President Trump isn’t going away quietly, and his successor as of Jan. 20, President-elect Joe Biden, is fine with that.
While Biden has made plenty of public pronouncements, including naming Cabinet picks and getting interviewed by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, Trump still commands much of the post-Election Day spotlight. That includes musings about late-term pardons and bromides at elections officials in Georgia and elsewhere, he claims — falsely — cost him reelection.
Biden’s failure to deliver a knock-out political punch to Trump is unlikely to impede his transition, but Republicans warn it could thwart his agenda after inauguration.
Yet many agree with the two-term vice president and 36-year Delaware senator’s strategy of simply ignoring the outgoing commander in chief for the final seven weeks of his presidency.
Biden and his campaign were quick to offer snippy responses about Trump before the election. Now the president-elect and his transition are being more discriminating when it comes to reacting to Trump as he declines to concede, claiming voter and electoral fraud.
Democratic strategist Juven Jacob believed Biden’s priorities were right. Biden has been concentrating on lining up top administration officials and getting up to speed on issues and programs, especially amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“No one expects President Trump to concede or attend the inauguration, but par for the course,” Jacob said. “Is anyone surprised? His incessant complaints about the election are embarrassing for the country.”
For David Greenberg, a Rutgers University history and journalism professor, some of Trump’s tweets were newsworthy. Others he dismissed as “just noise.”
“It would have been better had journalists and politicians ignored Trump more often over the last four years,” he said. “Biden has nothing to gain by getting into it with Trump.”
Several high-ranking Republicans, such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have suggested they’ll consider Biden the next president after the Electoral College gathers on Dec. 14. Yet to Greenberg, the electors meeting is merely a formality since most states have already certified their tallies.
“I think pretty much everyone realizes this, including Trump. Pandering to Trump’s frustration at having lost has no purpose,” he said.
During the campaign, Biden and his team, specifically those in the rapid response unit, weren’t as concerned about appearing above the fray. Rather, they pounced on almost every perceived Trump misstep.
Biden, for instance, wasn’t worried about calling Trump “racist.” He did, though, regret describing the president as a “clown” during their first, barely comprehensible debate. He later told NBC that he should’ve used the word “clownish” instead.
Biden’s aides have been less circumspect. In fact, former President Barack Obama’s chief political strategist David Axelrod criticized the campaign for regurgitating a statement they released over the summer after Trump hinted to Fox News that he wouldn’t accept the election results.
“As we said on July 19, the American people will decide this election. And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House,” Biden spokesman Andrew Bates told the Washington Examiner and other outlets after Nov. 3.
Axelrod, however, wasn’t sure he “would’ve gone there.”
“It may be that people are feeling uneasy about the situation because of what the president is saying, but, you know, I don’t think … they need to be that aggressive at this point,” he told CNN.
Since then, the campaign-turn-transition’s tone has changed, in part because Biden’s the likely next occupant of the White House and many of his staff have taken on different positions.
While his transition has circulated statements about administration clashes, such as the Supreme Court battle over the census, they’ve shied away from other confrontations, including Trump’s Thanksgiving pardon of his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
Republican strategist Duf Sundheim didn’t fault Biden on his approach to Trump since the president relishes conflict. Yet he cautioned Democrats that the GOP were energized after the election, poised to ruin their plans as a strong opposition party.
Sundheim said there were factions of the party who were “going to fight it to the end” for Trump, but many operatives were already looking toward the 2022 and 2024 cycles.
“They’re talking about controlling the Senate, they’re talking about taking back the House in 2022,” the California-based strategist added after unexpected Republican successes in his state.
The “honeymoon period” of Biden’s first few months in office would pressure test Democrats, even more so if he tries to appease the Left, according to Sundheim. Of Republicans, he said they were excited about the future with or without Trump, a sentiment not many may have shared early last month.
He continued, “The concern was if Trump went down with the whole right of center, what would be left? Would it splinter? Now they think they really have a message that can be a majority message in this country.”
