These were the images Americans were shown on Tuesday about their two choices for president: one taking his grandchildren to Dachau to witness the horrors of the Nazi death camps, the other sitting in his boxer shorts waiting on a hotel bed on sex with a porn site. star.
It may have been a twisted cosmic coincidence that President Biden broadcast on national television speech on the commemoration of the Holocaust would take place at the exact moment former President Donald J. Trump faced in court Stormy Daniels' testimony about a failed sexual tryst.
But the surreal synchronism of the disparate events 182 days before the election captured the sometimes surreal reality of a presidential race like never before, at once profound and tawdry, a contest with momentous consequences and circus-like surround sound. A country grappling with two wars abroad and campus unrest at home is also being asked to parse the sordid details of a married man's alleged altercation with a woman who professionally had sex on camera.
This may not have been what the founders had in mind when they established the presidency, when they saw Mr. Biden's speech at the Capitol condemning “a wild wave of anti-Semitism,” while Internet feeds provided the latest news of Ms. Daniels about the specific sexual position she was in. and Mr. Trump assumed so. Yet this also applies to 2024, a year full of twists and turns that defy history and the imagination.
Mr. Biden faced the more conventional but not inconsiderable challenge: He showed presidential leadership at a time of national trauma. He has come under fire within his own party for not doing more to curb Israel's war in Gaza, but wanted to use the annual commemoration ceremony to link the murder of six million Jews during World War II to the murder of 1,200 people during World War II. the October 7 Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel.
It was a speech with high historical accents and deeply personal memories, aimed at evoking “our common humanity” while “listening to the lessons of one of the darkest chapters in human history.” He described how his father taught him about the Shoah, or Holocaust, at the dinner table when he was young, and passed the lessons on to his children and their children when he was older.
“I want you to know,” Mr. Biden said in the Capitol's Emancipation Hall, speaking directly to the Jewish community: “I see your fear, your pain, your pain. I can reassure you: as president, you are not alone. You belong. You always have and you always will.”
Mr. Trump's challenge was very different, as he was forced to listen quietly and sullenly as Ms. Daniels finally testified against him after all these years in a proceeding that could lead to his prison sentence. Although he long denied the sexual encounter for which he paid $130,000 to keep quiet, Ms. Daniels gave one raw recollection after another under oath.
He listened unhappily as she described arriving for dinner in July 2006 to find him in satin pajamas and talking about her work for a “condom-required company” and her negative tests for sexually transmitted diseases. He was 60 at the time and she was 27, just three years older than his daughter Ivanka. She did testify, he told her, “You remind me of my daughter. She's smart and blonde and beautiful and people underestimate her too.” He called her 'honey bush'.
Ms. Daniels went into considerable detail — Trump's lawyers and even the judge found too much detail — about the encounter itself, how she went into a bathroom and came out to find him “minus much clothing” on the bed. “I felt the blood rushing from my hands and feet, almost like standing up too quickly,” she said. “I thought, 'Oh my God, what did I read wrong to come here?'” Nevertheless, she took off her clothes and “before I knew it I was on the bed.”
While other presidents have been embroiled in public sex scandals, none have ever faced an accuser in court. The closest predicate would be the extraordinarily graphic testimony that prosecutors elicited from Independent Counsel Ken Starr from Monica S. Lewinsky in 1998 about her affair with President Bill Clinton. But that happened behind closed doors in front of a grand jury and was later communicated to the public via transcripts.
The House of Representatives, which subsequently impeached Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice to cover up the case, never actually called Ms. Lewinsky to testify. When the Senate conducted her trial, leaders of both parties were so nervous about a public discussion of sex that they arranged for her private deposition. Lawyers for both sides were then allowed to publicly show only carefully edited excerpts of a less salacious nature from her interview.
No such montage took place in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday.
The contrast between the two presidents on display on this particular day was as stark as it could be, but won't necessarily surprise many Americans.
Voters have known about Ms. Daniels' account for years at this point, along with the stories of many other women who have accused Mr. Trump of sexual misconduct, and many have long factored these allegations into their judgments of him, at least good or bad. Indeed he was found liable by a jury in a civil case last year of sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll without any meaningful impact on his poll numbers.
Because Ms. Daniels' testimony was not broadcast, Americans had to absorb her story through reporters who delivered it on television, radio, online or in print, which may have less power to shock the public. Mr. Trump did what he could through his lawyers and social media account to divert attention from his alleged disloyalty to what he claims is the unfairness of the legal action against him.
For his part, Mr. Biden made no mention of the events in New York, speaking somberly and invoking the ghosts of Elie Wiesel, Raoul Wallenberg and Tom Lantos. The anger he faces over his support for Israel's war is real and poses a political threat to him in a closely matched race where small shifts in critical states can make a difference.
Of course he knew that. And of course he knew what his opponent was doing that day. The president said what he had to say and went back to the White House. And a campaign focused on atrocities and absurdities ended another day, with 181 to go.