At the very moment former President Donald Trump was pulling into an underground garage at the federal courthouse in Miami, his successor was 40 minutes into a meeting about Ukraine’s nascent counteroffensive with NATO’s secretary general.
Outside the Oval Office windows, the soundcheck for an evening Juneteenth concert could be heard drifting over from the South Lawn. The screen of the small television behind President Joe Biden’s desk was turned off.
As history was underway in South Florida, the response at the White House was intentionally muted. A day earlier, some aides professed to not even know when Trump’s arraignment was scheduled.
Biden aides have long prepared for the possibility of Trump being charged in the special counsel’s probe into the former president’s retention of classified documents. After Biden was informed of the indictment by members of his senior team on Thursday evening, there was little question what the strategy would be: Continue to say nothing publicly about the matter while allowing the contrast afforded by a president focused on his public duties to play out.
Biden himself appears to want little to do with Trump’s predicament. While Trump was being arraigned, he was meeting Uruguay’s president behind closed doors.
A few hours later, recalling his lengthy meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping to a group of American ambassadors, he seemed to swiftly recognize a joke that might be misconstrued.
“I turned all my notes in,” he said, adding quickly: “But that’s not a reference to the former president.”
Asked as he left for a comment on his predecessor’s arrest, the president shouted “No!” as he walked away.
It wasn’t the first time he’d been questioned about the bombshell indictment – he’d already refused to comment at least four times previously –…
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