These were the images presented to the American people on Tuesday for two choices for president: one who would take his grandchildren to Dachau to testify to the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps; Star sitting on a hotel bed in boxer shorts waiting for sex with porn.
President Biden's nationally televised address on Holocaust remembrance comes at the exact moment former President Donald J. Trump is facing Stormy Daniels' testimony about her failed sex marriage in court. It was probably a cosmic coincidence.
But the surreal synchronicity of disparate events that occurred 182 days before the election captures the sometimes surreal reality of an unprecedented presidential election, simultaneously profound and sordid, with grave consequences. It brought a circus-like surround sound with accompanying conflict. A country facing two wars abroad and campus unrest at home is also being asked to unravel the unseemly details of antics between married men and women who had sex in front of professional cameras. There is.
This may not have been what the founders had in mind when they took office. While Mr. Biden's speech at the Capitol condemned the “virulent rise in anti-Semitism,” the internet feed provided updates on Mr. Daniels' particular sex positions. Trump speculated. However, 2024 will be no different; it will be a year of twists and turns that defies history and imagination.
Mr. Biden has provided presidential leadership during a time of national trauma and has taken on more traditional, if not negligible, challenges. He has faced criticism from the left wing of his party for not doing more to curb Israel's war in Gaza, but he used the annual commemoration ceremony to highlight the He wanted to link the murder of 6 million Jews to the murder of 1,200 people during World War II. Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel on October 7th.
It was a speech with lofty historical flourishes and deeply personal reminiscences, designed to evoke “our common humanity” while “heeding the lessons of one of the darkest chapters in human history.” there were. He said that when he was young, his father taught him about the Shoah, or Holocaust, over dinner, and as he grew older, he passed those lessons on to his children and their children's children.
“I want you all to know,” Biden said, addressing the Jewish community directly in the Capitol's Emancipation Hall. As President, let me reassure you that you are not alone. You belong. You always have and always will. ”
Mr. Trump's challenge is very different from previous ones, with Mr. Trump sitting silently and sulking as Mr. Daniels finally, years later, testifies against Mr. Trump in a lawsuit that could lead to his imprisonment. I was forced to listen. Under oath, Daniels has long denied any sexual contact, saying he was paid $130,000 to keep quiet, but under oath he shared one vivid recollection after another.
When she arrived for dinner in July 2006, he wore satin pajamas and talked about his job at a “company that required condoms” and how he had tested negative for sexually transmitted infections. He listened dissatisfied. At the time, he was 60 and she was 27, just three years older than her daughter Ivanka. In fact, she testified, he told her, “When I look at you, I think of my daughter. She's smart and blonde and beautiful and people underestimate her too.'' was called “Honey Bunch”.
Daniels said Trump's lawyers and even the judge were overthinking the details, including the encounter itself and how she entered the bathroom and found Trump on the bed with “a large amount of clothing on.” I dug into quite a bit of detail. “I stood up so quickly I could almost feel the blood draining from my hands and feet,” she said. “I thought, 'Oh my god, what did I misread to come here?'” Still, she took off her clothes and “the next thing I knew, I was on the bed. ”
Although other presidents have been embroiled in public sex scandals, no president has ever faced his accusers in court. The closest predicate would be the highly graphic testimony that independent counsel Ken Starr's prosecutors extracted from Monica S. Lewinsky in 1998 about her relationship with President Bill Clinton. However, it took place behind closed doors in front of a grand jury and was later communicated to the public through minutes.
The House of Representatives, which had impeached Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice for concealing the incident, never called Lewinsky to testify. When the Senate held the trial, leaders of both parties were so sensitive about public discussion of sexuality that they arranged for her removal from office in private. Lawyers for both sides were then allowed to release only carefully edited, less salacious snippets from her interview.
There were no such redactions in the Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday.
The contrast between the two presidents on display on this particular day was as stark as can be imagined, but it may not necessarily surprise many Americans.
Today's voters have known Daniels' account and the stories of many other women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct for years, and many voters, for better or worse, have known these allegations against Trump. This has been factored into my judgment regarding him for many years. In fact, he was found guilty by a jury last year in a civil sexual abuse case against E. Jean Carroll, but it had no meaningful effect on his poll numbers.
Daniels' testimony was not broadcast, so Americans were forced to absorb her story through reporters on TV, radio, online or in print, which may have less power to shock the nation. Mr. Trump, through her lawyers and social media accounts, did everything he could to divert attention from her alleged infidelity to the unfairness of the case against him.
Mr. Biden, on the other hand, made no mention of the events in New York and spoke gloomily, raising the ghosts of Elie Wiesel, Raoul Wallenberg and Tom Lantos. His anger over support for Israel's war is real and poses a political threat to him in a close race where small changes in a nation in crisis can make a big difference.
Of course he knew that. And of course he knew what his opponent was doing that day. The president said what needed to be said and returned to the White House. The campaign, which focused on brutality and injustice, ended on another day with 181 cases remaining.
