Tuesday 26th Oct.2021:Joe Biden and Donald Trump are locked in an extraordinary and escalating clash that has profound political consequences now and into 2024.
Biden took the showdown, which was triggered by the fallout over the US Capitol insurrection, up another notch on Monday by refusing to assert executive privilege over a second batch of documents that Trump wants to prevent the National Archives from turning over to the House select committing probing the January 6 attack.
There have been occasions in US history when former presidents have sniped at and tried to undermine their successors. Many presidents have expressed private frustration with the antics of their predecessors. But nothing in the modern era matches the confrontation between the 45th and 46th Presidents.
Trump is mostly responsible for that. He has convinced tens of millions of his voters that Biden is an illegitimate president through lies about voter fraud. The twice-impeached former President's attempt to hamstring the January 6 committee is also in line with his repeated efforts to avoid consequences for his anti-democratic behavior.
What is executive privilege? Does a former president still get it?
Trump's claims that he alone has the right to assert executive privilege also appear designed to obstruct the committee's work with interminable legal suits and appeals through multiple courts.
Paradoxically, efforts to hold the former President to account may offer him the kind of oxygen he craves for his politics of insurrection. Trump had already filed a lawsuit to try to prevent an earlier batch of documents reaching the committee after Biden refused to intervene. He is all but certain to add the latest material to his suit as he seeks to disrupt the effort to investigate the origins of the mob riot he incited on January 6 and to run down the clock in the hope Republicans win the House next fall and shutter the probe.
The showdown with Biden will only fuel Trump's attempts to turn efforts to investigate the tumultuous end to his presidency into fodder for a political comeback. He's already making the midterms and the 2024 presidential election into a platform for his falsehoods that power was stolen from him in a rigged election. Trump and his allies have branded Biden's refusal to cooperate with his political power grabs as evidence of a political vendetta against the ex-President.
The last thing that Biden wants, however, is yet more confrontations with his once and potentially future rival. Since winning election last year, Biden has tried to bring a fractured country together -- even as Trump's lies about election fraud and misinformation spewed by his media propagandists have only exacerbated the mood of fury among "Make America Great Again" devotees. Sometimes, the current President has referred to his predecessor as "the former guy," not even wishing to mention his name. And the continuing tussle between Biden and Trump over documents is just one of the unfinished disputes that ensures that the poisoned legacy of the Trump presidency will linger in the United States for months and years to come.
No president since Gerald Ford -- who ended up pardoning Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandal that led to his resignation -- has been handed such a tortured legacy from an immediate predecessor. And Trump is only fanning the febrile mood of his supporters by almost every day challenging Biden's right to be president and inciting deeper national divides on the basis of a lie that he won the election.
But much as he wants to consign Trump to the past, Biden has little incentive to obstruct the work of the committee on the basis of a procedural matter like executive privilege. Accepting Trump's claims that he is protecting the integrity of the office of the presidency would require Biden to junk his own argument that he was elected to save American democracy, which prevailed despite a severe test in the Trump years and during the presidential transition in January. And Trump, who regularly trashed decorum and the traditions of the presidency, didn't appear too worried about protecting it in four years in the Oval Office.
But the latest escalation between Trump and Biden is also likely to further inflame the political conflagration raging ahead of Trump's potential political comeback and even a possible 2024 presidential rematch with his successor.
