Politics
Biden takes role as bystander on border and campus protests, surrenders the bully pulpit
The election might well be slipping away from Joe Biden.
And that’s the view among some who want the president to win a second term.
Biden’s passivity, and his reluctance to communicate, are fueling a narrative that he is a weak leader, and that’s now tied to a larger theme that will be difficult to shake by November.
For years, Biden’s refusal to take dramatic action – unilateral or otherwise – on the record-breaking illegal migration at what has become an open border, has been his greatest liability. It also happens to be Donald Trump’s strongest issue.
BIDEN’S LACK OF RESPONSE TO ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTS GIVES SENSE AMERICA’S ‘OUT-OF-CONTROL’: HOWARD KURTZ
President Biden speaks at an event near the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on Sunday, March 5, 2023. (Cheney Orr/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Then came the violent protests and antisemitic hatred that swept across college campuses like wildfire, and the president stubbornly remained silent for two long weeks. This has been the biggest and most alarming story in America, and Biden felt no need to address it as college buildings were being occupied and police were making mass arrests of pro-Hamas protesters.
The core concern here is that America feels out of control. The outbreak of lawlessness is heightened by a sense that no one is in charge.
Despite the White House spin, Biden said nothing about the campus protests as a deputy spokesman put out releases under his own name. His two-sentence answer to a shouted question could barely be heard amid the background noise.
A Barack Obama adviser once told the New Yorker, fairly or unfairly, that Obama’s approach to Libya amounted to “leading from behind.” That seems to describe Biden’s approach to the violence and arrests at Columbia, NYU, Yale, Darthouth, USC, UCLA and many other colleges. His words were fine and well-crafted, but it felt like too little too late.
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Now, it would be crazy to make predictions about an election six months away. Trump’s law-and-order stance is marred by his having to sit through the first of four criminal cases, the hush money trial. What’s more, the election will probably be decided by perhaps 50,000 voters in five swing states.
Andrew Sullivan wants Biden to be re-elected, but doesn’t see it happening:
“Biden had an opportunity to move to the center on illegal immigration – his core vulnerability – and decided to move, with his entire party, to the extreme left,” he wrote on his Substack. Besides, it was too late for Biden to have “serious cred” on the issue.
As for the president’s brief and belated speech on violent campus protests, “it was given only when he had no choice, after Trump goaded him, and it reminded me of his sad attempts to distance himself and his party from the rioting and looting in the hellish summer of 2020. He was reactive, not proactive. His quiet words were overwhelmed with the noise of the streets.”
L – Protester breaks window at Columbia University R – President Biden. (Getty Images)
All this, says Sullivan, “will help Trump get an Electoral College landslide, just as the new left handily elected Nixon in 1968 and 1972…
“Biden is losing this election, deservedly. And if he cannot pull off an almighty pivot – and I suspect at this point, he really can’t – this election really is Trump’s to lose.”
Another Andrew – former prosecutor and National Review writer Andy McCarthy – is opposed to a second Trump term. He thinks the former president should have been impeached and convicted after Jan. 6:
“I don’t want a Trump presidency,” the Fox News contributor said. “It’s a historic, even if inevitable, blown opportunity by Republicans not to have nominated a reliable conservative who might have ushered in eight-to-16 years of restorative administrations. But a second Biden government, which would likely become a Harris government, would be a disaster.”
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Okay, he’s torn, but it’s a binary choice. McCarthy is now hedging his bets on his previous prediction that Trump can’t win a general election.
His original reasoning: Trump’s ceiling continues to be around 46 to 47% in major polls. Plus, he’s at minus-10 in favorability ratings. It’s not clear how much Trump’s numbers will dip after a potential felony conviction, but it would be “negligible” if it’s D.A. Alvin Bragg’s “farcical” case, McCarthy said.
“The Dems haven’t yet unleashed the torrents of negative messaging that are coming. That is not going to help him reel in at least some of the close to one-in-five Republicans who are dead set against him — the voters he needs to have any chance of winning… Put it all together and I still think Trump’s a 2024 also-ran.”
