WASHINGTON – The US president spent four minutes on Tuesday speaking to the American public about the possibilities and dangers of artificial intelligence.
No, not that president.
The one that actually occupies the Oval Office.
Americans could be forgiven for momentarily forgetting about the most powerful person in the country.
While helicopters and cameras followed every step of the legal drama of Donald J. Trump In New York, more than 200 miles to the north, with the intensity of a white Ford Bronco, President Biden moved in a background, giving the stage to his accused predecessor.
He seemed content to do it, at least for now.
The White House has made no effort to attract attention with the arrest of a former president.
Biden’s only appearance came during a meeting with his science advisors.
The reporters entered at 14:59,
Biden, hoarse and with a cold, said a few words, and at 3:03 pm the reporters came out again.
Ten minutes later, the White House announced that Biden was done with the day’s public events.
The account of two presidents on this spring afternoon, one quietly focused on tech policy and the other on fingerprinting, highlighted the unique challenge Biden has faced since taking office more than two years ago.
No commander-in-chief in more than a century has been overshadowed in the public eye by a leader who succeeded in the way Biden occasionally did.
Now, with the first criminal case against a former president in US history, it will be much more difficult. dominate the national conversation.
Still, it’s a contrast that Biden’s team hopes will ultimately benefit them.
split screen
To the extent that the remainder of Biden’s term is a split screen between the 45th and 46th presidents, White House officials are willing to live on less airtime if it means one president focuses on manufacturing, health and climate change while the other focuses on pre-motions, witnesses hostiles and records of money paid to a pornstars.
“Twenty-three will be about Trump: His legal troubles will be a defining story,” said Jennifer Palmieri, who was the White House communications director for the president. Barack Obama and senior campaign adviser to Hillary Clinton.
What is the White House doing about it?
In a way, that’s fine. These stories will come to a head and then disappear.
What Biden needs to be is the anti-chaos president.”
The wild twists and turns of the Trump show, in this perspective, only reinforce the reasons why voters turned to Biden in the first place:
the call of a firm hand against the storm.
“All of this could be contributing to a lack of trust in institutions, a sense of chaos, of I disturbSo the Biden team needs to do more to show that government can work,” Palmieri said.
Even so, the anti-chaos may appeal to voters jaded by Trump’s turmoil, but it hasn’t historically been a huge crowd puller.
“I suppose Biden’s team will say that split-screen contrast works in their favor,” said Kevin Madden, a veteran Republican strategist.
“The problem, though, is that with Trump, there could be days or weeks like this where they never get their half of the screen.”
No other president would want the kind of publicity Trump is getting now, of course, but the fixation on the former president will extend even beyond this historic impeachment.
Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney in Georgia, may soon decide whether to charge Trump with trying to interfere in the 2020 election, while Jack Smith, the federal special prosecutor, may file a lawsuit in connection with the Capitol attack in January 6, 2021 and the former president’s refusal to hand over confidential documents.
As if that weren’t enough to keep the focus on Mar-a-Lago and not the White House, Trump is already set to go on trial on April 25 in a civil lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll, a writer who he accuses of having broken.
And a civil trial is scheduled for October 2 financial fraud Presented by Letitia James, New York Attorney General.
Against all of that, a meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology might not seem all that appealing to cable television manufacturers or their audiences.
When Biden flew to Minnesota on Monday to promote a hydrogen electrolyser factory, news channels showed Trump’s private plane, the so-called “Trump Force One“, leaving for New York.
“I’m flipping the channel and shaking my head,” Michael Steele, the 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 at once.”
On the plane, off the plane, in the car. Do you know the real @POTUS traveled today?
It fell to the White House to make the best of the situation. Jeffrey D. Zients, the new chief of staff, posted a cover image of The Tribune of the Stars from Minneapolis with the headline “Biden Promotes Investment in Minn”.
Ben LaBolt, the White House communications director, expressed no concern about the ability to connect with the public.
“We believe that addressing the concerns of hard-working Americans resonates and is what they expect from a president,” he said.
Ongoing coverage of Trump’s appearance and trip on Tuesday recalled the case of OJ Simpson many people old enough to remember an obsessive interest in a celebrity murder case.
There was a time during that saga where even the president Bill Clinton he was forced to share the television screen on one of his most important nights, when he delivered his 1997 State of the Union address at the same time a jury returned their verdict in the civil trial.
But that was an exceptional situation.
With rare exceptions, Clinton and other modern-era presidents have enjoyed unparalleled control of the pulpit.
In most cases, their predecessors have stood by. Even former presidents who have openly criticized their successors, such as Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carterthey have barely come to dominate the news the way Trump does.
The closest parallel to the Biden situation might be that of William Howard Taftwhich could barely compete for attention with its predecessor, Theodore Rooseveltwho finally mounted an unsuccessful comeback campaign against his former ally in 1912.
This, of course, was long before the age of social media and cable TV.
“It’s a challenge to govern,” says Julian E. Zelizer, a Princeton presidential historian.
“Part of what presidents do is shift the agenda toward issues they want Congress and the public to focus on. It’s difficult with Trump involved. On the bright side, it creates space for low-level policymaking. off the radar on issues that might otherwise create public controversy.”
Indeed, Biden’s brief public appearance on Tuesday doesn’t mean he wasn’t working behind the scenes.
He made phone calls to the French president Emmanuel Macron it’s at King Charles III From Great Britain.
On his Twitter account, he (or his tweeters) kept up a steady pace of serious posts, touting his budget, congratulating college basketball tournament winners, and wishing those celebrating a happy Mahavir Jayanti, which scores the birth of Lord Mahavira, who created the rules that define the jainisman Indian religion.
Biden let his publicist, Karine Jean-Pierre, deflect obvious questions about Trump.
During his daily briefing, he discussed Finland’s NATO entry, the Russian arrest of an American journalist, and the president’s meeting with technology advisers.
But the first arrest of a former president and “anything touching or related to the case,” he said, were banned.
Not that reporters in the White House briefing room have stopped harassing her.
They asked him about security in New York and the rule of law.
They asked if the president had seen the televised proceedings and if he would consider pardoning Trump, even if a president’s clemency power does not extend to state cases like New York’s.
When a reporter pointed out that there was “a huge uproar in Japan over the arrest of the opposition candidate”, Ms Jean-Pierre looked confused for a moment, until she realized it was just another attempt to get her talking about Trump. .
“I love how you ask me in different ways,” she said.
Then he repeated what he had said over and over again:
“I just won’t comment from here” before concluding the day’s briefing.
In the afternoon, his briefing garnered 12,000 views on the White House YouTube channel and the president’s short science remarks 2,100 views.
Within hours, Trump released a primetime statement about his arrest that should have been seen by millions.
Peter Baker is the White House’s chief correspondent and has covered the past five presidents for The Times and The Washington Post. He is the author of seven books, most recently “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” with Susan Glasser. @peterbakernyt – Facebook Michael D. Shear is a veteran White House correspondent and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, a member of the team that won the Public Service Medal for Covid coverage in 2020. He is the co-author of “Border Wars : Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration”. @shearm
c.2023 The New York Times Society
Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.