Meetings, interviews, fundraising events, official travel: Joe Biden tried this week to be everywhere at once while his rival Donald Trump was held up in court.
It was a tactical campaign move by an 81-year-old president who faces mixed polls and nagging questions about his age. Since last Monday, Trump has been tied up in criminal court in connection with alleged hidden payments to a former porn star. And for the next several weeks, the 77-year-old former Republican president, who's been indicted in several other cases, will see his campaign disrupted while he sits in the New York courtroom.
Biden's team jubilantly noted that last Wednesday, the only day Trump was not required to be in court, the real estate magnate played golf.
"I haven't had a chance to watch the court proceedings," Biden chuckled on Thursday at a fundraiser at the home of actor Michael Douglas, "because I've been out campaigning." On Tuesday, Biden flew to Florida to defend abortion rights. A day later, he presented himself to construction workers as a child of the middle class. On Thursday, Biden announced heavy federal investments in semiconductors. Trump "learned the best way to get rich is inherit it," said Biden, adding: "I guess that's how you look at the world from Mar-a-Lago," the former president's vast estate in Florida. On Friday, Biden again played up the contrast in a radio interview with host Howard Stern, a regular venue for Trump before he won the presidency in 2016.
Stern and Trump often delved into salacious terrain.
But Friday's interview was neither abrasive nor off-color.
Biden reviewed his life, the painful moments -- the death of his first wife and their baby daughter, then the death of his eldest son from cancer -- as well as the happy ones, such as meeting his current wife Jill. With the encouragement of a very supportive Stern, Biden took the opportunity to highlight his sense of family, his empathy and his resilience.