Biden avoids wading into Trump impeachment debate

The searing images once more claimed center stage: a mob storming the U.S. Capitol, Trump flags placed aloft as violent rioters fought with law enforcement and targeted lawmakers.

But mainly because the traumatic video from Jan. 6 grips visitors of the impeachment trial of ex - President Donald Trump, there is one place where, publicly, the trial is being studiously ignored: the White House.

President Joe Biden stressed to reporters beforehand that he would not be watching the proceedings and his team’s message is sharp: Their concentration is on the business enterprise of governing rather than the historic situations unfolding at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki has dodged query after question about the trial, declining to provide Biden’s judgment on the proceedings. And Biden’s calendar this week is intended as counterprogramming to the trial: events centered on getting help to those enduring amid the COVID-19 pandemic and bolstering vaccine distribution to regulate the virus.

The message discipline reflects both the political and practical realities of the moment for the president.

Privately, White House aides remember that the president would gain little politically from weighing in over the trial and that all comment he makes would draw the focus from his predecessor’s misconduct and onto Biden’s own views.

And they tell you that, on a practical level, staying above the fray allows Biden to focus on his COVID-19 relief package and remain on cordial conditions with Republicans as he tries to steer the $1.9 trillion bill through Congress.

“Presidents possess their peak political capital soon after they’re elected, plus they want to decide what to spend it all on. Containing COVID is normally President Biden’s No. 1 priority, so I don’t think it’s a surprise that that’s where the focus has been and can remain until that bundle has passed,” said previous Obama marketing campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt.

LaBolt also noted that if Democrats' ultimate aim is to gain GOP support for indicting the president, it's unlikely that “having President Biden out at this time there continuing to create statements about impeachment would serve that work.”

Among most Biden aides, there is a sense that the president should weigh in towards the end of the trial, especially if an predicted acquittal prompts Trump to break his silence and additional inflame a deeply divided nation.

For now, however, the White House’s public method of the proceedings has been: Impeachment? What impeachment?

“I am not,” Biden stated when asked if he would be viewing the trial. “Look, I told you before: I tell persons that I have employment. ... The Senate offers their job plus they are about to start it, and I am sure they are going to conduct themselves very well. And that’s all I am going to need to say about impeachment.”

Psaki sometimes has all but twisted herself in knots at the White House podium to dodge saying a lot of anything about the trial, simply discussing Biden’s previous condemnations of the Jan. 6 riot and past criticisms of Trump.

“Joe Biden may be the president. He’s not really a pundit. He’s not going to opine on back-and-forth arguments, nor is he enjoying them,” she explained Tuesday.

On Wednesday, she insisted that Biden would “not be a commentator” and would instead concentrate on jump-starting the vaccination plan and getting his COVID-19 relief bill through Congress.

Biden’s schedule this week echoes that communication.

He met with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and organization leaders on Tuesday to push for his monetary recovery bundle. On Wednesday, he released sanctions on Myanmar's military regime in the wake of the coup there and visited the Pentagon. On Thursday, he prepared a vacation to the National Institutes of Overall health to discuss the nation’s vaccination program.

White House aides knew the president’s events will be overshadowed by the proceedings on the well of the Senate, but wished to be sure to show Biden functioning and driving residential the contrast with his predecessor on trial.

It's all commensurate with Biden’s overall approach to Trump throughout the 2020 plan: Avoid getting bogged down in each new strike or controversy from the president and stay focused on his own overarching message about a go back to competent leadership found in the White House. In addition, it displays a belief among White House aides that the chattering classes in Washington and on Twitter tend to be far taken off the realities of every day Americans.

“I think the largest news story for most Americans gets the virus in order, and President Biden shows, both on the advertising campaign trail and in the White House, that his concentration is what the American persons are waking up considering every day,” LaBolt said.

With the Senate occupied by impeachment, White House legislative affairs staffers were dealing with House committee customers on crafting the large COVID-19 legislation.

But while the administration’s outward concentration was on the pandemic, the trial was inescapable within the West Wing.

The televisions mounted on office walls were tuned to cable news stations broadcasting the proceedings all night at a time. Aides kept one another modified and briefed the president. And preliminary do the job was underway for Biden to weigh in at the end of the trial in order to lower the heat range of a divided nation overheated by Trump.

Biden’s public silence through the trial was echoed by Trump, whose Twitter accounts has got been suspended and who followed aides' advice to keep a minimal profile for fear of endangering an acquittal.

In Trump’s previous impeachment, this past year, he relentlessly weighed in on the trial on Twitter and blended in a variety of events. The last president to be impeached, Bill Clinton, as well made a present of focusing on his day task, scheduling a flurry of situations contrary the 1999 trial that ended up bettering his approval ratings.

The clearest historical precedent for the moment where Biden finds himself could be that of President Gerald Ford wanting to unify the nation after the damaging Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon's resignation. Like Biden, Ford sought to move the country past his predecessor in part by ignoring him and concentrating on his own agenda. In a approach that was controversial at that time but one that presidential historian Jeff Engel explained was finally seen as good for the national disposition, Ford pardoned Nixon.

Engel suggested that Biden continue steadily to focus his communication on Americans, instead of wade into fights on Capitol Hill.

“Joe Biden, I think, will by his very nature feel accountable for and talk with Americans of all stripes," he said. “That’s not going to cure our concerns by any measure, nonetheless it provides a balm, in the event that you will, to allow what to quiet down.”