Part of President Joe Biden’s argument against another four years of Donald Trump’s administration will be to flaunt the former president’s new status as a convicted felon during the Atlanta debate on Thursday.
The president’s re-election campaign has made clear that a central argument and strategy in CNN’s general election debate will center on the 34 felony charges against Trump.
Biden campaign co-chairman Mitch Landrieu said “the American people have to accept” the fact that the presumptive Republican nominee is a convicted felon.
‘I’ll let the president say what he’s going to say. But the fact of the matter is that sometimes the sky is blue and Donald Trump is a convicted felon,” Landrieu told NBC host Peter Alexander on Sunday.
But the argument could backfire considering that most polls find that Republicans – and even many independent voters – are so far unfazed by the outcome of the Manhattan case to remain silent.
President Joe Biden is likely to make Trump’s felony conviction a key argument in Thursday’s debate. Biden campaign co-chairman Mitch Landrieu maintains that it doesn’t matter how the candidates perform in Atlanta next week.
Iowa voter Donald Share, 63, told the Des Moines Register last week that he will definitely vote for Trump because of his criminal conviction.
“Their convictions on these charges are part of the reason I am determined,” Share said.
“The more they try to get him out of the picture, the stronger they get,” he added. “I, for one, believe the charges are false.”
Landrieu still maintains, however, that the case will affect Trump without Biden having to point it out in the debate.
“The person who wants to be president has to sit down with his probation officer before going to the debate,” lamented the campaign co-chairman. ‘And that’s why it’s just a fact. But it’s not just about calling Donald Trump a convicted felon. It depends on his behavior and his character.
Landrieu also claims that how Biden, 81, performs on stage Thursday against Trump, 78, doesn’t really make a difference in the trajectory of the election.
‘I hope President Biden does an excellent job just as he did in the last debates. It really doesn’t matter how Donald Trump presents himself,’ he insisted.
“People will know that he is a twice-impeached felon who has been found to have defamed someone, sexually abused someone and declared bankruptcy six times.”
Biden was found guilty of 34 felonies last month in the secret money trial in Manhattan.
Biden and Trump will face off in their first debate of the general election on Thursday in Atlanta, Georgia.
Trump was found guilty in late May by a Manhattan jury of 34 felonies related to his hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.
There are still three other criminal cases pending against the former president: one in Washington, D.C., one in Fulton County, Georgia, and one in Florida.
After Trump’s guilty verdict, the former president still leads Biden by just one point in a hypothetical matchup in 2024.
Only 40 percent say Trump’s conviction won’t affect how they cast their vote in a post-conviction Emerson poll.
Still, more than a quarter (27 percent) say Trump’s guilty verdict actually makes them more likely to want to vote for him for president. And 33 percent say that makes them less likely to support him.