AAfter former President Donald Trump was criminally convicted last month, a historic first for a US president, the guilty verdict was expected to be a matter that neither Trump – who campaigned on the grounds that he was a political target – nor the President Joe Biden could be left out.
But instead of dominating the discussionTrump’s condemnation only first emerged after more than 45 minutes of the 90-plus minute debate moderated by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash — and was only mentioned during a segment lasting less than five minutes.
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“The only person at this stage [who] is a convicted felon is the man I’m looking at right now,” Biden said during a discussion of the January 6 Capitol riot in 2021 and the protests following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, after Trump suggested that Republican protesters have been treated unfairly by the courts and Congress.
“The fact is there was no effort on his part to stop what was happening at the Capitol,” Biden said. “And all of these people, every single one of those who are convicted, deserves to be convicted,” he added. “The idea that these people are patriots? Let’s go.”
In an immediate follow-up question, Tapper asked Trump to clarify what he meant when he said publicly, after his conviction, that he would “I have every right to go after it” their political opponents.
“My retribution will be a success,” Trump responded. “We are going to make this country successful again, because right now it is a failed nation.”
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Trump then turned the discussion to Biden and his son Hunter, the first son of a sitting U.S. president to be convicted of a crime when he was found guilty earlier this month of three felony counts of lying about his drug use when he purchased a weapon in 2018.
“When he talks about a convicted criminal, his son is a very high-level convicted criminal. His son was convicted, he will probably be convicted countless more times, he should have been convicted sooner,” said Trump.
He also suggested that Biden could be prosecuted, saying, “He could be a convicted felon as soon as he leaves office. Joe could be a convicted criminal with all the things he did.” Trump cited “all the deaths caused at the border” (probably referring to cases of undocumented migrants suspected of murderthat are crude), as well as a popular right-wing conspiracy theory that Biden, when he was vice president, improperly leveraged a $1 billion loan to Ukraine to remove a prosecutor that Trump and his allies have falsely claimed was investigating Hunter Biden. (Joe Biden admitted to having pressured Ukraine to remove the prosecutor for corruption, unrelated to his son.)
“This man is a criminal. This man, you are lucky,” Trump added about Biden. “We have a fraudulent and disgusting system. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
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Biden responded, “The idea that I did anything wrong in terms of what you’re talking about is outrageous,” pointing to Trump’s many past and pending legal troubles, including being found liable last year for sexually abusing and defaming the writer. E. Jean Carroll. “Think about all the civil penalties you have. How many billions of dollars do you owe in civil penalties for molesting a woman in public? By doing a series of things? Of having sex with a porn star the night your wife was pregnant? What are you talking? You have the morals of a stray cat.”
“I did not have sex with a porn star,” Trump responded. (According to Stormy Daniels, the adult film star at the center of Trump’s secret trial, the sexual encounter she had with Trump, about which he paid her to keep silent, occurred right after Trump’s wife, Melania, gave birth to his son Baron.) Trump also said that his conviction was politically motivated – claiming that the prosecutors and judge were “all high-ranking Democrats” – but that his campaign benefited as a result.” because the public knows this is a scam.”
When Biden was asked whether the millions of Americans who vote for Trump “will vote against American democracy,” he said, “the more they know about what he did, yes.”
“And there’s a lot more coming. He has a lot of cases ahead of him,” Biden said, likely referring to Trump’s other cases. ongoing legal battles about allegations including election interference and mishandling of confidential documents. “I don’t know what the juries will do, but I know he has a real problem.”
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
