Joe Biden faces historic challenges when he enters the White House on Jan. 20: a raging pandemic, persistently high unemployment, simmering tensions with China and Russia — and a predecessor who won\u2019t go away.<\/p>\n
Aware of the chaos and distraction Donald Trump has proved he can muster, the president-elect and his advisers have developed a strategy they believe is the only way to neutralize the threat: ignore him.<\/p>\n
One lesson of Biden\u2019s winning presidential campaign, they say, is that there\u2019s little incentive to engage with Trump, and that his penchant for spectacle is wearing thin with the American people. The tension will reach a head on Jan. 6, when Congress formally ratifies Biden\u2019s victory as Trump\u2019s supporters wage protests both on the streets of Washington, egged on by the president, and within the House and Senate. <\/p>\n
Biden has been \u201cadamant that we were not going to get down in the gutter with Donald Trump every day,\u201d said adviser Kate Bedingfield. \u201cThat\u2019s not who he is, and that\u2019s not what the American people want to see in a president.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the incoming administration is going to have trouble ignoring Trump, who\u2019s poised to remain at least an aggravation to Biden. After refusing to concede defeat and declaring the election he lost to be illegitimate, he\u2019s made clear he doesn\u2019t plan to quietly retire, and has told associates he\u2019ll run for president again in 2024.<\/p>\n
For generations, U.S. presidents leaving the office to a successor of the opposition party have yielded power gracefully — even those defeated for re-election after a single term. But Trump\u2019s attitude has set up the most awkward transfer of power in modern history, and threatens to hamstring Biden as he confronts a long list of crises.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is unprecedented territory,\u201d said Steve Israel, a former eight-term Democratic congressman from New York and director of the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University. \u201cWe\u2019ve never had a former president who is dedicated to the proposition of the failure of his successor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Biden\u2019s team regards Trump\u2019s attempts to overturn the will of voters — including his effort to recruit Republican lawmakers to challenge congressional certification of the election results on Wednesday — as doing more harm to the outgoing president\u2019s legacy than to Biden.<\/p>\n
And they believe there are already signs that Trump\u2019s bully pulpit and ability to command public attention is eroding, including waning media coverage of his election-related antics and congressional Republicans\u2019 willingness to buck the president in recent legislative battles, including the first override of a Trump veto. <\/p>\n
GOP Senators Led by Cruz Will Oppose Biden\u2019s Certification<\/p>\n
But Biden\u2019s strategy to deprive Trump of attention will likely face frequent and immediate tests.<\/p>\n
The outgoing president, sensing that his remaining power lies with still-formidable base supporters, has spent recent weeks threatening Republican lawmakers who dare to cross him.<\/p>\n
Trump has repeatedly emphasized that he captured 74 million votes, a record for a defeated presidential candidate, and asserted that his presence on the ballot helped Republicans win election and re-election to federal offices.<\/p>\n
\u201cRepublicans in the Senate so quickly forget,\u201d he tweeted on Dec. 22. \u201cRight now they would be down 8 seats without my backing them in the last Election.\u201d In the same post, Trump predicted that John Thune, the number two Senate Republican, would lose a 2022 GOP primary challenge, \u201cpolitical career over!!!\u201d<\/p>\n
After Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recognized Biden\u2019s victory and encouraged his members to avoid a messy fight over certifying the vote, a White House aide circulated a graphic to lawmakers on Capitol Hill suggesting the Kentucky Republican captured his seventh term thanks to Trump\u2019s endorsement.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s gravitational pull over Republicans has only been strengthened by his prolific fundraising since Election Day. His campaign announced it had banked $207.5 million in the two months following the president\u2019s defeat, after anemic fundraising relative to Biden before votes were cast.<\/p>\n
Trump has also persuaded a band of conservative lawmakers to contest Congress\u2019s certification of the election results on Wednesday, which is usually a pro forma affair. Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, said last week he\u2019d join many House Republicans who already planned to object to the certification of electoral college votes from several battleground states. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas led ten other lawmakers on Saturday in calling for a delay in Biden\u2019s certification and making other demands. <\/p>\n
