Joe Biden needs Donald Trump’s assistance, so the president provides it

Washington: Former President Donald Trump should be the first person to get a thank-you message from President Joe Biden for his assistance in getting him out of a tight spot recently.
As uncomfortable inquiries about Biden’s age began to pour in, his opponent and predecessor intervened, saving him with a poorly timed tirade promising to “encourage” Russia to strike NATO nations that underfund their armed forces.

In addition to deflecting attention from the president’s memory issues, which were documented in a special counsel investigation, Trump’s stunning performance over the weekend gave Biden’s supporters an easy opportunity to recast the situation: Indeed, they may now argue, the incumbent may be an elderly man who has occasional forgetfulness, but his opponent is not just aging but also dangerously careless.
It wasn’t the first time, and it probably won’t be the last, that Trump offered an unwise howler of his own as a means of escape when his opponent was in danger. Over the course of his life, Trump’s need for limelight has often overridden his own best interests. That could be Biden’s secret to winning this year’s campaign—relying on his rival’s incapacity to remain mute in crucial situations and hoping he never stops reminding them of why they rejected him in 2020.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who lost the party primary to Trump in 2016, had a Republican strategist named Alex Conant working on his presidential campaign. “There’s a saying that the enemy of your enemy is your friend,” Conant remarked. “Since Trump is his own worst enemy, he’s arguably Biden’s best friend.”
That does not imply that Biden’s age is no longer a political problem, since he would be 86 at the conclusion of his second term and is now the oldest president in American history at 81. Trump, at seventy-seven, is not far behind him, but the special counsel’s portrayal of the president as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” turned out to be scathing and harmful.
According to a recent survey conducted on Sunday by ABC News and Ipsos, 86% of Americans believe that Joe Biden is too elderly to hold the office of president again, while 62% believe that Donald Trump is too old.
However, in Washington, when faced with criticism, the conventional political tactic is to rapidly shift the topic. Biden’s staff aimed to shift the focus from his own qualifications to the actions of Robert Hur, the special counsel, in the same way that previous presidents like Trump and Bill Clinton did in order to draw attention away from accusations made against them and onto the prosecutors who looked into them.
In the days that followed, friends and surrogates from the White House crowded the airways to criticize Hur for bringing up the president’s forgetfulness of important events, such as Beau’s death year. First wife Jill Biden criticized Hur’s “inaccurate and personal political attacks about Joe” in a fundraising drive before pleading with supporters for donations. Though it may not win over those who were already against Biden, the backlash offered Democrats something else to speak about.
During a rally in South Carolina on Saturday, Trump played right into the Biden camp’s game plan by criticizing “delinquent” NATO members and declaring that he would not only not defend them if the Russians attacked, but that he would also encourage the Russians “to do whatever the hell they want” against such allies.
Democratic strategist Rodell Mollineau, a Partner of ROKK Solutions, said of Donald Trump, “He can’t help himself.” “Even when it is not to his benefit, he will constantly want to draw attention to himself. I anticipate that before this race is complete, Trump will have many more “hold-my-beer” moments.”
in tendency was used by former UN ambassador and governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley to support her claim that the party should not put its faith in him to lead it to victory in fall. Haley is still attempting to pull the Republican candidacy away from front-runner Trump.
Haley said on Fox News, “Unhinged chaos is what you’re going to get.” She went on, “And that only makes Joe Biden sound sane.” When Donald Trump manages to make Joe Biden seem reasonable, it serves as more evidence as to why Donald Trump is not able to overcome Joe Biden. All of the things he says are being taken by them and used against him.
That was definitely the goal of Biden’s team. “Encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes is appalling and unhinged,” the White House said in a statement. Biden responded to Trump’s remarks in a different statement issued by his campaign, calling them “predictable coming from a man who is promising to rule as a dictator like the ones he praises on Day 1 if he returns to the Oval Office.” He described Donald Trump on social media as one of Vladimir Putin’s “useful lackeys.”
Former White House press secretary for President Barack Obama Robert Gibbs said that the most recent incident demonstrated Trump’s inability to follow a well-worn political maxim, which goes, “If your opponent is having a bad day, simply get out of the way and let it happen.”
He said that such unexpected moments may be crucial for Biden. “The dexterity of the president and his team to drive those moments is going to be maybe one of the big determining factors as to who wins this race.”