Come on, man. The Biden campaign held an event a block away from the courthouse and dragged veteran Trump-hater Robert De Niro out to rage into a crowd. They staged it near the trial in Manhattan because that's where the press and the crowd would be, and where Team Biden figured De Niro's fans and Biden's voters would be. 

That didn't exactly turn out nearly as well as Team Biden and De Niro imagined: 

Well, that certainly worked out well! Great optics, eh?

A day later and a notable amount of bad press reaction along with it about politicizing the trial, Team Biden flack Michael Tyler tries to sell MSNBC on a claim that their event had nothing to do with the case in court.

And in other news, the moisture falling on the Morning Joe set is rain. Really!

"This campaign is not speaking about the substance of the trial in any way shape or form. What we're talking about is the unique threat that Donald Trump poses to our democracy."

— Biden-Harris Comms Director Michael Tyler on having Robert De Niro speak outside NYC courthouse pic.twitter.com/3QbLCLOOvh

— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) May 29, 2024

Welcome to the Modified Limited Hangout of the Day! After everyone in the sentient world commented on how Biden and his campaign politicized the trial even further with this stunt, the Biden campaign wants to pretend that their event exploiting the press and crowd at the courthouse had nothing to do with the "substance of the trial." That's utter nonsense, made even more transparent by the White House announcement four days earlier that Biden would address the nation after the verdict is reached in the Alvin Bragg hush-money trial. 

Of course they're politicizing the trial. The trial itself is nothing more than a politicized, Rube Goldberg contraption attempting to kneecap Democrats' political bete noire. Biden and his strategists assumed that people would take it at face value, much like the gaslighting Tyler offers here, but voters turned out to be a lot smarter than Biden & Co. That's why they pulled these desperation moves, especially De Niro's nutty ranting on the street corner.

Count Matt Taibbi among those seeing through the ploy. He has probably the richest explainer on the De Niro-Trump moment yesterday, drawing on decades of New York history at Racket. It's paywalled, but the historical perspective is available to all readers. The entire essay has a plague-on-both-houses feel, but the majority of the essay is dedicated to the accusation from a heckler aimed at De Niro: 'You're all washed up!" 

More to the point, Taibbi nails Biden on the politicized nature of this prosecution and especially the stunt yesterday:

Imagine going back decades to tell a Spy writer that in May 2024, former president Donald Trump not only goes on trial for paying off a porn star who told the world the presidential penis looks like a cartoon mushroom, but “Bobby” De Niro shows up during closing arguments on behalf of current president Joe Biden to scream “Fuck you!” into at a crowd for telling him he’s washed up[.]

It got worse. If Trump’s escapades bedding the star of Beaver Snacks did away with some portion of whatever (if any) dignity was left of the Oval Office, Biden just finished off the rest sending the star of Shark Tale to do a campaign event outside the criminal trial. It’d be nice to at least pretend these prosecutions aren’t politicized. But those days are over, and De Niro just made sure of it.

Seriously, the column's worth the subscription just for Taibbi's takedown of De Niro. He's become the ultimate elitist, Taibbi argues, mainly by coasting over the last several decades and putting his lunatic energies into the Left's cultural-political agenda. 

Jonathan Turley argues today that De Niro "has gone full Travis Bickle," and by extension so has Biden and his campaign. And you never go the full Travis Bickle, especially when it makes your motives so clear:

De Niro has gone full Travis Bickle. However, now 80, it came across as De Niro screaming at the courthouse for Trump to get off his lawn.

The diatribe is consistent with the messaging of Democrats, including President Biden, that “democracy is on the ballot” and that this may be our last election. De Niro was not satisfied with that alarmist message and decided to take it to an apocalyptic level in predicting a global meltdown. ...

What was particularly weird is that the Biden campaign succeeded in reinforcing the view of this case as lawfare, an effort to stop Trump at any cost.

That message was also reaffirmed by President Biden stating that he will hold a press conference on the verdict.  After the third highest ranking official in the Biden Justice Department joined the prosecution to bring the case, the announcement only magnified the view of a case that is being used for political purposes.

Clearly, that's no longer just a view. Team Biden intended to leverage the trial for his own political benefit, a strategy change that started last week and accelerated beyond Biden's control thanks to De Niro. Having Travis Bickle screaming expletives at Manhattanites was likely not what Team Biden had in mind, and now they want to distance themselves from the stench. 

And yes, that's rain, dammit! Rain, we tell ya!

LOLOLOK https://t.co/DGpsWgV0uA pic.twitter.com/SXdfQE325n

— Matthew D. Dempster (@dempstermd) May 29, 2024