As lawmakers, presidential candidates and advocacy groups flooded in-boxes and social media platforms with statements responding to the Manhattan grand jury’s indictment of former President Donald Trump, there was one notable – and intentional – omission.
There was no statement from President Joe Biden.
The man who defeated Trump in the 2020 election – and may very well face him again in 2024 – had no plans to engage in an ongoing legal matter.
No comment came from the White House and there is little evidence that public posture will change any time soon, even as officials acknowledge they will be closely monitoring any security issues that may develop.
“He’s the president, not a legal analyst,” one Democrat in regular contact with the White House said. “He has an administration to run.”
Biden’s presidency has, from its first day, been shaped by extraordinary moments in US history: The aftermath of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol; a twice-impeached, once-defeated, still omnipresent former president who attempted to overturn a presidential election; a once-in-a-century pandemic; and the largest land war in Europe in 80 years.
It’s a reality Biden hasn’t attempted to dodge or escape. A campaign and presidency explicitly centered on what he calls the “battle for the soul of a nation” and a moment when the world “stands at an inflection point” hardly represents an effort to downplay the stakes.
Yet Biden’s initial silence in the wake of Trump’s indictment isn’t a surprise. While officials inside the West Wing were as surprised as the rest of the country by the news, there was no scramble to prepare anything to release publicly.
Instead, Biden faces a convergence of two clear, if unofficial, animating principles of his first two years in office: don’t engage in…
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