Former Obama adviser David Axelrod questioned the Biden campaign’s decision to hold a press conference with Robert De Niro and two Jan. 6 Capitol Police officers outside the Manhattan courthouse where former President Trump’s hush money trial is taking place.
In De Niro's remarks, in which he claimed that Donald Trump would destroy New York City, the USA, and the world, the actor went off script and admitted he was fearmongering.
But in addition to De Niro's over-the-top rhetoric, Axelrod pointed out in a CNN op-ed that “the scene quickly devolved into a shouting match between De Niro and a small crowd of hecklers who roasted him as he roasted Trump," which is great for SNL material but not so much for the Biden campaign.
Fingers were pointed between De Niro and the Trump-loving hecklers. F-bombs flew. And those images and De Niro’s impulse to plunge into the legal fray hours before the case would go to the jury became the story.
Who thought this was a good idea?
I love De Niro’s work and agree with many of his comments. But given the arm’s length distance the White House has kept from the whole sordid mess at 100 Centre Street, they seemed grossly ill-timed. (It’s also a little bewildering why Team Biden, struggling with younger voters, cast De Niro as its point man here. After all, nothing speaks to Gen Z more than yet another octogenarian.)
Navigating Trump’s legal thicket has been a challenge for Biden from the start. But Tuesday’s odd exhibition was a head-spinning lurch from the arm’s length, above-the-fray position he has struck to date. It came as the Biden campaign began running an ominous ad, narrated by De Niro, going right at Trump’s trials, character and autocratic impulses, and at a time when anxious Democrats ponder battleground state polls marginally tilted in Trump’s favor. (CNN)
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The Democrat strategist concluded that the Biden campaign wouldn't been better off without the presser.
"[W]hoever at Biden HQ directed De Niro’s performance Tuesday probably should have left it on the cutting room floor," he said.
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