, his opening statement was greeted with sustained applause.
“We’re here today to stand against the forces in America that value power over principle,” he said, “forces that attempted a coup — a coup against the legally expressed will of the American people — by sowing doubt, inventing charges of fraud, and seeking to steal the 2020 election from the people.
“They want chaos to reign. We want the people to rule.”
Included in his speech was a passionate appeal to Democrats in Congress to pass two voting rights laws even if they had to abolish the filibuster to get it done.
“Jim Crow 2.0 is about two insidious things: voter suppression and election subversion,” he said. “It’s no longer about who gets to vote; it’s about making it harder to vote. It’s about who gets to count the vote and whether your vote counts at all.
“That’s the kind of power you see in totalitarian states, not in democracies.” (emphasis added)
These are fighting words, uncharacteristic of Biden. He has spent his first year in office seeking to accommodate Republicans as if he did not learn the lessons of the Obama years: Their only agenda then – as it is now – is to prevent a president from the opposing party from accomplishing anything at all.
If there was any doubt that Biden’s position and tone had shifted dramatically, it was underscored at his Jan. 19 two-hour press conference held at exactly the same time as the Senate started debate on the voting rights package – the split-screen effect was probably intentional.
The president barely mentioned voting rights, despite being asked repeatedly about the issue, probably because he realized by then it was a lost cause.
For almost the entire two hours he managed to focus on the accomplishments of his first year in office.
He also showed how government can – and should – work for the governed with free COVID tests and masks for every American. The web site for free COVID tests logged more than one million visitors on its first day – which was a day EARLIER than officially advertised, a stark contrast to Obama’s HealthCare.Gov rollout.
Demonstrating that he’s learned what his advisers have probably been yelling at him for some time, he said:
“Part of the problem is, as well: I have not been out in the community nearly enough.”
Indeed, this was only his second press conference in a year and he has been notably absent in promoting his many significant accomplishments during that year.
He has been far too busy negotiating with intransigent Democrats in Congress.
There was no doubt this has changed: within the first five minutes of his give-and-take with reporters he listed some of his accomplishments:
“We went from 2 million people being vaccinated at the moment I was sworn in to 210 million Americans being fully vaccinated today.
“We created 6 million new jobs — more jobs in one year than at any time before.
“Unemployment dropped — the unemployment rate dropped to 3.9 percent.
“Child poverty dropped by nearly 40 percent the biggest drop ever in American history.”
One of the major reasons why the president's approval rating is hovering around 40% is that he has done a lousy job of communicating his successes during his first year.
Based on his recent performance it seems like he has got the message – literally and figuratively!
There is no diminishing the losses he has suffered in Congress, not the least during this past week when his major voting rights efforts failed to get through the Senate. Even the president's personal exhortations did not convince the two recalcitrant members of his own party to abolish the filibuster.
Sen. Joe Manchin and Sen. Krysten Sinema drew howls of protests from Democrats around the country for their stubborn refusal to budge. They are also the ones blocking Biden’s $2 trillion social spending plan known as Build Back Better.
It was at the press conference, however, that Biden brought up for the first time the possibility he would break his massive spending proposal into its most popular parts in a new attempt to get at least a portion of it through the Senate.
This shows realism in the face of solid Republican obstructionism and dissent from within his own ranks.
“We’ve been doing everything we can, learning and adapting as fast as we can, and preparing for a future beyond the pandemic,” he said.
The president was at his best — as he always is – when he expressed empathy for the American people.
“While I know that after almost two years of physical, emotional, and psychological weight of this pandemic – and the impact it’s had on everyone – for many of us, it’s been too much to bear.
“We’re in a very different place now, though. We have the tools — vaccines, boosters, masks, tests, pills — to save lives and keep businesses and schools open.”
Biden’s new "gloves off” approach was epitomized by his comments regarding Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“He has one straightforward objective: Make sure that there’s nothing I do that makes me look good in his mind with the public at large,” Biden said. “And that’s okay. I’m a big boy. I’ve been here before. … I think that the fundamental question is, ‘What’s Mitch for?’ ”
That's going right for the jugular. At their national convention in 2020, the Republican Party decided to not even adopt a platform of issues it supported.
