President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign alongside other Democrats are hoping to rely on more media coverage of former President Donald Trump to help turn tanking Biden polls around, according to The New York Times (NYT).
Several swing state polls as well as a few national polls show Biden trailing Trump less than a year out from the 2024 election. Biden’s campaign and officials within the president’s party believe an increase in media coverage of Trump will help win back voters who have turned on the sitting president, The NYT reported. (RELATED: ‘Doesn’t Look A Day Over 90’: Conservatives Celebrate Biden’s Birthday With A Look Back At His Year Of Gaffes)
“Not having the day-to-day chaos of Donald Trump in people’s faces certainly has an impact on how people are measuring the urgency of the danger of another Trump administration,” Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, an African American political organizing group, told The NYT. “It is important to remind people of what a total and absolute disaster Trump was.”
Some voters who are leaning toward Trump but voted for Biden in the 2020 election told The NYT they have not kept up much with the former president’s whereabouts. These types of voters can be swayed with more coverage of Trump, the Biden campaign told the NYT.
“The more the American people are confronted with who Donald Trump is — a dangerous, extreme and erratic man who only cares about using the power of the government to help himself and his friends — the more they reject him,” Ammar Moussa, a Biden campaign spokesman, told the NYT. “We will continue to highlight for voters what’s at stake if Trump and his cronies are allowed anywhere near the Oval Office.”
Former U.S. President Donald Trump points after delivering remarks at a campaign rally at The Ted Hendricks Stadium at Henry Milander Park on November 8, 2023 in Hialeah, Florida. Even as Trump faces multiple criminal indictments, he still maintains a commanding lead in the polls over other Republican candidates. (Photo by Alon Skuy/Getty Images)
In an effort to do so, the executive director of left-leaning organization Hub Project, Jessica Floyd, encouraged mainstream TV networks to consider showing people “exactly how bad [Trump] rallies are” and “how corrosive they are for our democracy,” The NYT reported. Similarly, the Biden campaign has pushed mainstream media outlets to mirror how The NYT is covering Trump, pointing to his stance on immigration as an example of topics that should be emphasized, the outlet reported.
“[Mainstream cable TV networks] should also show President Biden selling an absolutely historic level of investment in our economy,” Floyd told the NYT.
If voters are exposed to Trump and his vision for the country, they will more likely vote for Biden in 2024, Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, told the NYT.
“The more people see and hear from Donald Trump and what he has planned for the country if he regains power, the better off Democrats will be up and down the ballot,” Wikler told the outlet. “Trump’s voracious need for attention works to Democrats’ advantage.”