Nonetheless, it appeared at instances like Mr. Trump was already president, largely as a result of Mr. Biden has pale from the scene so shortly.
This was Mr. Trump’s second full information convention at Mar-a-Lago since he started forming his authorities, and in that respect, it follows custom: Mr. Biden held a lot of information conferences in Delaware 4 years in the past, denouncing Russia for its “Photo voltaic Winds” hack of a important piece of American software program after which expressing horror on the violence wrought on the Capitol on Jan. 6.
However previously six months, Mr. Biden has ceded the stage, making Mr. Trump’s voice all of the louder, his affect all of the higher. The final prolonged Biden information convention got here final July, after the NATO summit in Washington, and his aides have been white-knuckled via the entire thing, fearful he would freeze up once more as he did on the stage debating Mr. Trump in June.
When Mr. Biden points govt orders nowadays, they’re issued on paper or an e-mail; he hardly ever talks about them, or takes detailed questions. He has by no means spoken publicly on the Chinese language hack of the American telecommunications firms, which his aides describe as maybe essentially the most pressing new nationwide safety risk of the previous six months. (Curiously, neither has Mr. Trump, who might make a clearer case for why the hack of the innards of the American communications programs is a risk to American authorities and personal trade than he might about long-existing Chinese language ports close to the Panama Canal.)
With the departing incumbent fading from view, Mr. Trump appears to sense that if he takes the stage, there will probably be nobody to push again on his interpretation of current historical past. He’s rewriting that historical past shortly, simply as he recast the occasions of Jan. 6, in hopes that his election was proof that People imagine he was pursued by prosecutors out of vengeance, not the appliance of justice.
“That’s a sick group of individuals, and it was all to affect the election,” Mr. Trump mentioned of the investigations led by Jack Smith, the particular counsel. “It was all a battle in opposition to their political opponent. We’ve by no means had that on this nation. We now have had that in sure international locations. We’ve had that in third-tier international locations.” Inevitably, he began speaking about “banana republics,” a well-known line from the primary time period. Some issues don’t change.