The actions by Hawley, Cruz and others will force congressional Republicans to go on the record as either supporting or rejecting Trump\u2019s false claims of a fraudulent vote. Cruz and Hawley have both been mentioned as potential 2024 Republican presidential candidates. <\/p>\n
Once he\u2019s departed from Washington, there\u2019s little doubt Trump will turn his attention toward tearing down Biden and attempting to undermine his presidency.<\/p>\n
While it remains to be seen whether those efforts extend beyond inflammatory posts on social media, the outgoing president possesses a talent for manipulating the media and grabbing attention with tweets, even when they\u2019re plainly untrue. He channeled White racial and economic grievances into one successful presidential campaign and a close loss for re-election, and is likely to try to turn those same cultural forces against the new president.<\/p>\n
In Biden\u2019s transition office, staffers have barely discussed Trump\u2019s efforts to sow discord. The battle against the coronavirus eclipsed all other issues during the presidential campaign — diminishing the effect of Trump\u2019s mud-slinging — and Biden\u2019s advisers expect health and economic issues to remain top of mind for lawmakers and voters. <\/p>\n
\u201cMembers of Congress have to deal with their constituencies in real time,\u201d said former Senator Chris Dodd, a Biden campaign adviser. \u201cThe majority will come around to trying to get something done. Just providing an echo chamber for criticism doesn\u2019t strike me as being terribly good politics.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the Biden team believes there\u2019s evidence Trump\u2019s grip on American politics is already weakening. The annual defense policy bill, which became law on Friday after the Senate joined the House in handily overriding Trump\u2019s veto, is an example. <\/p>\n
Trump also tried unsuccessfully to pressure lawmakers to increase the amount of money provided to Americans in a pandemic relief bill that passed Congress last month. The president eventually signed the measure even though his demands weren\u2019t met, and only after a damaging delay. <\/p>\n
There\u2019s also a sense among Biden\u2019s aides that Trump\u2019s increasingly outlandish claims and his inability to accept defeat are eroding his standing — in effect, trading attention in the short term for respect and a legacy in the long term.<\/p>\n
The president\u2019s effort to attack the legitimacy of Biden\u2019s election has been rejected by courts across the country and become a running joke in popular culture. Mainstream media coverage has focused on the many false claims and missteps by Trump and his legal team, as well as dissent by top officials including former Attorney General William Barr, who departed in December after declaring that the Justice Department had seen no evidence of widespread fraud.<\/p>\n
Trump has even begun to shed followers on his most important mouthpiece, Twitter, with more than 379,000 users unsubscribing from his account in the past month, according to Factba.se. Biden gained more than 2.6 million new followers in the same period.<\/p>\n
Consumed with election conspiracies, Trump has all but ignored the raging coronavirus pandemic, with its record daily cases, soaring hospitalizations and death toll that\u2019s passed 349,000 in the U.S. While he could have overseen a rapid and successful distribution of vaccines developed under his administration\u2019s \u201cOperation Warp Speed\u201d program, the pace of shots instead badly trails the 20 million doses government officials promised would be injected by the end of 2020. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s led to even more criticism of Trump\u2019s handling of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak, the issue that likely doomed his presidency. On Dec. 30, Trump pushed back, saying it was \u201cup to<\/span> the states to administer\u201d the vaccines, adding, \u201cGet moving!\u201d <\/p>\n While Biden and his aides would prefer Trump go away, some see a silver lining to his continued presence on the national stage. Trump is so toxic to Democrats of all stripes that he helps to unify a party that might otherwise be more openly squabbling over policy and political issues, such as Biden\u2019s appointments, according to one former Biden campaign official who asked not to be identified.<\/p>\n Biden himself predicted to donors in early December that \u201cas Donald Trump\u2019s shadow fades away, you\u2019re going to see an awful lot change.\u201d Biden has predicted that a bipartisan spirit can once again develop in Washington. <\/p>\n But the president-elect also allowed that he \u201cmay eat these words.\u201d Asked a few weeks later if Trump\u2019s departure would really change the political climate, Biden responded more warily.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll see,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know. I\u2019m not a fortune teller.\u201d<\/p>\n