Welcome to the online version of From the Policy Deska nightly newsletter that brings you the latest reporting and analysis from the NBC News politics team on the campaign, the White House and Capitol Hill.
In today’s edition, we report on Joe Biden’s big publicity advantage – and why it will disappear. Plus, senior national political reporter Jonathan Allen looks at why Hunter Biden’s trial is bad news for Donald Trump.
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Biden’s Big Publicity Advantage Won’t Last Forever
By Ben Kamisar
Get ready: Donald Trump’s cavalry is arriving, after months of almost unanswered attacks on the airwaves, courtesy of President Joe Bidencampaign.
MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, announced plans this week spend $100 million on ads in key swing states this summer. It’s a title worth paying attention to for several reasons.
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While Trump-world is turning his criminal conviction into an unexpected financial gainThe big question for the former president and his orbit is: How can they use this money most effectively in a race in which they have been outmatched and outspent?
The announcement is expected to fundamentally transform the advertising spending landscape in a race that has so far been dominated by Democrats. Since March 13 (the day after Trump and Biden were projected as their party’s presumptive nominees), Biden and his main allied groups have outspent Trump and his groups by a 3-to-1 ratio on the airwaves.
It’s a dramatic difference from how things looked at a similar time in 2020. From April 8 (after Senator Bernie Sanders ended his Democratic primary bid against Biden) until June 6, 2020, Trump and his key allies had an advantage in advertising spending. Biden.
It’s hard to say how much of Trump’s super PAC summer spending (and Democratic groups as well) will influence this race, which remains within the margin of error despite a huge Democratic spending deficit and Trump’s recent conviction. But as much as it counts in a static race, Biden’s publicity has been an objective advantage for his reelection campaign over the past three months — and Republicans are about to deeply reduce that advantage.
By Jonathan Allen
Hunter Biden’s trial is embarrassing for President Joe Biden and his family, but its mere existence blows a huge hole in former President Donald Trump’s public defense of his own criminal convictions.
Hunter, the president’s surviving son, is accused of illegally purchasing a gun while addicted to drugs. The trial is provoking painful testimony about Hunter’s ill-fated romantic relationship with his brother Beau’s widow, Hallie Biden, and his frequent use of crack cocaine.
The alleged crime at the center of the trial — lying about being addicted to a federal firearms purchase form — arises from the so-called Brady Bill, a gun control law from the early 1990s. Joe Biden was a leading supporter of that measure and was quite vocal about his feelings toward guns and drugs when the project was considered during the crack epidemic of the time.
He told the Associated Press in 1991 that he thought addicts “should be forced off the streets and into jails, prisons and drug treatment centers.”
In this way, Hunter’s prosecution demonstrates consistency in the president’s position, even when his son’s freedom is at stake, and, perhaps more importantly for the 2024 election, that he is not interfering in a federal trial in which he has a huge stake. personal interest. the result.
Offering no evidence, Trump systematically accused the president of being the mastermind of a Democratic conspiracy to persecute him through prosecution. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 counts related to his effort to help his 2016 campaign by falsifying business records to hide an alleged affair, Trump said he will have “every right” to sue your political opponents if he wins the presidency again in 2024.
His logic is that if Biden can direct the processes, so can he. But Biden is not interfering in either case.
Biden has no formal influence over the Manhattan prosecutors who tried Trump’s case, nor did he have any role in returning a grand jury indictment against Trump or coordinating the unanimous judgment of the 12 trial jurors who found Trump guilty.
There is no evidence that Biden improperly influenced the two federal criminal trials facing Trump — which are being prosecuted by a special counsel that operates independently and not “subject to daily supervision” from anyone in the Justice Department that Biden oversees. Likewise, there is no indication that he played a role in a Georgia case in which Trump is accused of trying to illegally overturn that state’s 2020 election results.
So what’s left for voters is for Trump to make a hard-to-believe claim that Biden is interfering in his trials, but not in Hunter’s case. It remains to be seen whether Hunter will be found guilty or whether the president will pardon him – Biden told ABC News on Thursday that he has ruled out a pardon – but what is clear at this moment is that the president respects the rule of law when it comes to the fate of his own son.
Trump’s base won’t care.
But for swing voters who worry that presidents abuse their power to reward friends and punish enemies, Biden is demonstrating exactly the kind of restraint that Trump accuses him of abandoning.
That’s all from The Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback – like or dislike – send us an email at newsletter@nbcuni.com
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