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Joe Biden has visited every battleground state since the Super Tuesday primaries. He has also been involved in unannounced calls for negotiators to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza, among the official White House duties.
Trump held a rally in a battleground state for two-and-a-half weeks, and moved another to Ohio to save costs. He also participated in two golf tournaments at his Palm Beach club, among other activities at his club. Like lunches with potential donors to the crusade who, according to their attendees, are about to start making a lot of money.
The two oldest presidential candidates of all time are still susceptible to any mention of their own resilience or sharpness. And everyone is interested in asking who’s sleepy and who’s keeping up.
But the two weeks since their nominations were finalized show the other bets they’ve made and the other demanding situations they face.
Already this year, both have given reason to doubt the price tag of the classic campaign: Biden won No. 1 in New Hampshire as a registered candidate, though he refused to attend because of a dispute with the state over the timing of his election. Trump crushed their opposition despite being the candidate who spent the least time on the ground.
With two well-known candidates in a country more polarized than ever, no one knows how much the crusade will matter this year, especially as political operatives of all stripes seek to figure out what tactics are still in place post-pandemic.
But the past two weeks have been raw.
Biden is in the midst of his most intense in-person crusade since before Covid-19 halted the 2020 primaries, just as he clinched the Democratic nomination four years ago. He’s taking part in a post-State of the Union race that will culminate in a fundraiser at New York’s Radio City Music Hall next week, where former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are expected to help him realize what others say could become the biggest fundraising event in history.
For Biden, all this activity is a highly planned maneuver, designed to build on his hard-hitting State of the Union address and allay the concerns of most of the electorate (and many Democratic leaders) that he is not up to the task. a second term.
Outside of his ongoing court appearances, which he chose to do, Trump has remained almost entirely behind closed doors in Palm Beach, seeking to revive his overdue fundraising crusade and strategize on how to pay the $454 million bail he was ordered to post after the trial. The ruling in his civil fraud trial in New York concluded that he and his company had lied about their assets for years.
After months in which the president has come under fire for his busy schedule, Biden’s advisers are eager to highlight the contrast.
“To call what Donald Trump is doing a ‘crusade’ is to be generous, because hiding in his country club while calling for cuts to Social Security or calling on white supremacist radio hosts to spit out anti-Semitic stereotypes is not exactly an effort to touch the hearts and minds of the American people,” Biden’s crusade spokesperson stated. Ammar Moussa.
That forced Trump’s advisers to try to dismantle appearances Biden was making, such as Wednesday when campaign spokesman Steven Cheung issued a statement accusing the president of being “bored” in the middle of an event in Arizona. In his latest attempt to paint Biden as Senile, Cheung said he was “distracted by a mother and her baby. “It’s not all there, folks!”
Biden explained when he was given the microphone that he had been drawn to a baby in the crowd.
“Well, folks, I have to tell you frankly: I like you, but I couldn’t this little baby,” he said.
With a current president and former president facing off for the first time since 1892, each and every component of their crusade platforms has at least a tinge of official duties. For most of the year, Biden’s trips to promote new government-funded projects have been at full throttle in battleground states, and when he lands, he arrives with all the trappings of Air Force One. Trump has attempted to make his own presidential appearances aboard the personal jet he and his aides like to call “Trump Force One. “
This has put them in parallel conditions, such as when they traveled to the Mexican border in February. But over the past two weeks, they have also strengthened their statesmanship influence with foreign leaders whom they have invited to meet with them.
Biden hosted the Polish president at the White House to revive the case for increased investment for Ukraine, and turned the classic Irish taoiseach welcome last weekend on St. Patrick’s Day into an all-afternoon party. Trump hosted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. at his Mar-a-Lago home, which the media described as a friendly gathering that ended with Trump praising the authoritarian before members of his Mar-a-Lago club at a tribute concert.
White House aides note that Biden’s public schedule reflects only a fraction of what he does each day, and a source close to the matter says he has continued to dig into the main points of issues ranging from policy proposals on the state of the Union to classifying staff. Even on the campaign trail, a source close to him said, he continues to consult a thick informational e-book each night and comes back with questions. Another noted that Biden, after preparing late at night for days, stayed so late to greet lawmakers after the State of the Union that the House lamps began to fail.
“Basically, he’s two jobs now, whereas before he only had one, and it’s a pretty big job,” a Biden adviser said.
“There are many other people who can’t keep up with Joe Biden,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement.
The “occasions” page about the Trump campaign has been empty lately, with a note that reads “No Occasions Scheduled. “
Trump’s aides say his schedule has been disrupted by the number of appearances he has made in his numerous trials; Appearances, it should be noted, are not required in court. After spending a day last week in a Florida courtroom as part of his classified document hoarding trial, next Monday was scheduled to be the first day of the trial in New York for discreet cash bills to an adult film actress. Trump was scheduled to attend, but after the ruling on the trial delay was handed down, he will attend. a similar hearing in Manhattan that day.
