David Axelrod, who served as a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama, said that an appearance by President Joe Biden‘s campaign this week at former President Donald Trump‘s hush money trial backfired, noting that he was not sure it “redounded to their benefit.”
On Tuesday, during closing arguments in Trump’s hush money trial in New York, the Biden-Harris campaign held a press conference outside of the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse where actor Robert De Niro spoke and clashed with Trump supporters.
Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, became the first former president to stand trial in the criminal case. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted the former president in March 2023 on charges of falsifying business records relating to hush money paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels by his then-lawyer Michael Cohen during his 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels had alleged she had an affair with Trump in 2006, which he has denied. The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges and said the case is politically motivated.
“It was quite a lurch, wasn’t it,” Axelrod said of the Biden campaign’s appearance outside the courthouse in an appearance on CNN on Wednesday. “I mean the president has been very, very assiduous about not engaging … And then they turn up on the last day of the trial and kind of wade into this kind of weird reality show that has been life outside the court. I’m not sure it redounded to their benefit. Why they did it? Maybe they wanted to put their stamp on what they expected to happen in this trial.”
