Pretty Good President, Not-So-Good Candidate

Plus: Mid-Ukraine victory lap, Biden says he still wants to address the border.

The New York Times on the grim realities of Trump’s trial timetables: “In immunity case, Trump can lose in ways that amount to a win”:

Most legal experts say that former President Donald J. Trump will face deep skepticism at the Supreme Court on Thursday, when the justices will hear arguments on his claim that he is absolutely immune from prosecution on charges of plotting to subvert the 2020 election.

Mr. Trump would prefer to win, of course. But there are, from his perspective, at least two attractive ways to lose.

SCOTUS might take its sweet time deciding the case. It might also remand certain immunity-related questions back to a lower court, which would push the timeline for his federal election-interference trial back farther still.

In other cheerful Times headlines this morning: “Harvey Weinstein’s conviction is overturned by New York’s top court.” Happy Thursday.

---

President Biden leaves the stage after a Nevada campaign event on March 19, 2024. (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images.)

Pretty Good President, Not-So-Good Candidate

Lots of news the past few days—Trump court cases, mobs on campus, abortion legislation in Arizona, political struggles within both parties. But by far the biggest news, the most important news, is that Congress finally passed the long-delayed emergency national security package, including aid for Ukraine. The legislation had overwhelming support from Democrats. Congressional Republicans were divided.

President Biden spoke about its significance Wednesday morning:

At the end of the day, most of us—whether we’re Democrats, Republicans, or independents—believe that America must stand up for what is right. We don’t walk away from our allies; we stand with them. We don’t let tyrants win; we oppose them. We don’t merely watch global events unfold; we shape them. That’s what it means to be the indispensable nation. That’s what it means to be the world’s superpower and the world’s leading democracy. 

Some of our MAGA Republicans reject that vision. But this vote makes it clear: There is a bipartisan consensus for that kind of American leadership. That’s exactly what we’ll continue to deliver.

Watching Biden’s remarks yesterday morning at the White House was an important reminder that he’s providing pretty competent and responsible leadership in a new and difficult world.

It’s important that he’s basically doing the right thing, in Europe and the Middle East and Asia. It’s impressive he was able to secure bipartisan support in a bitterly polarized political environment. It’s reassuring that polls show the American public remain much closer to the view of America as the indispensable nation than to Trump’s new and dangerous version of America First. So far, so good.

Then Biden headed out from the White House to a routine campaign event in D.C. He shouldn’t have.

Taking the stage to accept the endorsement of the North America’s Building Trades Unions, Biden gave a standard and uninspiring partisan stump speech, consisting of conventional Democratic talking points interspersed with some disjointed shots at Trump. Then, after inviting the crowd to chant, “Four more years,”  Biden read aloud from the teleprompter the stage direction, “Pause.”

No big deal, really. But plenty of news coverage, overshadowing the national-security win that would otherwise have been the big Biden story of the day. It’s a reminder of the fact that while Biden is a pretty good president, he’s not a particularly good candidate.

I understand all the pressures on Biden to get out and campaign. But perhaps he and his staff should do more to resist those pressures? The routine campaign events add little to his message, and present opportunities for things to go wrong. And in fact they detract from the gravity of the moment, a gravity Biden had explained well that morning at the White House.

Stay in the Oval Office. Govern the nation. Highlight your deeds as president. Explain what you’ve done and what you’re doing. Explain why the alternative the other party is offering is so dangerous. But avoid in public some of the petty and uninspiring party politics.

Of course, of course: Don’t be unaware of politics. (Not that that’s likely.) So in private, think politically. But govern presidentially.

—William Kristol

---

Now Do the Border

President Biden sounded one regretful note in his Ukraine-aid signing speech: “There’s one thing this bill does not do: border security. Just this year, I proposed, negotiated, and agreed to the strongest border-security bill this country has ever, ever, ever seen. It was bipartisan. It should have been included in this bill. And I’m determined to get it done for the American people.”

Up at the site this morning, I’ve got a piece arguing that “Biden is smart to keep the border-security pressure on”:

Congressional Republicans, egged on by Donald Trump, turned up their nose at the package’s border provisions. Naturally, they couldn’t admit that they rejected it because they were ordered to do so. Instead they kvetched that the bill would not bring the number of border crossings magically down to zero. Any bill that fell short of that ideal, House Speaker Mike Johnson scoffed at the time, “would be surrender.”

