Milwaukee
CNN
—
With Joe Biden at his worst, Donald Trump will achieve his greatest feat yet.
The 78-year-old former president accepted the Republican nomination on Thursday, marking one of the most stunning comebacks in political history after a conviction, an unprecedented criminal conviction and an assassination attempt following a plot to rig the 2020 election.
Meanwhile, Biden, 81, is reeling from the Democratic revolt. Concerns are rising again about whether he can beat his 2020 opponent amid concerns among lawmakers about his health and cognitive health, and desperation about whether he can thwart Trump’s possible reelection. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently told the president that polls show Biden cannot beat Trump and that continuing the campaign could dash Democrats’ hopes of taking the House, a source told CNN on Wednesday.
After being dormant for months, the race for the White House suddenly erupted in a tumultuous three weeks of events not seen in a half-century, sandwiched between Biden’s stunning debate performance and an assassination attempt on President Trump.
The 45th president’s comeback will only be fully realized if he becomes just the second one-term president to return to the White House in November. But his comeback so far seems even more unlikely than his unexpected victory in the 2016 election. His return to the top of the Republican field means that Trump is no longer just an outlier, but is shaping up to be a historic political force that, for better or worse, has completely transformed the party and could do the same for the country if he returns to the White House on January 20, 2025.
The campaign that Trump painted as a contest of strengths and weaknesses is going better than Republicans ever imagined with less than four months to go until Election Day.
Republicans are praising their candidate who dodged bullets from an assassination attempt, rose bloodied and raised his fist in a vow to “fight on.” By contrast, Biden suspended his campaign activities on Wednesday and returned to his Delaware home after contracting COVID-19.
Fresh off a prime-time television audience at Tuesday’s convention, Trump convincing his defeated primary opponents to pledge their loyalty — the most spectacular display of superiority of any modern political party — Biden is clashing with lawmakers who warn he is losing control of his party, risking losing the White House, the Senate and three House seats, and party leaders like Rep. Adam Schiff of California have publicly said he should step aside.
The electoral map reflects the diverging fortunes of the two candidates. Trump is leading in most national polls and has an advantage in battleground states. The situation is not yet irreparable for Biden, but most analysts believe his path to winning the 270 electoral votes in the blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin is limited. The Biden campaign maintains it is not giving up in other states.
The presidential election will be decided by the votes of millions of Americans in the fall. It’s not a snapshot of the relative fortunes of the July campaign. And Trump’s apparent momentum may have been inflated by a convention showcasing a party that has purged all dissent in an eight-year political purge. The former president remains deeply unpopular nationwide, with millions of Americans despising his cult of personality, his record of racist rhetoric and his authoritarian instincts. But that’s one reason his campaign has refrained from attacking him in the hope that Biden will carry on the campaign.
The growing threat to the Biden campaign isn’t coming from pundits, but from deep within the party, from lawmakers and donors who fear a Republican landslide victory in November.
Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty Images
President Joe Biden gestures to reporters as he disembarks from Air Force One upon arriving at Dover Air Force Base on July 17, 2024.
With Democrats on the brink of internal division, Trump’s Republican Party is showing rare discipline and unity, fueled by a growing confidence among delegates here in Milwaukee that the former president will return to the White House.
Having survived the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, Trump’s campaign has used the aftermath to try to renew his image and portray his four years in power as an idyllic time of peace and prosperity. They are trying to erase memories of his attempts to subvert democracy to stay in power, as well as the chaos, hostility and attacks on the constitutional order that characterized his presidency, which ended with his supporters rioting at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and led to his second impeachment.
Republicans paint a picture of a nation in economic decline that is bankrupt, plagued by crime and illegal immigration, and despised by the world. This picture is highly subjective. Americans still suffer from high prices, but inflation is not as high as it used to be, crime rates are down, and unemployment is near an all-time low. The economy is outperforming other developed countries, and Trump thwarted attempts to ease the immigration crisis by ruining bipartisan legislation that could have addressed the border problem. And in perhaps the boldest bait-and-switch move, the party led by the man who has always bowed to President Vladimir Putin is accusing Biden of being weak on Russia for reinvigorating NATO and standing up to the Kremlin’s onslaught against Ukraine.
