Still, anti-chaos may be appealing to voters exhausted by Trumpian turmoil, but it has not historically been a big ratings draw. “I assume Biden’s team will say the split-screen contrast works in their favor,” said Kevin Madden, a longtime Republican strategist. “The problem, though, is with Trump there could be days or weeks like this one where they never get their half of the screen.”
The Biden Presidency
- Free Trade: Under President Biden, the United States has declined to pursue new free-trade agreements with other countries. That approach has now become a major headache for the administration.
- Preparing for 2024: President Biden is sharpening his message ahead of an expected re-election bid, warning that a strong economy could be weakened under Republican leadership.
- Defending Democracy: The Biden administration’s defense of global democracies is being tested by a political crisis in Israel and setbacks to democracy in other countries closely allied with the United States.
No other president would want the kind of publicity that Mr. Trump is getting now, of course, but the fixation on the former president will extend beyond even this historic prosecution. Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney in Georgia, may decide soon whether to charge Mr. Trump in trying to interfere in the 2020 election, while Jack Smith, a federal special counsel, could seek indictments tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the former president’s refusal to turn over classified documents.
How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.
As if those were not enough to keep the spotlight focused squarely on Mar-a-Lago rather than the White House, Mr. Trump is already scheduled to go on trial on April 25 in a civil lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll, a writer who has accused him of raping her. And a civil trial on allegations of financial fraud brought by Letitia James, the New York attorney general, is scheduled to follow on Oct. 2.
Against all that, a meeting of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology may not seem as compelling to cable television producers or for that matter their audiences. When Mr. Biden flew to Minnesota on Monday to promote a factory making hydrogen electrolyzers, the news channels showed Mr. Trump’s private plane, the so-called “Trump Force One,” taking off for New York.
“I’m flipping stations and shaking my head,” Michael Steele, a former Republican National Committee chairman who broke with Trump, wrote on Twitter. “It’s no wonder we can’t recover from this Trump infection because the media continues to feed Trump’s thirst to be everything everywhere all at once! On the plane, off the plane, in the car. Y’all know the actual @POTUS travelled today?”
