President Joe Biden briefly acknowledged former President Donald Trump's guilty verdict on all 34 felony counts during a Friday press conference. But some Democrats want him to do a lot more than that.
The 2024 presumptive Republican presidential nominee is the first former U.S. president to be convicted of crimes after the unanimous verdict was read in his New York criminal trial earlier this week. While the Biden campaign is now referring to its opponent as "convicted felon Donald Trump" in emails to supporters, some Democratic elected officials told the New York Times that Biden needs to make Trump's guilty verdict a common refrain on the campaign stump.
"That Trump paid hush money to a porn star and jurors found he falsified business records to cover it up is just one short, tawdry chapter of a much bigger story: Trump is an aspiring tyrant who intends to rule, not lead, the United States," Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) said.
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Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas), who briefly ran for president in 2020 before dropping out and endorsing Biden, shared a similar sentiment with the Times. He told the outlet that it would be a huge missed opportunity for Biden to not use the advantage of the presidential bully pulpit to remind voters that the GOP is likely to nominate a criminal this summer.
"I do think it is the obligation of every Democrat to remind every voter that Donald Trump is now a convicted felon and just how unprecedented this is," O'Rourke said.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), another former 2020 primary opponent of Biden's, said the campaign should not only highlight Trump's felony convictions, but also the "contrast" between the current president's governing and his predecessor's losses in various courtrooms. Warren said 2024 could be framed as "the man of lies and chaos versus the guy who is trying to make this country work for everyone."
And according to Faiz Shakir, who worked as Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vermont) 2020 campaign manager in his bid for the Democratic nomination, Trump's guilty verdict could be seen as a "significant re-mobilization of an anti-Trump movement in America." He added that the response to the convictions as of this week "shows no doubt it has reinfused energy at this moment."
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However, Biden is so far refraining from doing any obvious end zone dancing regarding his opponent's 34 felony convictions. This could be due to him not wanting to be seen as playing into Trump's baseless claims that the case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was in some way influenced or orchestrated by the White House. Biden is also likely aware that anything he says about the New York verdict could be exploited by Trump's lawyers to undermine the two ongoing federal prosecutions of the former president.
Former Bill Clinton adviser James Carville — a longtime Democratic strategist from Louisiana — said the smart play for Biden would be to simply praise the rule of law and move on.
“The jury, the jury, the jury — for God’s sakes, hide under the dress of the jury,” Carville told the Times. “And you don’t need to say much more than that.”
Click here to read the Times' full report (subscription required).
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