President Biden is battling a new phenomenon in American politics: what Democrats and pollsters are calling “Trump amnesia” — softening feelings about his successor's tumultuous presidency.
But over the course of about 24 hours Tuesday, Donald J. Trump offered what appears to be at least a temporary solution. He reposted a video containing the words “united Reich” and revived his accusations of approaching Nazism. He has floated the idea of restricting contraception and rehired political activists with records of sexual harassment accusations as campaign staff.
The court's decision, released later in the day in one of the federal criminal cases against Mr. Trump, left a judge questioning how the classified documents could have been repeatedly overlooked before they appeared in Mr. Trump's own bedroom. It was shown that it was present.
And by mid-morning, Trump's lawyers rested on a criminal case that could permanently label him as a convicted felon, something no presidential candidate has yet survived.
Mr. Trump has built his political career on surviving unsurvivable situations. No matter how much chaos he causes or how much he breaks political norms, his Republican base will support him. But now he is leaving his permissive conservative cocoon and entering the melting pot of a general election. Much of his electoral success will depend on whether voters who are not yet irrevocably cornered will rebel against and reject the chaos, division, and inflammatory rhetoric that cost him re-election four years ago. It may depend on.
So far, nothing like that has happened. Even though Trump has been sitting in court as a criminal defendant for several weeks, he is leading in many polls in battleground states. Polls show that voters remember it as a time of economic prosperity and strong national security, and their views of his administration improve with distance. Although Americans still remember Mr. Trump as a divisive and polarizing figure, many voters now believe that Mr. Trump's term in office will be better for the country than President Biden.
There are plenty of ingredients Biden and his Democratic allies can use to try to get voters to shake off President Trump's amnesia. The former president faces four criminal charges in four different courts. He is the first president to be impeached twice for his role in inciting the Capitol siege. And under Mr. Trump, Republicans have lost or underperformed in every election since his 2016 victory.
The Biden campaign is focused on focusing voters' attention on the issues it thinks will work best, including abortion bans, threats to democracy and the sense of chaos that so often plagued the Trump administration.
That's why Tuesday's headlines felt like a series of gifts from Trump to his successor.
By Tuesday night, the Biden campaign had unwrapped the gift and issued a sweeping news release highlighting Trump's “terrible 24 hours.”
“Posting Nazi images and promising to take more freedoms away from women is not what we would call a winning election strategy,” campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said. “Donald Trump reminds voters every day how extreme and dangerous Donald Trump is.”
Biden himself scolded Trump for reposting the “United Empire” video at a fundraiser, accusing him of supporting fascism.
“A united empire. Those are not the words of the president of the United States,” he told hundreds of donors gathered in Boston. “That's not the word of any American. It's the word of Hitler's Germany.”
Of course, it is unclear at this point how many voters are likely to sway in their views of Trump. “People have already formed their judgment on this guy,” said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster. “There's not much new that will change their impression of him.”
Mr. Trump's campaign believes voters are more focused on broader issues that affect their lives, such as the economy and affordability, rather than a series of controversies. Trump spokesman Brian Hughes pointed to recent polling and fundraising numbers as evidence that the campaign is doing well.
Hughes said the Biden campaign used the “United Empire” video and Trump's comments about birth control, taking both out of context to distract voters from what he called “the heart of the situation.” insisted. “Stake” will be held in November.
Still, the Trump campaign's actions on Tuesday suggest it recognizes some of Mr. Trump's comments over the past 24 hours as potentially harmful.
In an interview with a Pittsburgh television station, Trump suggested he might be open to birth control restrictions or allow states to impose such restrictions, then quickly shut the door on the idea.
“I have never advocated for imposing restrictions on birth control or any other form of contraception, and I never will,” he wrote on his social media site Truth Social on Tuesday afternoon. written in capital letters. “I don’t support banning contraception, and neither do Republicans!”
In response to the wave of criticism, Trump's campaign also disavowed the “United Empire” video and deleted it from his social media accounts. The video used images of mock newspaper articles to evoke what the future of the United States would look like if Trump were to win in November. Although the term “Empire” is often associated with Nazi Germany, the text in the video was taken from a template and appeared to refer to the decades before World War I.
“This was not a campaign video. It was created by a random account online and reposted by a staffer who clearly did not see the words while the president was in court,” a campaign spokesperson said. said Caroline Leavitt in a statement.
But Trump's response Tuesday to news of the classified documents scandal was yet another unforced error. The former president tweeted on Tuesday night on his social media networks that the Biden administration had “deadly…” after four documents found in Trump's bedroom were revealed in a court filing. accused of authorizing the use of deadly force. “They had permission to shoot me!” he said in the subject line of a fundraising email.
But it still sparked another exchange of accusations, with the FBI taking the unusual step of refuting Mr Trump's claims.
“As with all search warrants, standard procedures were followed in this search, which includes standard policy statements limiting the use of lethal force,” the department said in a statement.
“No one issued any orders to take any additional steps and there were no deviations from normal procedures in this matter,” the FBI said in a statement.