As a slew of Republicans went to the hush-money trial to show their fealty to their boss, the president tried to rise above it<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Donald Trump last week turned his New York fraud trial into a political circus and a platform for his election campaign while Joe Biden struggled to persuade voters that they\u2019re wrong about the economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump engineered a parade of leading Republicans to demonstrate their allegiance outside the courthouse in downtown Manhattan even as his trial laid bare the swamp that is the former US president\u2019s professional and personal life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, Biden has spent the trial trying to get Americans to pay attention to his claim to have done much more for the economy than Trump ever managed, even though polls show many voters do not believe it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump has been obliged to sit in silence through his trial for allegedly falsifying business records to claim that $130,000 in hush money paid to the porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election, after she claimed to have had sex with the then businessman a decade earlier, were legal expenses. A gag order has forced Trump to curb his natural inclination to attack the judge, the judge\u2019s family, the prosecutor and the leading witness against him, his former lawyer Michael Cohen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Trump worked his way around the order, while demonstrating the strength of his grip on the Republican party, by summoning a parade of Washington politicians to stand in front of the court and say what he could not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some had their strings yanked with hints that their names are in the pot of potential vice-presidential candidates. Others calculated that it was good politics to make sure constituents know they remain loyal to Trump<\/p>\n\n\n\n
JD Vance, the US senator and bestselling author who is reputedly a leading contender for the vice-presidential slot despite once having described Trump as \u201can idiot\u201d, made an appearance on Monday to back the former president\u2019s claim that the trial is an attempt to stop him running against Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s going on inside that courtroom is a threat to American democracy,\u201d he declared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vance later described the case against Trump as a \u201cpaperwork violation\u201d and said he was \u201cconvinced the main goal of this trial is psychological torture\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The US senators Tommy Tuberville and Rick Scott of Florida joined the parade of genuflecting politicians along with the governor of North Dakota and the attorneys general of Texas, Alabama and Iowa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the prize for Trump was surely the arrival of Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, one of the most powerful people in Washington. Johnson rode to court in Trump\u2019s motorcade and then told the world that the prosecution was a \u201csham\u201d and that Cohen was \u201con a mission for personal revenge\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo one should believe a word he says in there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inevitably, the former president could not resist belittling those who did his bidding while celebrating his defiance of the judge\u2019s order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI do have a lot of surrogates, and they are speaking very beautifully,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, with Trump in the dock, Biden has been trying to shift attention to his claim to have revived the US economy<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The president taunted his predecessor earlier this month by visiting an empty Wisconsin field where Trump once waved a golden shovel<\/a> and announced construction of the \u201ceighth wonder of the world\u201d, a huge electronics factory by the Taiwanese company Foxconn that would have created 13,000 jobs. But even though Trump\u2019s administration spent more than $500m to pave the way for the project, including bulldozing scores of homes and farms, it was never built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The site in Racine sat barren for years, an embarrassing reminder of Trump\u2019s failed promises. Biden stood on the same spot and announced that Microsoft will spend $3bn to construct an artificial intelligence datacenter in Racine, bringing thousands of jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a political stunt intended to highlight that Biden has done more to create jobs and improve the economy than Trump. The problem for the president is that the voters don\u2019t feel it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A recent Financial Times poll\u2002<\/a>found that 58% of voters disapproved of Biden\u2019s handling of the economy. Just 28% said the president improved it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Biden can claim to have created more manufacturing jobs, to have invested in ramping up tech manufacturing and to have spent more than his predecessor on renewing the US\u2019s ageing roads, bridges and other infrastructure, most voters say they are primarily concerned about inflation. Large numbers of Americans continue to barely scrape by financially. Rising prices have forced more deeper into debt, and healthcare companies continue to take a bigger chunk of workers\u2019 pay even as their medical insurance pays an ever small slice of the bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Biden\u2019s response is to say the numbers are wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019ve already turned it around \u2026 the polling data has been wrong all along,\u201d he told<\/a> CNN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Biden\u2019s campaign is instead putting its faith in a different set of numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As expected, Trump won with nearly 80% of the vote in the Republican presidential primary in Maryland on Tuesday. But Nikki Haley took more than 20% even though she dropped out of the race more than two months ago. Similar results in other swing state primaries, including Wisconsin, Georgia and Michigan, could be bad news for Trump even though polls say he is ahead in most of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Democrats think that for all Trump\u2019s bluster, the trial reminds voters of his considerable personal shortcomings and that is having an impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n