I don’t agree – or at least I’d say that Trump is highly competitive despite running against an incumbent, who happens to be 81, and who has a substantial record of legislative accomplishment.
Former President Donald Trump, with attorneys Emil Bove (L) and Todd Blanche (R), attends his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 3 in New York City. (Curtis Means-Pool/Getty Images)
What’s more, the major issue for voters remains inflation. Unfortunately for Biden, prices are again creeping back up, even though we’re in a record stretch of unemployment below 4%.
There’s one other potential parallel to 1968, beyond the fact that it was exactly 56 years since the first time Columbia protesters seized control of Hamilton Hall.
The Washington Post reports that “pro-Palestinian activists are ramping up plans for a major show of force at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, increasingly worrying Democrats who fear the demonstrations could interfere with or overshadow their efforts to project unity ahead of the November election.”
If “unruly” protests erupt in late August, “especially if they feature inflammatory rhetoric, property damage or police intervention — they could strike at the heart of the Democratic message that President Biden represents competent and stable leadership” while Trump is “an agent of chaos and confusion.”
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Uh, remind me again why the Dems are holding the convention in Chicago, with its horrible echoes, when Illinois is a blue state? Wouldn’t Detroit or Philadelphia have made more sense?
The paper quotes William Daley, whose father, the senior Mayor Richard Daley, sent out the cops who wound up busting heads, as minimizing the comparison. That convention took place not long after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and Bobby Kennedy, and the National Guard was sent in to quell the riots.
“To analogize what’s going on in the country today with 1968 is ridiculous,” Daley said. “Only people who weren’t alive in ’68 have that idiotic perception.”
But even less violent protests could utterly distract from Biden’s renomination, and cement the perception that, as with the porous border and campus demonstrations, the president is failing to keep the country safe.
When Biden ran four years ago, it was based on the notion that a president didn’t have to be in the public’s face all the time, commenting on everything from basketball protests to awards shows.
But, somehow, that gradually evolved into avoiding interviews (except with the likes of Howard Stern), terse answers to shouted questions and remaining silent or taking no action as lawless events swirl around him. Whether his staff is shielding him or not, he operates slowly by digital-age standards, his instincts appearing dulled.
And that often makes the president seem like a bystander to grave events.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed off on a 100% state tax on money any Californians receive from Trump’s $1.8-billion “anti-weaponization” fund for his political allies.
Newsom unveiled his proposal in May, after Trump’s Justice Department said it would create a fund to compensate Trump’s allies who claim they have “suffered weaponization and lawfare” under Biden’s Justice Department.
The settlement fund was criticized by politicians on both sides of the aisle, including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who described it as a “slush fund to pay people who assault cops.”
The fund remains in legal limbo. Earlier this month, a federal judge in Virginia extended a court-ordered block on the plan, which critics warned could be used to pay pardoned Jan. 6 rioters.
Fast-tracked into law as part of Senate Bill 122, Newsom’s plan imposes “a tax on any settlement fund payment from the federal Anti-Weaponization Fund, or any subsequent fund, settlement, or agreement, as provided, at a rate of 100%,” according to the bill text. The tax applies to all tax years between 2026 and 2030.
Newsom signed the bill Tuesday. In a statement, his office said the tax is meant to ensure that, should Trump’s fund proceed, California recipients won’t “receive favorable state treatment on those payments.”
“We believe democracy is worth defending, the rule of law matters, and public dollars should support victims—not those who attacked the very institutions that protect our freedoms,” Newsom said in the statement.
University of Southern California law professor Ariel Jurow Kleiman, an expert on tax law and policy, said that while Newsom’s tax is a “novel legal strategy,” she believes there is “no categorical legal restriction” preventing California from implementing it.
States have a “wide degree of discretion” to design their tax systems — including how they define income — so long as they do not violate their constitutions, Jurow Kleiman said.
