WASHINGTON − While one man forcefully denounced antisemitism, declaring the millions of Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust would never be forgotten, his opponent sat in a courtroom and watched a porn star share details of their alleged sexual encounter.
The race between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, was already like no other presidential election: an 81-year-old incumbent trying to hold off his 77-year-old challenger − and predecessor − who tried to overturn the last election and is campaigning from court.
But what emerged this week was a split screen for the times, perfectly encapsulating the unprecedented and bizarre election of 2024.
“Striking is the word,” said Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “It’s so hard for us who follow presidential history to draw parallels. This is unusual. This is unique.
“We’ve never had this before.”
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On Tuesday morning, Biden warned of a “ferocious surge of antisemitism in America” as he gave the keynote address at a Holocaust remembrance ceremony before a bipartisan group of lawmakers at the Capitol. He recounted taking his children to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany when they were kids “so they could see and bear witness to the perils of indifference.”
“This ancient hatred of Jews didn’t begin with the Holocaust; it didn’t end with the Holocaust, either, or after − or even after our victory in World War II,” Biden said, as he went on to condemn a new wave of antisemitism. “It’s absolutely despicable, and it must stop.”
At the same time, Trump sat for the 13th day of his hush money trial in New York as a new witness was welcomed to the stand: Stormy Daniels, a porn star who says she had a sexual exchange with Trump in 2006. Her story is at the heart of 34 felony counts Trump faces on accusations of falsifying business records.
Daniels described in vivid detail a sexual encounter at a Lake Tahoe hotel. Daniels, who was then 27 years old, said Trump greeted her at his suite wearing silk or satin pajamas that reminded her of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner’s famous attire.
She told Trump to change clothes, and he obliged. She testified that Trump asked her whether she had any sexually transmitted diseases. She said she did not. At one point during the exchange, Daniels spanked Trump with a magazine, she said, before they later had unprotected sex.
“I do think there are some things that would have been better left unsaid,” Judge Juan Merchan later said, though refusing the defense team’s request for a mistrial.
Trump: ‘I should be campaigning right now’
On the one hand, the contrast of a president on the job versus a former president in trial is one that seems to clearly favor Biden.
“There’s just no doubt that you have an ex-president who’s in court being accused by his former lover, a porn star. That just doesn’t seem to work its way into a good bumper sticker,” Perry said. Compare that image to Biden, who she said looked “presidential” with his address.
Yet Trump long ago upended conventional wisdom in politics. And his trial in New York has allowed him to play victim, decrying “election interference” by his political foes.
“I should be out campaigning right now,” Trump said after Tuesday’s day in court. Instead, he said, “I’m stuck. I’m here.”
After Biden concluded his remarks Tuesday, he and others in the audience held black and white photos of Holocaust victims. The president then returned to the White House, where he held a bilateral meeting with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis.
The stark split screen − between two presidential candidates in vastly different circumstances − continued over the following days.
Trump returned to his Mar-a-Lago Florida home, where he spent his day off from court Wednesday doing fundraising activities, which according to Axios included spending time with supporters who spent thousands of dollars buying digital Trump trading cards.
Meanwhile, Biden traveled Wednesday to Racine, Wisconsin. There, he trolled Trump over an announcement for a $3.3 billion Microsoft artificial intelligence data center, set for the same site of a failed project by tech manufacturer Foxconn that Trump once hailed as the “eighth wonder of the world.”
It was back to the courtroom for Trump on Thursday, for Day 14 of the hush-money trial, where this time Trump’s defense team got their chance to cross-examine Daniels, who received payments totaling $130,000 to keep quiet about he sexual encounter with Trump before the 2016 election.
Trump attorney Susan Necheles suggested Daniels made up her story of having sex with Trump, prompting Daniels to shoot back: “If that story was untrue, I would have written it to be a lot better.”
Will the hush money trial have any impact on the election?
As the latest Daniels court appearance unfolded, Biden dealt with the international blowback from an interview with CNN Wednesday night in which, for the first time, he vowed to stop supplying Israel with certain weapons if it moves forward with a full-scale invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza.
In the afternoon, he carried out a traditional presidential ritual − meeting with the WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces − before boarding Air Force One to head to California for a high-dollar campaign fundraiser.
Since Trump’s trial began, Biden has only once publicly made reference to it, joking last month that the former president is “busy right now.”
Although his reelection campaign hasn’t focused on the details of his Trump’s case, Biden’s team is embracing the optics as they argue Trump has been slow to organize his campaign in key swing states.
“Over the next month, the split screen between our two campaigns is only going to sharpen,” said Dan Kanninen, the Biden campaign’s battleground states director. “While Trump is stuck in New York or hiding at Mar-a-Lago, we’re expanding and deepening our reach in every critical battleground state.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden is focused on his job when asked how the president is consuming the details of Trump’s trial.
“The president is really busy. Obviously, he probably catches up during the day, like many of us here. But, look, the president is going to focus on the American people,” she said Tuesday, declining to detail his tracking of the hush money trial. “Can’t speak to that.”
At one time, it looked as if Trump could face multiple trials before the November election. But he has benefited from this week’s postponements in the classified documents federal case tried in Florida and his criminal case in Georgia.
Now, it’s possible the New York hush money case will be Trump’s only trial before the election − and some are skeptical its outcome will have any effect on the election, regardless of the verdict.
Veteran pollster Frank Luntz, in an interview with CNN, said swing voters in the battleground states who will decide the election aren’t likely to be swayed by the trial.
“If you’re a Joe Biden supporter, you think Donald Trump is guilty. If you’re a Donald Trump supporter, you think this is all ridiculous,” Luntz said, adding that while Trump is weaker than when the trial started, he doesn’t anticipate any “meaningful, measurable impact” on public opinion.
“These are people who look at the economy. They prioritize inflation, immigration and abortion, more than anything else,” he said of key undecided voters. “And the trial to them is a distraction. In the end, what happens in May is not going to determine what happens in October and, more importantly, in November.”
Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.