It was a ridiculous ask. Immigration hardliner Donald Trump never got border crossings anywhere near zero despite wielding sweeping emergency border-shutdown powers during a global pandemic; how could Republicans consider that their line-in-the-sand negotiating position? You could almost believe they would actually rather not strike any border deal with Biden at all. . . .

But it was one thing to make this case in the context of a complex deal including multiple tranches of foreign aid. Under those circumstances, Republicans could pooh-pooh any border deal as simply not being strict enough to outweigh their opposition to other parts of the package—to wit, more aid to Ukraine. The phrase We shouldn’t prioritize Ukraine’s border over our own has become something of an America First mantra, repeated endlessly by MAGA presidential candidates, Senate candidates, and senators.

Well, now Ukraine’s out of it. Biden has called for border-security legislation on its own, not linked to Ukraine aid. What excuses will Republicans concoct this time for spurning the offer? Will they have the temerity to respond the same way again—to claim that they would rather, as the saying goes, let the perfect be the enemy of the good?

Read the whole thing.

—Andrew Egger

---

Catching up . . .

• Harvey Weinstein’s conviction is overturned by New York’s highest court: New York Times

• Meadows, Giuliani, and other Trump allies charged in Arizona 2020 election probe: Washington Post

• RFK Jr. may be hurting Trump more than Biden, polls show: Axios

• Arizona House votes to repeal 1864 abortion ban with help of three Republicans: ABC News

• TikTok plans lawsuit to block U.S.’s divest-or-ban legislation: Variety

• Poll: America warms to mass deportations: Axios

---

Quick Hits

1. Gaza Protest Tensions Continue

It’s a big week for large-scale campus clashes: Police arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin, and Boston’s Emerson College yesterday and early this morning. Here’s the Times: 

University administrators from Texas to California moved to clear protesters and prevent encampments from taking hold on their own campuses as they have at Columbia University, deploying police in tense new confrontations that already have led to dozens of arrests.

At the same time, new protests continued erupting in places like Pittsburgh and San Antonio. Students expressed solidarity with their fellow students at Columbia, and with a pro-Palestinian movement that appeared to be galvanized by the pushback on other campuses and the looming end of the academic year.

Protesters on several campuses said their demands included divestment by their universities from companies connected to the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, disclosure of those and other investments and a recognition of the continuing right to protest without punishment.

“A recognition of the continuing right to protest without punishment” is an important phrase here. The “RECLAIM OUR SPACE” event organized by UT-Austin’s Palestinian Solidarity Committee deliberately mirrored the campus “occupations” at other colleges: “In the footsteps of our comrades at Columbia SJP, Reuters-New Brunswick, Yale, and countless others across the nation, we will be establishing THE POPULAR UNIVERSITY FOR GAZA,” their social media post proclaimed.

2. How Trump Will Defend Himself

Kim Wehle has the latest on Trump’s New York trial:

GOING INTO THE FOURTH DAY of Donald J. Trump’s trial on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, there’s a lot we’ve already learned. David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer and former CEO of its parent company, testified that in August 2015 he met with Trump and fixer Michael Cohen at Trump Tower where he says he was asked “what I can do and what my magazines could do to help [Trump’s 2016] campaign.” Pecker says he agreed to be the “eyes and ears” of the campaign. This opening testimony was critical to the government’s case for two reasons.

First, it introduced to the jury Trump’s knowledge of and complicity in the “catch-and-kill” scheme that allegedly produced the $130,000 payment to adult film start Stormy Daniels in the lead-up to the 2016 election in order to keep her quiet about a claim that she had sex with Trump. This is important because the Manhattan district attorney’s office must prove for each count that Trump had an intent to defraud—that is, the requisite mens rea (Latin for “guilty mind”), which is often a key dividing line between conduct that is criminal and could deprive someone of liberty if convicted, and conduct that is not.

Second, Pecker’s testimony put before the jury that the reason for the $130,000 payment was Trump’s presidential campaign. It wasn’t concern over personal embarrassment or the future of Trump’s television career or the possibility of upsetting his wife, Melania Trump. This is important because the government’s theory of the case is essentially that Trump committed a crime within a crime—that he falsified business records with an intent to commit another crime, or with an intent to aid or conceal the commission of another crime. For the D.A., the inclusion of the secondary crime is what elevates misdemeanor offenses for falsifying business records to felonies.

Read the whole thing.

---

Cheap Shots