Trump fumes while Biden hits the trail

In New York on Tuesday, Donald Trump suffered through a hearing on whether he should be held in contempt of court and testimony from a tabloid publisher on a “catch and kill” scheme allegedly used to help Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Back in his home state of Florida, his opponent, Joe Biden, was unloading on him over abortion.

If the opening week of Trump’s hush-money trial laid bare the courtroom’s constraints on Trump, no single 24-hour stretch demonstrated the extreme asymmetry of the unfolding campaign more than Tuesday. There was Biden making campaign stops with fawning supporters of abortion rights in Tampa, Florida, while Trump was sitting in a “freezing” Manhattan courtroom, with barely any supporters in sight.

“He’s out campaigning, and I’m here in the courtroom, sitting here, sitting up as straight as I can all day long,” Trump told reporters just before Biden’s event began Tuesday afternoon. “It’s a very unfair situation. We’re locked up in a courtroom, and this guy’s out there campaigning, if you call it campaigning.”

Trump has maneuvered to take advantage of the media circus surrounding the courthouse at 100 Centre Street. As he walked in and out of court on Tuesday, the former president paused to rail against the proceedings, which he called the “Biden trial,” and blamed his opponent for everything from unrest on college campuses over the Israel-Hamas war to the war in Ukraine and inflation. In the morning, he did interviews with local Pennsylvania outlets focused on the state’s primary. And in the evening, he hosted former Japanese prime minister Taro Aso, the deputy head of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, at Trump Tower, where the two men discussed "challenges posed by China and North Korea," according to a readout of their meeting.

Trump also gave an interview via satellite from New York to the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia, where he called his former fixer Michael Cohen — a likely key witness in the criminal case — a “convicted liar” who has “no credibility whatsoever.”

Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the trial, on Tuesday held a hearing to decide whether to punish Trump for alleged violations of a gag order that’s meant to restrict the former president from publicly discussing witnesses or other parties involved in the case.

But Trump is becoming increasingly outwardly frustrated by the situation he finds himself in — the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party facing weeks in a liberal city as details about his private affairs are rehashed in court — and the underwhelming displays of support from MAGA protesters on the sidelines, which he and his team have blamed on unfair security measures.

The setting could hardly have been more different than Biden’s in Florida. In his first campaign stop on Tuesday at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, he blasted Trump for “pain and cruelty” caused by the state’s six-week abortion ban set to take effect May 1. Biden called on voters to hold Trump “accountable” on Election Day.

“Let's be real clear. There's one person responsible for this nightmare — and he's acknowledged and he brags about it: Donald Trump,” Biden said during his 12-minute speech in the campus gymnasium, flanked by signs that read “Restore Roe” and “Reproductive Freedom.”

The issue was a major advantage for Democrats in the 2022 midterms — and Democrats are pressing it again in the run-up to the November election, putting Republicans on defense not just in Florida, but across the electoral map.

On Tuesday, while Trump in New York was listening to the judge in his case snap at his attorney, Biden surrounded himself with allies, including several lawmakers, candidates and abortion-rights leaders who took the stage before him. They praised Biden for supporting abortion rights and tore into Trump for appointing the deciding Supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade.

“We cannot possibly have a better ally than President Joe Biden,” said Florida state House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell, one of the speakers. “He, Vice President Harris and the entire administration have been with us every step of the way.”

“Four more years,” the group chanted before Biden came out onstage to speak in front of roughly 400 people, many of them wearing abortion-rights T-shirts.

Biden was in Florida trying to draw a contrast between his agenda and what his campaign is calling a “toxic and losing agenda” in the state — one shaped largely by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as he geared up to run to the right of Trump during the 2024 presidential primary.

It wasn’t all glowing accolades for the president in Florida. Outside Biden’s first campaign event in Tampa, roughly 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators had gathered ahead of his speech holding signs that read, “No U.S. aid to Israel,” and chanting, “Occupation no more.”

Biden bragged about improving polling at his second campaign stop, an informal reception of about 50 people — including state party leaders such as Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried — in a room next to the community college’s auditorium.

“The whole world is looking,” he said, per the pool report. “And they’re looking to see how we handle ourselves in this election.”

Biden avoided saying anything about Trump’s legal issues, but during a gaggle with reporters aboard Air Force One, White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates quipped, “Nobody fall asleep while we talk, please,” seemingly referencing when Trump appeared to have possibly dozed off momentarily in court last week.

Asked directly by reporters whether Biden had monitored Trump’s trial, Bates replied that the president “has been busy” and that the White House doesn’t “weigh in on the 2024 election or on independent judicial processes.”