As I suggested on May 11, we had confirmation this week that Donald Trump and his lawyers won their bet.
The deadlines announced for the trials in Georgia and Florida will be long enough for the New York trial verdict to be the only one to bother Donald Trump between now and the November 5 election. It is therefore the voters alone who will determine the outcome of the 2024 election.
The past week also highlighted two of the heaviest burdens for Joe Biden and his strategists.
Stubborn perceptions
Since the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden has never managed to shake perceptions about his age, physical abilities or cognitive faculties.
As if to drive the point home once again, Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal published a text in which, under cover of anonymity, people who recently worked with the president argued that his condition was deteriorating.
Little attention has been paid to the fact that the sources of Wall Street Journal were mostly Republicans. Whether the article is biased is secondary here, it conveys and maintains a perception that Biden will not get rid of.
Another perception for which we feel a form of despair: security at the southern border.
When we look at the facts, Joe Biden has taken more concrete actions than his predecessor in this matter, but he felt the need this week, for essentially political purposes, to resort to a presidential decree to temporarily close the border.
This measure will not solve anything in the short term and it is questionable whether it will have sufficient influence on the choice of voters.
The arsenal of democracy
In addition to the efforts he has begun to make to recover the losses within two segments of the population, young people and the black community, which could fail him, the president will once again have to play the card of safeguarding democracy.
Listening to him give a speech Thursday during the commemorations of the 1944 landings, it was the slogan used by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in December 1940 that came to mind. He presented the United States as “the arsenal of democracy.”
Whether on the international scene or in domestic politics, Joe Biden presents himself as an ardent defender of democratic regimes and institutions. His own arsenal, however, is diminished and he must hope that the polls are not wrong when they report the concerns of a strong majority of voters who believe that their democracy is in danger.
Pictures of the week
Cover of Time which uses the same title as for Trump: “If He Wins”.
AFP
The president and the first lady with a veteran of the landings.
Quote of the week
“Make no mistake, all the autocrats in the world are watching very closely to see what will happen in Ukraine. To see if we allow this illegal aggression to continue with impunity. […] We cannot allow this. We cannot capitulate to tyrants, it is unthinkable. If we did that, we would forget what these men did on these beaches.»
Excerpt from Joe Biden’s speech at the Colleville-sur-Mer cemetery, June 6. The American president thus linked the spirit of the 1939-1945 war to the Ukrainian conflict.
Number of the week: 2500
The US president signed an executive order to close the border when the number of migrants entering the United States illegally exceeded 2,500 per day in seven days. As we regularly cross this threshold, the southern border is therefore temporarily closed. Asylum seekers will be able to enter the country when their number drops to 1,500 per day.
Lie detector: TRUE
“The Russian army has been decimated. You don’t write about it. “She was really decimated.” Joe Biden made this statement during the interview with Time. According to the Reuters agency, which reported data from American intelligence services, the Russian army had 360,000 active soldiers at the start of the invasion and last December there were 315,000 soldiers dead or wounded, or 87% of the force.
