Did Joe Biden just pull a fast one?

| 9:09 am EST November 19, 2020
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Earlier this week the media reported that Joe Biden was privately lamenting about not wanting to have to criminally prosecute Donald Trump, even while making clear that he would let the DOJ handle it and not interfere in any way. It’s a non-story, both because Biden won’t be involved in the DOJ’s decisions about federal charges, and because Trump is likely to get hit with state charges in New York first anyway. But it nonetheless set off a firestorm.

At first I thought Biden was simply leaking this particular lament because he wanted to position himself as being above the fray, and therefore make sure that the DOJ’s inevitable prosecution of Trump doesn’t look partisan. But today it finally hit me.

For the past ten days since Biden was declared the winner, Palmer Report has been pointing out that the real story with Trump is that he’s now facing prison and bankruptcy. It’s been really irksome that the mainstream media is still hung up on fantasies about Trump launching a media venture or running in 2024, when in reality he’ll be in prison by then. I’ve been wondering how many weeks or months it would take for the media to finally shift gears and acknowledge that Trump is done for.

But now that Biden has leaked his lament about wishing he didn’t have to prosecute Trump, the mainstream media is suddenly spending portions of every day talking about the criminal liability that Trump faces. It’s finally prompted the media to shift gears and start acknowledging that Trump is looking at federal prison, state prison, litigation, you name it. It’s taking Trump’s legs out from under him, because once the public is aware that Trump has no leverage when it comes to where he goes next, it shatters Trump’s narrative that he’s somehow in the driver’s seat.

Did Joe Biden just pull a fast one? As a result of his leak about not wanting to prosecute Trump, suddenly the national conversation is about Trump being prosecuted, instead of Trump leaving on a magic carpet. If Biden had leaked that he did want to prosecute Trump, that wouldn’t have worked, because the media would have just criticized him for being too brazen about it. But as it’s playing out, Biden’s leak has resulted in the media finally acknowledging that Trump is backed into a corner on criminal charges.

Keep in mind that Joe Biden has been on the political stage for nearly fifty years. He knows how the media works. He knows how narratives work. Did Biden just get lucky, or did he purposely leak this in order to goad the media into turning toward the real narrative? Biden is a lot savvier than some people give him credit for.