Biden ordered advisers to step up attacks on Trump’s inflammatory comments

(CNN) — US President Joe Biden has ordered his top campaign advisers in recent days to focus more aggressively on former President Donald Trump’s inflammatory comments, according to two sources familiar with the presidential order.

The goal of Biden’s directive, his senior staff has been told, is to significantly boost the campaign’s efforts to highlight the “crazy shit” that Trump says publicly, according to the sources.

The president’s announcement, which has not been previously reported, appears to indicate that Biden himself believes that his potential Republican rival must be portrayed as unhinged and unfit for office. For weeks, her campaign has said she is fully prepared to be the Republican nominee for Trump.

The president’s re-election team has long focused on highlighting what the black-and-white contrasts between Biden and Trump say when it comes to their temperaments and worldviews. Biden campaign advisers say alerting voters to what another four years under Trump’s presidency might look like is critical to his overall election strategy, from foreign policy across the board to reproductive rights to protecting institutions. Democracy.

That strategy is largely driven by widespread concern among Biden advisers that too many voters seem to have forgotten what they see as some of the most outrageous and unacceptable moments of Trump’s presidency. As one senior campaign adviser said recently, he’s surprised how many voters paint “bright” things when they look back on the Trump years, a reality campaigns say they should change by constantly reminding voters that Trump what’s that. .

“The president knows that the stakes this November could not be more important to the American people,” Biden campaign rapid response director Ammar Moussa said in a statement to CNN. “Donald Trump is the polar opposite of everything President Biden has stood for and accomplished since taking office, and the campaign’s top priority over the next nine months is showing voters that tough choice.”

The president ordered his top advisers in recent weeks, but did so before the release this month of special counsel Robert Hurr’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents, according to one of the sources. Hurr did not press charges, but he stoked political fire by describing the president as an old man with memory problems in his lengthy report.

If Biden’s team decides to highlight Trump’s most inflammatory statements more strongly, the campaign has had ample opportunities to do so in recent weeks.

Trump said this month that he would encourage Russia to invade countries that do not meet their NATO obligations, worrying US and foreign officials alike.

The campaign was quick to release a statement from Biden.

“Donald Trump’s admission that he wants to give Putin the green light for more war and violence, to continue his brutal assault on a free Ukraine and expand his aggression against the people of Poland and the Baltic states is appalling and dangerous,” he said. President. “Freedom and democracy itself will be in the November election.”

According to a campaign official, it was the second time that a statement from the Biden campaign was directly attributed to the president. The first time was in December, when the president pointed to the eighth anniversary of Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban,” which the president said was “cruel” and “betrayed America’s long history of welcoming people of all faiths.”

Two days later, Biden himself sharply criticized Trump for those comments in White House statements.

“No other president in our history has bowed down to a Russian dictator,” Biden said in a speech that included some of his harshest criticism of Trump’s foreign policy. “Let me say this as plainly as I can: I never would. For God’s sake, it’s bullshit. It’s shameful. It’s dangerous. “It’s un-American.”

The next day, the campaign rebuked Trump after the former president repeated a threat he had made to NATO members. The email, sent with the subject line: “If you think Trump is joking about NATO: He’s not,” said that no one should be fooled into thinking Trump was just “joking.”

And when Trump appeared to mock his Republican rival Nikki Haley’s husband, a National Guardsman, for his deployment overseas (“What happened to your husband? Where is he? Where has he gone,” Trump quipped at a campaign rally), Biden was quick to criticize. Curry. Those comments in X.

“The answer is that Major Haley is overseas, serving his country right now. “We know you think our soldiers are ‘dumb,’ but this guy won’t accept service to his country if he slaps,” Biden’s post read.