“Manchurian candidate.” “Stone-cold thief.” “Dumb son of a b----.”
Former president Donald Trump is, by his own admission, attacking President Biden in increasingly vicious terms. The attacks on Biden center on allegations that are exaggerated or unfounded, frequently drawing on right-wing media reports about the foreign business dealings of Biden’s son HunterBiden. The president has denied any involvement in his son’s affairs, and no evidence has emerged proving otherwise.
Trump’s escalation comes amid his commanding polling position in the Republican primary, setting up what many allies hope will be a rematch with Biden in next year’s election, as well as the former president’s mounting criminal jeopardy, with multiple trials scheduled to occur during the height of the campaign.
The attacks offer a glimpse of potential 2024 battle lines and follow a well-established pattern for Trump of trying to delegitimize his political opponents. During the 2012 election, Trump became the leading promoter of the racist and unfounded conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was born outside the United States. In 2016, Trump pledged to prosecute Hillary Clinton and encouraged his supporters’ chants of “Lock her up!”
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