JOIN USTrump rages, Biden yawns
With a blistering, greatest hits barrage of insults against an insufficiently loyal Republican senator, Donald Trump put America on notice that he wants to be noticed again. President Joe Biden yawned.
"I'm tired of talking about Donald Trump, don't want to talk about him anymore," he said during a CNN town hall in Wisconsin on Tuesday night.
Trump certainly wants to be talked about.
Since grumpily departing the White House on January 20 and ceding to Biden, he has largely kept to himself.
He spent four years at the White House inundating the world with his thoughts on everything from foreign affairs to golf and morning television, so the silence was deafening.
But on Tuesday he returned, firing a remarkable broadside not at the Democrats or Biden but at Senator Mitch McConnell, the senior Republican in Congress.
McConnell's sin was to have ripped Trump in a speech after helping to acquit the former president in last Saturday's impeachment trial.
McConnell did not join the seven rebel Republicans voting with Democrats to convict Trump for inciting insurrection at the Capitol on January 6. He stuck to the party line and in doing so likely ensured that the number of defectors remained just a trickle.
But having done his duty to Trump, McConnell then let loose, blaming him for a "disgraceful dereliction of duty" and recalling that the mob attacking the Capitol was "carrying his banners... screaming their loyalty to him."
Trump's riposte on Tuesday was a humdinger.
"Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack," a statement from Trump's Florida retreat said.
It went on.
McConnell was responsible for the Republican disarray in Washington, where just a few weeks ago they controlled the Senate and White House. McConnell had "begged" for support from Trump. McConnell's continued leadership would mean Republicans "will not win again."
And so on.
Trump's explosion certainly grabbed attention in the media and among Republicans. But if the celebrity turned politician had been hoping to knock Biden off his stride -- reminding the new president that the old one is again stirring and plotting -- it didn't work.
During his CNN town hall, Biden stuck entirely to his focus on promoting a gigantic $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package and getting the country vaccinated against Covid-19. It's the same line he took throughout last week's impeachment trial drama and really has ever since entering the Oval Office.
References he did make to Trump were notable mostly for their indifference.
The "former guy," he called him at one point.
"For four years all that's been in the news is Trump. In the next four years I want to make sure all the news is the American people," Biden said.
So far, the tale of two presidents is working out better for the new one.
Polls consistently show broad support for Biden's Covid relief plans, as well as for his job performance.
Trump has dismal national approval ratings, even if he retains strong backing from hardcore Republicans.
And his suggestion of going to war against McConnell and anyone else in Congress refusing wholehearted support throws a shadow over the party's preparations to fight for control of the legislature in the 2022 midterm elections.
"Mitch McConnell working with Donald Trump did a hell of a job. They are now at each other's throat. I'm more worried about 2022 than I've ever been," Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump loyalist, told Fox News.
"I don't want to eat our own."