After officially clinching the Republican nomination on March 12, Trump held a rally in Georgia and another in Ohio to support Senate candidate Bernie Moreno ahead of the primary. Trump doesn’t feel in danger of squandering a state he won in 8 elections in 2016. and 2020, however, resources involved in the campaign told CNN that they are concerned about the imaginable embarrassment if the candidate they endorse loses the primary (Moreno won Tuesday night).
Much of Trump’s days are spent at Trump International’s golf course, where he competed in the club’s championship last week, mingled with members and occasionally hosted donors and allies for lunch. He played golf at least once more during that period, but regularly not with those he recruits to get cash for his campaign. “His way of playing golf is too sacred” for that, one user told CNN.
But recently he spent many nights inviting donors to dinner at his Mar-a-Lago club, as well as attending personal events at the resort, adding a fundraiser for the Palm Beach County Republican Party and a member’s wedding.
Trump’s advisers insisted that the pause in the election campaign be restarted before the general election began. But they acknowledge that making time for fundraising and courting donors is surely mandatory. However, many members of Trump’s team have expressed a sense of relief in recent times. Days after securing his nomination, he earned signed checks from Republican donors.
Biden travels to Pennsylvania — where he abandoned Trump in 2020 — so he has become a joke among journalists and an embarrassment or two for local Democratic leaders who have had to decide between provoking their agendas to be with him or answering why they supported him. . Upper floor. Trump visited the state once this year, for a National Rifle Association conference in Harrisburg in early February. Before that, he was last present at a rally in Erie in the fall. And while advisers insist he will prioritize the state before November, nothing has been planned lately.
The contrast is even starker in Wisconsin, another state that has shifted from Trump to Biden. Vice President Kamala Harris recently visited a space in Madison where she lived for a few years as a child and explained how connected she has felt to the And Biden was in Milwaukee last week to announce $36 million for a new bridge, open a campaign office and stay overnight. Before that, he was last there in January to announce investments for another bridge connecting part of the state to Minnesota, also funded through the Infrastructure Law.
Trump’s last visit to the state: Aug. 5, 2022.
Even Wisconsin’s top Democrats were surprised when they were told how far it was until Trump’s last visit.
“During the 2020 election cycle, Trump visited Wisconsin 16 times. Then he lost, his favorite gubernatorial candidate lost, and his favorite Supreme Court candidate lost in a landslide,” said Ben Wikler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. As of August 2022, Trump hasn’t been to Wisconsin once. To quote the old movie “Dodgeball,” it’s an ambitious strategy. Let’s see if it will pay off.
On Wednesday, Biden was in Arizona to announce $8. 5 billion for a new Intel chip processing plant outside Phoenix, a state he visited twice in the second half of last year. Trump was making plans for a vacation in the state, which Biden won with just 10,457 votes in 2020, last weekend, the same day he held his rally in Ohio. But those plans were scrapped after he clinched the presidential nomination, and two appeals raised a preference for saving money and attending a more politically advantageous opportunity in Ohio to mobilize Moreno.
But that means Trump’s last trip to Arizona will be on Oct. 9, 2022.
Those involved in drawing up plans say Trump is expected to resume campaigning in the next two weeks, with stops most likely in key battleground states. His aides also implemented a broader strategy of deploying senior officials and other surrogates while he waits for him to make a decision. about a vice presidential candidate.
And Trump intends to arrange a combination of occasions when Republican officials and other dignitaries come to him, either at his Mar-a-Lago resort or during his summer stay in Bedminster, New Jersey, a Trump adviser said, as well as trips to battlefields. . States.
Trump will never board a plane to fill the void.
Although he has conducted all of his recent interviews from Mar-a-Lago with largely sympathetic media outlets, many of his public statements have kept him in the news through cycles of outrage that he is adept at overcoming. His growing number of legal battles – involving indictments, hearings and court appearances – have also kept him in the spotlight, occupying hours of unpaid press.
Biden is counting on the impact of local media politics as he travels to states to announce new investments and projects. He gave more interviews than Trump, but because they were given to local media and caused less outrage, they didn’t get the same kind of attention.
But it seeks to accentuate this. Biden has asked his more sensible advisers to give him a list of Trump’s excessive comments, according to a source close to the campaign, and will inject new complaints into it at the appropriate time. Among the examples he cites are Trump’s claims that immigrants are poisoning the blood of Americans, his advice for cutting Social Security, and his praise of authoritarians.
CNN’s Jeff Zeleny, Fredreka Schouten, Alayna Treene and Kate Sullivan contributed to this report.
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