They basically have not supported any positive legislation since Biden was inaugurated.
It's a legitimate and devastating critique of the party of “NO" – and will serve Biden well if he keeps repeating it time after time after time.
While President Biden was taking a much deserved victory lap, three ominous developments — in New York, Washington DC and Atlanta, Georgia – greatly increased the legal jeopardy of the former president and his immediate family in two actual (and several potential) criminal cases.
On Tuesday, the Attorney General of New York – who is conducting a long-running investigation of the Trump Organization and its possibly fraudulent business practices – filed a stunning document in court.
In a 157-page filing, AG Letitia James provided excruciating details about all the evidence she has collected so far concerning Trump and his children and their business.
This was in support of her motion to compel Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Don Jr. to testify in her case.
She has already obtained testimony from Eric Trump, who invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 500 times during his appearance to avoid answering questions. Shielding behind the Fifth Amendment is tantamount to an admission of guilt.
The civil investigation is separate from a criminal probe AG James is running in tandem with new Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Whatever evidence James gathers from the Trump family could be shared with the DA in the criminal case.
The very next day the US Supreme Court handed Trump a defeat that should cause him great concern.
In an 8 to1 vote – including the three justices Trump himself appointed – the court flatly rejected his attempt to keep secret hundreds of documents relating to the January 6 insurrection, which are being sought by the House select committee investigating those events.
A question on everybody's mind for months has been, “What does he have to hide?” It seems like we are soon to get the answer because by Friday the National Archivist had already handed over the documents to Congress.
This comes less than a week after the Justice Department charged 10 members of the Oath Keepers right-wing extremist group with conspiracy to overthrow the government. This raises the possibility that the Trump documents will provide a roadmap to prosecutors in the future to find out whether he was personally involved in this conspiracy. It's a tantalizing prospect – and one Trump should fear greatly.
But the most serious and immediate criminal jeopardy facing the ex-president came from the District Attorney in Fulton County, GA, home to the city of Atlanta.
The prosecutor, Fani T. Willis, opened her long-running investigation after the stunning revelation of Trump’s hour-long phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger asking him to “find 11,780 votes” – the exact margin by which he lost the state to Joe Biden.
“The District Attorney’s Office has received information indicating a reasonable probability that the State of Georgia’s administration of elections in 2020, including the State’s election of the President of the United States, was subject to possible criminal disruptions,” Ms. Willis wrote in a letter to Christopher S. Brasher, the chief judge of the Fulton County Superior Court.
Willis requested the empaneling of a special grand jury whose sole task will be to investigate whether Trump criminally interfered with the election administration in Georgia.
Supporting her request, she added: “We have made efforts to interview multiple witnesses and gather evidence, and a significant number of witnesses and prospective witnesses have refused to cooperate with the investigation absent a subpoena requiring their testimony.”
Her inquiry is the only one known to be investigating whether Trump himself committed crimes in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. His potential criminal exposure could include charges of racketeering or conspiracy to commit election fraud – very serious felonies indeed.
Political earthquake?
Taking a step back and looking at major events involving the 45th and 46th presidents this week, it is inescapable that the political landscape has undergone a very significant earthquake.
During his first year in office, President Biden has bent over backwards to accommodate Republicans in the Senate so that he can get major legislation passed. His entire campaign for president was based on his boast that he could get bipartisan cooperation across the aisle.
He seems to have finally woken up to the futility of this endeavor. It's not a moment too soon.
He has taken off the gloves and engaged with the obstructionists who have succeeded in limiting his legislative accomplishments for over a year. He has shown a new combativeness and if he manages to keep it up, it is going to serve him well.
Meanwhile, the criminal cases against the former president keep getting closer and closer to him and his inner circle, and it seems to be only a matter of time until the first criminal charges are filed.
We may indeed look back on this particular week as a pivotal moment when the fortunes of the two key players in our national politics reversed – with one reaching a nadir and the other starting its descent.