If a California resident wanted to challenge the tax in court, they would need to show they were harmed by it to have standing to sue, according to Jurow Kleiman. That would mean receiving a payment from Trump’s settlement fund and then paying the 100% California tax. Unless the settlement fund is established and distributes payments, that scenario is unlikely.
While there have been proposals to levy a 100% tax on income above certain thresholds — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2023 said he supports a 100% tax on income exceeding $1 billion — Jurow Kleiman said she is not aware of any governments that have adopted such a policy.
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The House has officially shipped a colossal bipartisan housing package to President Donald Trump, and lawmakers are hoping that, at the very least, he doesn’t veto it.
Trump was supposed to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act last week, but his last-minute decision to ghost the signing ceremony with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., put into question whether the bill was dead.
His refusal to sign the bill, which passed with overwhelmingly bipartisan support in both chambers, was to leverage the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which doesn’t currently have the votes to succeed in the Senate.
WARREN TELLS TRUMP TO ‘SIGN THE DAMN BILL’ AS BIPARTISAN HOUSING PACKAGE REMAINS STALLED IN WASHINGTON
Trump has refused to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. (Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trump appears to be in no hurry to sign the bill, despite Republicans who are hungry for a win in the affordability fight ahead of the midterm elections.
“It’s so unimportant … compared to the SAVE America Act,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. “I think the SAVE America Act is exactly what it says. It’s saving America from crooked elections.”
“Here’s what I would like to sign, much more than a bill that — big deal, it’s a yawn,” he continued. “Some people say it’s wonderful. To me, compared to the SAVE America Act, just about everything is a big yawn.”
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It’s legislation that is loaded with nearly 60 provisions from both sides of the aisle in both chambers that’s designed to make it easier for homes to be built and for younger Americans to buy their first home. It also includes a ban on hedge funds buying up housing stock that Trump pushed Congress to include during the State of the Union earlier this year.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., one of the architects behind the bill in the upper chamber alongside Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., charged that Congress handed the bill to Trump “on a silver platter.”
“When you ask me what happens next, if he cared about the American people, he’d have already signed the damned thing, and we’d be underway,” Warren said on WCVB’s “On the Record” on Sunday.
But Trump doesn’t have to put his signature on the bill for it to become law.
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The Senate advanced a massive, Trump-backed housing package geared toward lowering the costs of homes and supercharging the housing supply. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., pitched it as legislation to prevent America from becoming a “nation of renters.” (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Protect Borrowers; Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The Constitution grants presidents the ability to veto a bill within 10 days of it being transferred over to the White House. In that scenario, Congress could override a veto of the housing package.
It’s happened before under the Trump administration. In early 2021, Congress overrode Trump’s veto of the annual National Defense Authorization Act — a massive Pentagon funding authorization package that some House Republicans are trying to use as a vehicle to pass the SAVE America Act.
But during that 10-day period, if Trump doesn’t sign the bill, it would automatically become law. That’s unless Congress completely adjourns, in which case a “pocket veto” could happen. The Senate is currently in recess and the House is scheduled to leave town by week’s end, but neither count as a full adjournment.
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Johnson, who spent the last few days meeting with Trump at the White House about the housing bill and the SAVE America Act, said: “I hope he does sign it.”
“If he doesn’t, it’s still law,” Johnson said. “We’ll still celebrate it, but he’s trying to make a point, and I think he’s making it very effectively. And the fact that you all ask me every three steps down the hallway illustrates that he has achieved the desired objective, and that is to make SAVE America the number one thing, because if we don’t get that right, everybody’s concerned about what happens next.”
Britain’s culture minister may challenge Paramount Skydance’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery — presenting a potential speed-bump to David Ellison’s plan to wrap up his $111-billion deal by September.
Earlier this month, Paramount secured the U.S. Justice Department’s blessing to buy the Warner assets, which include CNN, HBO, Cartoon Network, Animal Planet and the Warner Bros. film and TV studios in Burbank.