Image-making was taken to a new level by a speech given at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night by Trump’s new running mate, J.D. Vance. The Republican senator from Ohio spun a fable of national redemption from the horrific scene in Pennsylvania where Trump had fallen to the ground and then emerged bruised but unbowed.
“Look at the video of the would-be assassin within a quarter of an inch of taking your life,” Vance told the captivated delegates. “Think of the lies they told about Donald Trump. Then look at this photo of him with his fist raised and defiant. When Donald J. Trump stood up on that field in Pennsylvania, all of America stood up with him.”
“Donald Trump represents America’s last, greatest hope for restoring what, if lost, may never be found again.”
As Trump began to enjoy the national debut of his new protege, even as attention was focused on the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, rebellion aimed at removing Biden from the race resurfaced.
Schiff was the most high-profile Democrat to publicly call for the president to “pass the baton.” In a statement, the California Democrat said Biden’s departure would “allow him to defeat Donald Trump in the upcoming election and solidify his leadership record.” Schiff’s intervention is seen as especially important because he is running for the Senate and is very close to Pelosi, the ultimate Democratic strongman, and many in the party are counting on him to navigate the transition. But Biden pushed back, saying in a call with Pelosi that he saw polls that showed he could still win, CNN reported Wednesday.
Signals of opposition to Biden have grown as details of his sour clashes with lawmakers over the weekend have emerged. Two sources told CNN’s Dana Bash that the notable clashes also included an exchange with Rep. Jason Crow, an Iraq War veteran, in which Crow told the president that voters don’t see the election the same way he does. At one point, Biden told the Colorado Democrat to “stop giving crap,” and said he knew Crow was a Bronze Star recipient, as was his son Beau, but “he didn’t rebuild NATO.”
Another Democrat, Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, told Biden she was concerned about his standing in Bucks County, which is key to Biden’s landslide victory in the state’s November election. The president told Houlahan that Biden’s team would bring her talking points about everything he’s done for Pennsylvania, reminding her that he married “a woman from Philadelphia.”
By evening, there were new signs that Biden’s reelection effort was once again in jeopardy. ABC News reported that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer shared party members’ concerns about Biden’s campaign during a meeting at Biden’s beach house on Saturday. A spokesman for the Senate Majority Leader said in a statement that the report was “unfounded speculation.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was also at the meeting. But White House spokesman Andrew Bates said, “The president conveyed to both leaders that he is their nominee, intends to win, and looks forward to working with them to pass a 100-day package to support working families.”
Biden has publicly rejected any suggestion he should step down, despite overwhelming public concern that he may not be able to serve a full second term, which expires when he is 86 years old. He has maintained he is the favorite to take on Trump in November. But an Associated Press/University of North Carolina poll released Wednesday found that 65% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said Biden should “step down and let the party choose another candidate,” raising doubts that he may not fully grasp the fragility of his political position.
As the bad news continues to pour in for the president, a senior Democratic adviser told CNN’s Jeff Zeleny that Biden has been less defiant than he has been in public and more “receptive” in private as talks with congressional Democrats continue.
“He’s gone from saying, ‘Kamala can’t win,’ to saying, ‘Do you think Kamala can win?'” the adviser said, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris. “It remains to be seen where he’ll land, but he seems to be listening,” the source said.
The latest speculation about Biden’s future marks a brutal turn of events for a president who has spent his entire life vying for the highest office, who defied expectations by reviving a stalled primary campaign to beat Trump in 2020 and who has endured a lifetime of personal tragedy. But the president’s deterioration over the past 21 days has been fueled by his dismal appearances in the debates, where he appeared weak and at times confused, confirming the fears of many voters.
The situation is especially painful for the president because he sees his campaign in existential terms, as a fight to protect the soul of America from the deadly threat that Trump poses to democracy. The former president tested the rule of law and the limits of executive power during his four years in office and has vowed to wage a personal campaign of revenge if re-elected.
And the fact that Republicans are putting a convicted felon, who was convicted in a hush-money case in New York, lost a massive civil fraud trial and has been charged with sexual assault, as president has been largely forgotten in the surge in attention Trump has garnered after Saturday’s vicious assassination attempt.
