The Biden-Harris campaign has stepped up direct attacks on the presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump — and the Biden campaign’s #1 weapon appears to be the intemperate words (and actions) of Trump himself.
Posting what it characterized as a “tirade” by a “feeble and confused” Trump on Easter Sunday, Biden’s team featured Trump’s all-caps rant whole — or at least it featured one of dozens of similar screeds that Trump posted on Truth Social on Easter.
A feeble and confused Trump spends the Easter holiday spewing an unhinged all-caps tirade attacking America and talking about himself pic.twitter.com/z8v58N3fW5
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) March 31, 2024
It’s a calculated risk, but Biden’s team has evidently determined that Trump’s appeal has reached a saturation point, meaning that those who will support the former President already do.
Based on that assumption, the campaign is content to give Trump “free media” by sharing his screeds, believing their tone and content will alienate, not attract, any non-MAGA loyalist who is still undecided.
One example of this approach is Biden’s open courtship of Nikki Haley supporters in the GOP primaries, a significant percentage even after Haley suspended her campaign. These are voters who find themselves left behind by the current Republican Party, commandeered by Trump and Trumpism.
The Biden strategy — letting Republican dysfunction and what Democrats perceive as the GOP’s unpopular stances on social issues become self-inflicted wounds — isn’t limited to the White House. Democratic Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett asserts, in the video below, that all Democrats — not just Biden — can use Republicans to campaign for them.
“I can tell you that the best thing that we got going for us ever is Republicans opening their mouths,” Crockett says. “It is amazing. It is so helpful. I just want to sit here and be silent and say ‘watch them work.’”
Rep. @JasmineForUS on GOP attacks on IVF: “It seems like there was every excuse in the book to kill a Black walking, living, & breathing human being. And then you want to talk about embryos & say that they are people? Something that cannot breathe?”
Pod: https://t.co/lfBD8ckmLf pic.twitter.com/HZyQT0hclH
— Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) March 29, 2024
By his own admission, Trump is about retribution, rage and American “carnage,” casting America as a “failing” nation. Biden casts himself as Trump’s opposite, portraying a sunnier outlook that Americans have traditionally embraced. The President continually describes himself as “optimistic,” as he does below.
The confidence in that approach may be mislaid if there are enough Americans unhappy enough with the present circumstances to go back to a Trump presidency. The Biden campaign, as it promotes Trump’s own words, is betting big that while Trump is campaigning for himself, he is campaigning for Biden, too.
President Biden: Look, we have tens of thousands of people contributing 5, 10 bucks a pop, we’ve opened up 100 headquarters, people are ready. They’re so tired of the negativity that’s propagated, they want to get engaged and change things. I’m optimistic pic.twitter.com/tzgklIu5tC
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 1, 2024