Paramount also must win the approval of British and European regulators, who are known for drilling deeply into media matters because of their influence on society.
Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority took a preliminary step this month by opening an investigation into Ellison’s proposed merger.
On Tuesday, Lisa Nandy, Britain’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, notified Parliament that she was inclined to intervene in the blockbuster deal.
In a written statement, Nandy cited her ability to weigh in on “public interest grounds,” due to concerns about maintaining a competitive media market in Britain.
“The UK’s move to intervene in the Paramount–WBD deal confirms what we’ve been saying for months. The real regulatory risk was never in the US — it’s in Europe,” Forrester VP Research Director Mike Proulx said Tuesday in a statement.
While Nandy cautioned she has not made “a final decision on intervention at this stage,” she has invited Paramount and Warner Bros. to respond to her concerns by July 6.
June 2026 photo of Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Lisa Nandy arriving at Downing Street for the weekly Government cabinet meeting in London.
(Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images)
Paramount did not offer immediate comment.
The company owns CBS News, children’s channel Nickelodeon and Channel 5, one of the largest over-the-air television broadcasters in the United Kingdom.
Warner Bros. Discovery owns CNN, Cartoon Network and TNT Sports, which broadcasts the Olympics, Champions League and Premier League soccer matches.
“I am conscious that the proposed acquisition is global in nature,” Nandy wrote in her statement. “In reaching this decision, my focus has been, and will remain, on the UK public interest and the range of services available to UK audiences, including Channel 5, TNT Sports, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and CNN International, as well as Paramount+ and HBO Max.”
If Nandy decides to intervene, the Office of Communications, known as Ofcom, would launch an assessment of the deal. Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority also would determine how the merger might reshape the competitive landscape.
Teams from the two companies have been huddling for months to plan for the melding of the two operations as soon as Paramount receives all of its regulatory approvals.
Australia, New Zealand, China, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Serbia, France and Italy have already given their approvals to the deal.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is planning to contribute $10 billion to help the billionaire Ellison family pull off the merger, which would make the Saudi royal family a significant, although passive, equity owner. In addition, the royal families of Qatar and Abu Dhabi have agreed to each contribute $7 billion in equity financing.
The Federal Communications Commission must evaluate the foreign ownership stakes due to Paramount’s holding of CBS broadcast licenses. U.S. antitrust regulators already have concluded the combination would not violate federal anticompetition laws.
Approval had been expected because President Trump — who has friendly ties with Ellison and his father, tech billionaire Larry Ellison — favors the deal.
Trump has been eager for changes at CNN.
The U.S. government stopped short of asking Paramount to make concessions or divestitures. Many expect that Paramount may have to reconfigure its children’s television holdings abroad due to the proposed combination of two large players — Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network.
Nandy suggested that Britain also should scrutinize the impact of combining two major streaming services HBO Max, a Warner property, with Paramount+.
HBO programming, including “Game of Thrones,” “Boardwalk Empire,” and “Succession,” has long been popular in Britain.
A coalition of state attorneys general, led by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, also is expected to challenge the deal, in part, due to concerns about news media consolidation. Bonta’s office has said the matter remains under review.
Opposition to the deal has been building in the U.S. for months. A group of Hollywood activists — led by actors Jane Fonda and Mark Ruffalo — have spearheaded a “block the merger” campaign that now has support from more than 5,000 entertainment workers.
The group’s open letter calls on Bonta to take action to thwart the Ellison expansion effort. Paramount’s Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim has blasted the campaign, calling it “fear-mongering” and a partisan distortion of antitrust law.
Forrester’s Proulx noted differences in attitudes toward the deal among the various constituencies.
“For US consumers, this merger has become a proxy fight about political influence and control of media,” Proulx said. “In the UK, it’s being treated as a structural competition issue where regulators, not consumers, will decide how this deal plays out and how long it takes.”
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